Brutal Runoffs In Tejas— Both Parties
Almost, but not all, the big news out of Tuesday’s Texas runoff primaries were in the Republican lane. We highlighted just two yesterday, Tony Gonzales’ narrow escape from neo-fascist Brandon Herrera (just 407 votes out of 29,639 cast) and House speaker Dade Phelan’s equally narrow escape from his own neo-fascist challenger, David Covey (366 votes out of 25,260). Phelan lost Orange and Jasper counties and only managed to scrape through because of his strength in the district’s only city, Beaumont (Jefferson County)— and because he spent over $12 million. We’ll come back to more of what happened in the Republican Party races in a minute. First the interesting Democratic Party runoffs.
Let me start in Laredo (HD-80), where the corrupt Cuellar clan rules the roost. With longtime state Rep. Tracy King (D) retiring, it looked like Congressman Henry Cuellar’s and Sheriff (since 2008) Martin Cuellar’s sister, Rosie, would be headed off to Austin. Back in March, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin Jr. won the Republican nomination (with support from Trump, Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton) and in the 5-person Democratic primary, Cecelia Castellano and Rosie Cuellar rose to the top, with, respectively 27.1% and 25.5%. In the primary, 12,640 Democrats had voted as did 10,982 Republicans.
Then, in between the primary and the runoff, Henry Cuellar was finally charged with accepting at least $600,000 in foreign bribes. Did it make a difference for Rosie, who lost the runoff Tuesday to Cecelia Castellano? Well, everyone in Webb County already knew the Cuellars are corrupt as hell. And, as expected, Webb County turned out for Rosie, but it wasn’t enough in a district that also includes Atascosa, Dimmit, Frio , Uvalde and Zavala counties… although Martin managed to win his runoff (since it was only in Webb County).
Another Democratic race I was watching was in Houston’s HD-146, where Shawn Thierry has been the Rep since 2017 in an all-blue district. On Tuesday, she lost her runoff to Lauren Simmons by a wide margin in a low turnout election— 2,365 (60.3%) to 1,558 (39.7%). Why? Thierry had repeatedly crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans against the LGBTQ community— on banning books, on gender affirming care and then on banning trans women from women’s sports. Although reactionary Black church leaders supported Thierry, many of her House colleagues backed Simmons, including new-Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, as well as Houston state Reps Alma Allen, Ann Johnson and Christina Morales, John Rosenthal and Gene Wu. Beto O’Rouke also endorsed Simmons. Other conservative, anti-gay Dems in the legislature, including including Nicole Collier, Harold Dutton, Eddie Morales, Sergio Muñoz and Richard Raymond, backed Thierry.
In El Paso’s HD-77, another anti-gay freak, corrupt conservaDem former Rep. Norma Chávez was, thankfully, beaten (64-36%) by the establishment Democrat, Vincent Perez, not great, but not her.
There was one state Senate race that got my attention, also in Houston (SD-15– now mayor John Whitmire’ old seat), where very progressive Molly Cook seems to have narrowly beaten state Rep Jarvis Johnson, 50.2% to 49.8%. Good news.
OK, now let’s move over to the Dark Side and have a look at the results of the vicious Republican Civil War. Though Gonzales and Phelan beat back their fascist challengers, many mainstream conservative incumbents didn’t. One caveat: be aware we’re not talking about candidates who are good fighting candidates who are bad. We’ll talking about battles between bad and worse. Allow the Texas Tribune to explain the background and results: “A wave of Republican incumbents were swept out of the Texas House in Tuesday's primary runoffs, including a handful who opposed school vouchers last fall, handing Gov. Greg Abbott a tentative majority in the lower chamber on his signature issue. With most ballots counted across the state, six of the eight GOP House members who were forced into overtime appeared to lose their runoffs, continuing a surge of anti-establishment energy that had already led to the ouster of nine House Republicans in the March primary.”
The runoffs brought mixed results for Texas' hard right: the House gained a pro-voucher majority— for now— and the 15 GOP incumbents ousted by insurgent challengers across both rounds of the primary amounted to a record. But House Speaker Dade Phelan, the top target of the party's rightmost faction, survived his runoff, setting the stage for a period of major turbulence and uncertainty for the lower chamber as it shifts even further right.
…According to complete but unofficial results, anti-voucher GOP state Reps. DeWayne Burns of Cleburne, Justin Holland of Rockwall [to former Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson] and John Kuempel of Seguin lost their reelection bids on Tuesday…
A fourth GOP voucher holdout, state Rep. Gary VanDeaver (R-New Boston) defeated runoff opponent Chris Spencer.
The Republican voucher skeptics were not the only casualties of Tuesday's election. State Reps. Frederick Frazier (R-McKinney), Stephanie Klick (R-Fort Worth), and Lynn Stucky (R-Denton), all fell to their runoff challengers. All three backed school vouchers last year and received Abbott's support in the runoffs, yet also voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton last spring— another issue that became a flashpoint in the House primaries.
By Abbott’s count, voucher supporters headed into the runoffs needing to net just two votes to gain a majority in the House, the chamber where a firewall of Democrats and rural Republicans has shot down past attempts to provide taxpayer funds for private school tuition.
Despite the chamber’s historical resistance, Abbott has adopted vouchers as his top priority in recent years. He campaigned for reelection on the issue in 2022, then spent much of last year trying to muscle it through the House, using a mix of hardball tactics such as vetoing bills passed by voucher holdouts and using public school funding increases as a negotiating chip.
Abbott ultimately failed to break through, with therewith death knell coming last fall when a bloc of 21 House Republicans— mostly from rural districts— joined with Democrats to strip vouchers from a broader education funding bill. The bipartisan coalition of 84 members outnumbered the 63 Republicans who voted to preserve the voucher measure.
Ahead of Tuesday’s runoff, voucher supporters had already knocked off six of the GOP holdouts. They were also poised to nominate at least four pro-voucher candidates to fill seats vacated by retiring voucher opponents, netting a total of 10 seats before the overtime round.
Another seat that was vacant at the time of last fall’s voucher vote is all but certain to be filled by a pro-voucher member next year. That put voucher supporters at 74 votes in the 150-member chamber heading into Tuesday— assuming all pro-voucher Republicans hold onto their seats in the November general election.
Most of Texas’ House districts have been drawn to heavily favor Democrats or Republicans, making most seats unlikely to change hands this fall. But Democrats are eyeing at least one seat Abbott is counting as a voucher pickup: San Antonio’s House District 121, where state Rep. Steve Allison lost to an Abbott-backed primary challenger, Marc LaHood, in March.
Allison and other anti-voucher incumbents faced an onslaught of attack ads in the first round of the primary, a trend that continued into the runoffs. Much of the opposition came from Abbott, who has spent more than $8 million of his own campaign funds on the primaries, and two deep-pocketed pro-voucher groups.
AFC Victory Fund, the super PAC political arm of the voucher advocacy group American Federation for Children, has spent around $2 million in the runoffs boosting pro-voucher primary challengers. And Club for Growth, a federal PAC, reserved some $4 million in TV and radio ads targeting the four anti-voucher Republicans who were pushed into runoffs, along with House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont.
A large chunk of the spending has been underwritten by Jeff Yass, the Pennsylvania-based GOP megadonor and TikTok investor whose priority issues include school vouchers. Yass has contributed nearly $12 million to Abbott and AFC Victory Fund, about half of which came from a single $6 million check to Abbott’s campaign in December. He has also donated millions to Club for Growth.
One of the main groups defending anti-voucher Republicans, meanwhile, has been the PAC funded by H-E-B Chairman Charles Butt. The group spent more than $4 million through March 5, then largely steered clear of the runoffs. Filling the void was a last-minute funding influx from Miriam Adelson, the owner of the Las Vegas Sands casino empire who is intent on legalizing her business in Texas. She kicked in six figures to Holland and Kuempel in the final weeks of the runoff.
…After Phelan declared victory in his runoff, Paxton released a statement blaming the outcome on Democratic voters who crossed over to rescue the GOP speaker. He also threatened House Republicans with electoral defeat in 2026 if they voted to return the gavel to Phelan when the Legislature reconvenes in January.
"My message to Austin is clear: to those considering supporting Dade Phelan as Speaker in 2025, ask your 15 colleagues who lost re-election how they feel about their decision now," Paxton said. "You will not return if you vote for Dade Phelan again."
Phelan delivered the opposite message, telling a raucous crowd of supporters, “I will be your state rep for HD 21 and I will be your speaker for the Texas House in 2025."
Late Tuesday night, Zach Despart reported that “Phelan’s win is a major blow to the party’s ultraconservative faction that is led ideologically by [Lt Gov. Dan] Patrick and [corrupt AG Ken] Paxton and financed by megadonors like West Texas oil magnate Tim Dunn. It is a group that rejects compromise and bipartisanship, demonizing Democrats and the Republicans willing to work with them. This ascendant wing has supplanted the party’s traditional focus on taxes and regulations with highly divisive social issues like transgender rights and book bans. In defeat, that group did not go quietly. Covey called Phelan an ‘Austin swamp creature’ who only secured reelection through the support of Democrats, which he said was a ‘brazen act of betrayal.’ Paxton, an early endorser of Covey who had campaigned for the challenger as late as Tuesday afternoon, echoed the claim. The attorney general, who had vowed revenge against Phelan for supporting his impeachment, said the speaker had ‘blatantly stolen an election from the hard-working people of his district’ by courting Democrats. Paxton said Republicans should move to closed primaries— a priority of the far right— and he issued a warning to members of the House. ‘To those considering supporting Dade Phelan as Speaker in 2025, ask your 15 colleagues who lost re-election how they feel about their decision now,’ Paxton said. ‘You will not return if you vote for Dade Phelan again.’”
The more business-oriented establishment wing of the party viewed Phelan’s campaign as a last stand to maintain influence— and civility— in the Legislature. That group, led by some of the state’s wealthiest business executives, political strategists like Karl Rove and erstwhile Republican elected officials including U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Gov. Rick Perry, poured millions of dollars into Phelan’s campaign. Phelan’s win was a victory for them, too. That well-heeled group of powerbrokers, who swept Texas Republicans into power in the 1990s, cracking a century of Democratic dominance, showed that despite recent attacks on their own reputations as RINOs, they still have sway within the state party.
But whether Phelan can hold on to the speaker’s gavel is unclear. One of his own committee chairmen, Republican Rep. Tom Oliverson of Cypress, declared his candidacy for speaker in March. But no members have publicly endorsed Oliverson, and while his reelection was in doubt, Phelan was able to keep the rest of his caucus from open rebellion.
…Attacked by his enemies as a RINO, Phelan was also widely considered more conservative than his predecessors, Phelan secured passage of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, permitless carry of handguns and several first-in-the-nation border security bills.
Phelan was easily reelected speaker in January 2023 with all Democrats and almost all Republicans in support; conservative rumblings of dissatisfaction amounted to a paltry three votes for another candidate. And he batted away far-right criticism of the House’s longstanding practice of appointing Democratic committee chairs, appointing them to lead eight of 34 committees.
Commentaires