Tuesday’s tightly contested runoff elections exposed turmoil within the Texas Republican Party.
The party’s so-called business wing was hit hard in an election that saw unprecedented levels of outside spending, but it still managed to win because some incumbents, notably Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Texas) and Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), hung on.
But they’re in a precarious position: In Tuesday’s vote, conservative hardliners in state government removed almost all of the board’s dissenting members, primarily those who opposed the rise of privatization in the state’s massive public school system and a small group that supported impeaching Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Joshua Blank of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin said Tuesday’s election results “were just the most confusing outcome,” with “most of the Republicans he targeted lost, and the speaker narrowly won.”
As a result, the primary has widened divisions throughout the state GOP, which Blank noted has been widely criticized for “prioritizing putting Republicans on the line over building the state party.”
Now, he said, “the party appears to be continuing to move in that direction.”
Tuesday’s election came just after Republicans held their state party convention. passed a strong policy platform It calls abortion “murder, not medicine,” advocates for the abolition of no-fault divorce, describes homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice” undeserving of any legal protection or parental rights, and classifies climate-warming carbon dioxide as a “non-pollutant.”
The move was a stark contrast to the once-dominant “business” wing of the state Republican Party, which tended to put the culture wars second to the day-to-day business of the state.
Those tensions within the party were on full display after Tuesday’s runoff election. Education voucher activist Corey DeAngelis The result is called “Political shockwave”
Abbott is He now has the “votes to pass school choice,” which supporters call vouchers, and conservative activists have already stepped up their attacks on Phelan, seeing him as not doing enough for the cause.
“It remains to be seen whether the speaker will stay in office,” said Shelley Sylvester of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which ran the rebel campaign. “We have a fresh slate of House members, many of whom were elected on a school choice platform. The speaker has said he would have preferred to have passed a weaker form of school choice legislation by not passing it and not making it a priority.”
She said the voucher bill now has the power to pass a “stronger version” because “previous bills included perks to school districts. Now we don’t need those perks. We have the votes.”
But that analysis is an “oversimplification,” argues Republican lobbyist Thomas Ratliff. Regardless of lawmakers’ overriding stance on vouchers, “there are 37 different ways it could mean that. You’re going to have a division in the House, and you’re going to have an equal or greater division between the House and Senate,” he said.
Ratliff noted that many members of the Texas House of Representatives have endorsed Phelan since the runoff election, saying it’s proof that defeating Phelan won’t be easy.
“The thing that still holds true in Texas politics is that representatives and senators don’t like the other side interfering in what they consider to be their internal affairs,” he said. “I think that outside interference will influence the House to come together and be on the defensive.”
Republican anger was also evident in the congressional elections.
In Tuesday’s runoff election, Gonzalez narrowly survived a challenge from the right against YouTuber and gun enthusiast Brandon Herrera. The senator drew the ire of Texas Republicans last year for his stances on several bills, most notably for supporting bipartisan gun control legislation following the devastating school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the state he represents, and for supporting the Respect Marriage Act.
The Texas Republican Party responded by censuring Gonzalez, a move that would have allowed the party to remove him from the race under measures proposed in the new party platform.
Gonzalez’s primary campaign sparked personal conflict after several of his colleagues in Congress endorsed Herrera in the primary, including House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good (R-Va.), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Eli Klain (R-Ariz.).
Gonzales had the support of Abbott and other Democrats, as well as local congressional representatives, but mainstream conservatives barely won the election.
As is common in Texas primaries, both Gonzalez and state Rep. Craig Goldman (R-Texas), who is running in the 12th Congressional District, are “being challenged from the right,” Matt Mackowiak, chairman of the Travis County Republican Party and a Republican strategist, told The Hill.
“I wouldn’t say either opponent was serious,” Mackowiak added.
“But the political environment made them take it seriously.”
Many in the party have argued that non-Republicans helped Gonzales win.This belief, and the steps the party is taking in response, highlights a second divide: between Republicans who believe they should embrace a larger field that includes as many new voters as possible and those who want a smaller, ideologically unified party committed to the culture wars.
For example, the Republican Party’s new platform outlines the party’s intention to limit voting in primary elections to registered party members and end the state’s lengthy early voting period.
The measures have also raised concerns from some of the state’s emerging far-right forces.
“As a conservative, I think my side is always going to be able to put forward good ideas and get people on their side,” Sylvester of the Texas Public Policy Foundation told The Hill. “Elections are about ideas, and we want to make it as easy as possible.” [people to vote] As much as possible.”
Sylvester also criticized the party’s platform, which requires statewide elected officials to win at least half of Texas’ counties and aims to keep urban Democrats out of power.
Still, Sylvester and other Republicans agree that the party will win in the fall.
“The Texas Republican Party is more united than ever,” state GOP Chairman Abraham George said in a statement to The Hill. “We passed our party platform, legislative priorities and rules, and we just overwhelmingly elected a new party leader at our convention.”
Others believe there is a much longer road ahead.
Intraparty fighting at the state House level is unlikely to give Democrats an electoral chance outside of a few strong districts, experts told The Hill, noting that many of those key races took place in rural districts that are reliably conservative.
But they acknowledge that tensions and infighting will likely continue when a new parliament takes office in the autumn.
“This is going to continue through the summer, fall and winter as everyone is watching Dade Phelan and whether he can continue as speaker,” said Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser.
“There are a lot of vested interests who want to remove him, not just on the school choice issue but on other issues like the border and other cultural issues.”
Blank of the Texas Politics Project told The Hill that Phelan remains the clear favorite to retain control of the House, partly because many lawmakers may be upset about the roles Abbott, Patrick and Paxton played in removing their sitting colleagues.
“They may have created an environment where it’s even less likely that Republicans, at least a significant number of them, will come in to try to compromise,” Blank said.
This division could give Democrats in the state legislature a level of strategic power they haven’t known for a long time.
“From Washington to Austin, the Republican Party is more divided than it has ever been,” state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, told The Hill.
But, as in Congress, “if Democrats are united, our unity is our greatest asset,” he said.
Ratliff told The Hill that one looming question is whether Texas Republicans will start rejecting bills simply because Democrats propose them.
“If Democrats return to Congress next session with less power and less voice, they could become a force that further fuels chaos, which is not their role,” Blank said. “That could pit factions of Republican primaries in Congress against each other, and Democrats may be more inclined to add fuel to the fire.”
Mr Abbott’s bid to control the House of Commons may be doomed by something far more mundane than party politics.
“They’re working on one issue, but they have 7,000 bills coming at them, so there are still a lot of unanswered questions about what these lawmakers want to do,” Blank said.
But he said those hoping the rebels would reshape the culture of the House may be disappointed.
“It’s not normal for a new member to have such a big impact on the rules and the process,” he said.
