Lewis triggered a speaker's race in 1991 when he announced, amid allegations of accepting an illegal gift from a law firm, that he would not seek re-election as speaker in 1993. Laney announced in November 1992 that he had secured the pledges of more than eighty of his colleagues to elect him speaker. In his first term as speaker, Laney "ran the fairest, cleanest, most open, most democratic House in memory". He was named by "Texas Monthly" magazine as one of the "Top Ten" legislators of the Seventy-third Texas Legislature.