Texas House to pick new speaker, concluding brutal proxy war

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In 2009, 11 Texas House Republicans gathered at a lawmaker’s West Austin home and plotted the ouster of then-Speaker Tom Craddick.

Told from the perspective of the aggrieved, the rogue Republicans plotted with Democrats to overthrow the first GOP Texas House speaker since Reconstruction and thwart their conservative agenda. From the perspective of the eventual winners — the “Polo Road Gang,” as the 11 lawmakers came to be known for the location of their initial meeting — were casting off the rule of an iron-fisted leader who had stifled the voice of individual members and disregarded parliamentary rules to push through his preferred legislation.

In the end, the GOP insurgents won and with the help of a majority of House Democrats, they elected former Rep. Joe Straus of San Antonio as speaker, beginning a record-tying five terms as leader of the chamber. Straus would be known for being a business-minded Republican who fended off his party’s attempts to restrict LGBTQ+ rights while regularly clashing with his more conservative Senate counterpart Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

That speaker coup 15 years ago provided the initial spark for the fiery Republican civil war culminating Tuesday with the vote to select a new House speaker — a decision that will have a dramatic impact on the direction of this year’s lawmaking and potentially the future of the Legislature.

One candidate from each camp is seeking the speaker’s gavel which is soon to be vacated by the current chamber leader, Dade Phelan of Beaumont, who is being pushed out by party leaders and activists.

Rep. David Cook of Mansfield represents the right wing of the party — Republicans who say current House leaders are too willing to compromise with and elevate Democrats. Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, represents the establishment wing of the party. He’s much more conservative than Straus but is emblematic of a group that has worked with Democrats in the past and who believes in protecting the independence of the House against outside forces.

The acrimony between the two factions was stoked during a contentious 2023 legislative session when members were largely divided over whether they supported the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott’s priority legislation to create a school voucher-like program, allowing public dollars to be used toward private schools.

Those votes paved the way for a brutal Republican primary with Paxton and Abbott waging war against sitting members over their disloyalty. And in recent months the venomous proxy war has played out ahead of the speaker race, with Paxton’s allies taking aim at Phelan and then, after he dropped from the race, his successor Burrows.

“This is the latest and maybe the final battle in a very long war between the insurgent Republicans and the establishment Republicans,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “Long simmering tensions between the party have finally boiled over.”

Burrows vs. Cook

Burrows, a five-term legislative veteran who is part of the chamber’s current leadership team under Phelan, is the candidate of the establishment and has said he has enough votes to win the speaker’s race. However, a handful of lawmakers who were on Burrows’ pledge list have said publicly they have not committed to supporting him.

Cook, a two-term Republican who has climbed the chamber’s ranks steadily without making many enemies, is the candidate of the GOP’s more conservative wing, despite a somewhat moderate voting record that included supporting Paxton’s impeachment. Cook won the House Republican Caucus endorsement in December in a divisive meeting in which many of Burrows’ supporters walked out when they claimed they were not getting a fair process.

Under caucus rules, each of the House’s 88 Republicans should follow the group’s endorsement and vote for Cook, which would give him well above the 76 votes he needs to win the gavel. But Burrows has entrenched support from more than 30 Republicans who have said they are willing to defy the caucus’ rules to back their man.

The two camps have been stuck at a stalemate since early December with each trying to draw support away from the other. They’ve also tried to secure support from Democrats who lost two seats in the House in last year’s elections, dropping their ranks to 62, and who stand to lose more power as Cook’s platform includes barring the minority party from leading legislative committees and prioritizing Republican bills.

It is highly unusual for lawmakers to arrive in Austin for the Legislature’s opening day without knowing who will lead the chamber – something that has not happened since at least the turn of the century. That division reflects the internecine feuding in the Texas GOP.

The war on Phelan

The Republican party has dominated every branch of Texas government since 2003 but has had a prolonged battle over what ideologies and policies to put front and center, mostly between traditional business-oriented Republicans and its more socially conservative adherents

“This goes back even to the early 2000s when the Republican party was trying to establish itself and determine its identity in a purple Texas,” Rottinghaus said. “There’s a fight of how far to go ideologically and what social issues to pick up and that fight has finally culminated in this battle today.”

Phelan, as the chamber’s leader, became a figurehead of the establishment GOP and was blamed both for the failure of the school voucher bill and for Paxton’s impeachment. (Phelan supported Paxton’s impeachment, but did not cast a vote on vouchers.) By the time the Republican primaries came around in 2024, a slew of incumbent House Republicans, including Phelan, were in the crosshairs of the party’s most conservative voters. Paxton, who was acquitted by the Senate, vowed revenge against those Republicans who had voted to impeach him. Abbott also went on the attack against some GOP incumbents for voting against his voucher bill.

Between Abbott’s multi-million dollar war chest and Paxton’s deep-pocketed socially conservative donors, incumbent House Republicans were fighting a two-front war against their own party in the primaries.

When the elections were over, more than 20 House Republicans had been replaced by lawmakers who were further to the right than their predecessors. Phelan survived his own challenge but the fight had cost him millions of dollars and scores of political capital, and many of the newly elected Republicans had pledged to oust the sitting speaker. In that fight, too, the intra party fighting made itself clear: Phelan was backed by some of the GOP’s biggest donors in the state, including wealthy business executives who lavish money on some of Texas’ biggest political leaders, while Covey was funded by far-right megadonors from West Texas and Jeff Yass, a supporter of school voucher-type legislation.

By early December it became clear that Phelan did not have the support to win a third term as speaker and he withdrew from the race. Burrows, a top Phelan lieutenant, became the standard bearer for Phelan’s remaining GOP supporters, setting up another showdown between longtime House leaders and the party’s most conservative faction.

Phelan 2.0

Cook’s supporters have dubbed Burrows’ candidacy as “Phelan 2.0” or even “Bonnen 3.0,” after former House speaker Dennis Bonnen of Angleton who preceded Phelan and had also feuded with the party’s right wing. In Burrows, they see a continuation of the establishment GOP that they believe has negotiated too much with Democrats and failed to pass priorities of the increasingly socially conservative Republican Party of Texas.

That dissatisfaction comes even as House Republican leaders over the last decade and a half have passed bills that ban nearly all abortions in the state, loosened gun laws to allow Texans to carry handguns without licenses or training, sent billions of dollars toward border security including a state-funded border wall and barred transgender children from playing on school sports teams based on the gender they identify with.

The party’s right wing is pulling out all the stops for this speaker’s race. Grassroots activists and political action committees – some of the same ones that were active in the primary races – are urging their supporters to call their state representatives and tell them to vote for Cook. Last week, Paxton and Republican Party of Texas Chair Abraham George, went around the state for two days to rally constituents to put pressure on Republicans who had pledged to vote for Burrows.

“You gotta put the pressure on them next week,” Paxton told a room of supporters in Fort Worth. “Do not give up, do not give in. And, listen, if they don't listen we are going to come back and primary them next time and beat them.”

Burrows’ supporters, however, push back on the notion that they are squishy moderates and are trying to paint their candidate as the “most conservative” lawmaker in the race.

Burrows’ backers tout that, as leader of the agenda-setting House Calendars Committee, he was responsible for advancing anti-abortion legislation like the so-called “Fetal Heartbeat” anti-abortion bill in 2021 and last session’s bill barring transgender children from competing in school sports. They also point to Burrows’ authorship of a bill to limit the property tax rate increase that cities and counties could impose on their constituents and a bill, targeting Democratic-run cities, that barred municipalities from imposing labor rules on businesses, some of which were aimed at protecting workers but could be cumbersome for employers.

“He is clearly the conservative choice and the person that is going to look out for the best interests of the institution of the Texas House on a whole,” Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, told KXAS in Dallas.

This isn’t Burrows’ first tangle with conservative activists. In 2019, Burrows hit the low point of his political career when as House GOP Caucus chairman he was surreptitiously caught on tape authorizing a political activist to target 10 fellow Republicans in the primary elections.

When the tape was released Burrows was forced to resign as head of the caucus. The activist, Michael Quinn Sullivan, also headed up a political action committee funded by West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris and Dan Wilks that frequently targets incumbent Republicans. Sullivan and his conservative media outlet, Texas Scorecard, has been critical of Burrows’ run for speaker and supportive of Cook.

How will the speaker impact this legislative session?

The House speaker appoints committees, chooses who leads those committees and sets the pace for the flow of legislation through the chamber. Traditionally, the speaker has managed the competing interests of 150 members and tries to keep enough of them happy so that the session doesn’t grind to a halt. A big part of the job is also balancing the needs of House lawmakers against the needs of the state’s other big actors, the governor and the lieutenant governor who leads the Senate, as well as outside forces.

In this speaker’s race, those outside figures are watching closely.

Abbott has said a speaker “chosen by a majority of Republicans” is needed to pass his priority school choice bill.

Patrick, who is aligned with the GOP’s right wing and openly feuded with Phelan over school vouchers and the Paxton impeachment, has thrown his weight behind Cook as the endorsed nominee of the Republican caucus and has exchanged heated words with Burrows’ supporters. Like others in the party’s right wing, Patrick has pointed to Straus’ election by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats as the original sin lawmakers need to reverse.

“Unfortunately, for most of the last 15 years, there have been a dozen or so House Republicans who undermine the Republican Party by getting all or most of the Democrats to join them to pick a Republican who the Democrats can then control,” Patrick wrote on social media. “That is what Dustin Burrows is doing.”

“I do not support any Republican who is elected Speaker by a few Republicans and a majority of Democrats,” he added.

On Sunday, two days before the opening day of the session, Patrick accused Burrows and his close allies, Phelan, former speaker Bonnen, his brother Rep. Greg Bonnen of Friendswood and Rep. Cody Harris of Palestine, of running the House through an “oligarchy” that passes on the most powerful positions to one another.

Democrats are also watching the race closely. In December, the House Democratic Caucus released its members to vote for whichever candidate they wanted except for Cook. Cook has said he will still seek out Democratic support and gained the vote of Laredo Democrat Richard Raymond Peña over the weekend. Burrows has also put out a list of more than 30 Democrat supporters. But without either of them securing the gavel yet, the race may come down to who can win over more Democrats.

Still, Cook’s supporters say pushing the speaker’s race this close to the session is a victory.

“We’re either going to have a new speaker and we’re going to get a lot of Republican victories or we’re going to have the same old type of speaker and there are going to be a lot of fireworks in the Texas House the next two years and we’ll see some interesting primary challenges,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, told supporters during the event with Paxton and George.