Will Texas Republicans Finally Control the Texas State House in 2025?

Texas House Speakership Race

Will the Texas Republican Party finally gain control of the Texas House of Representatives?

That seems like a silly question, since out of 150 seats, the Republicans hold 88 following the excellent Election 2024 results.

However, for the last two decades, what has happened is that a liberal Republican lines up with the Democrats and a couple of other RINOs, and then he clinches the Speakership.

This kind of hustle is all too common in state legislatures. If the minority party has enough votes, they can use their caucus to leverage for a different speaker from the majority party. Why would Democrats support a Republican for Speaker? In Texas, at least, the RINO Speaker rewards the minority party by granting them chairmanships on key committees.

With liberals running committees in any otherwise "conservative" majority House, you can guess what happens: all the conservative Texas GOP priorities get killed.

And that has been the problem for the last twenty years in Texas.

Some conservative priorities make it out of the legislature, but most of the time there is a trade-off, like more spending, or in the last Texas legislative session, and expensive impeachment proceeding against effective Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Texas GOP grassroots rose up, fought back against this uniparty corruption, and pushed out a host of pro-Establishment, pro-Democrat RINOs this year.

But ... will a real Republican finally clinch the Texas House Speaker's Gavel?

Here's an update from Texas Scorecard on this fight:

Good morning,

The race for Speaker of the House had been pretty quiet for a while....

And then the last few days happened.

On Friday, Speaker Dade Phelan dropped out of the race after several of his allies endorsed against him.

Then yesterday, the House Republican Caucus met and nominated State Rep. David Cook as the Republican choice for Speaker. Cook has promised a series of reforms, including eliminating Democrat chairmanships. 

Meanwhile, State Rep. Dustin Burrows is attempting to create a coalition of Democrats and Republicans to thwart Cook in January. After the Caucus vote yesterday, Burrows released a list of 38 Republicans and 38 Democrats he claimed support him.

In the following hours, however, numerous members began to come out and say they did not give permission to be on Burrows' list and in fact actually support David Cook. 

The actual vote for Speaker will take place on the first day of session, January 14.

The question between now and then is whether Republicans will side with the Republican nominee for Speaker, David Cook, or the Democrats' choice, Dustin Burrows.

So far, things are developing in a positive direction.

RINO Dade Phelan stepped aside, knowing that he did not have the votes within the Republican caucus, because this time around, Texas GOP House Reps know that they can get primaried and lose their seats.

However, a candidate needs 76 vote, and the caucus only had 62 members. What's going to happen in January?

Rep. Dustin Burrows is the Establishment pick who has been courting Democratic votes, and he recently announced that he has the bare 76 votes. Of course, even if there weren't announcements that followed to disputed the list, his math is clearly off. If 62 members were willing to accept David Cook following the Texas GOP caucus vote, then Burrows doesn't have 38 Republicans ready to line up behind him.

What will happen in January?

Can Cook peel off 14 more Republicans to support his effort? He might have to hand out chairmanships to liberal Republicans, even if he refuses to install Democratic chairs in the future. Will this frustrate the Texas GOP push for school choice, the ban on foreign purchases of Texas property, the end of property taxes, and all the other Republican Party priorities?

Perhaps a compromise GOP nominee will emerge beyond Burrows and Cook, and co-chairmanships might emerge on some key committees. However, that compromise will rankle the rank-and-file in the state, and they should expect more primary challenges against those sellout RINOs.

Perhaps the growing pressure of the Texas GOP leadership will work this time. After all, they have clearly announced that all the Republican House members must get behind David Cook, or face censure and removal from primary ballots in the 2026 elections. Will this threat be enough, though?

Or maybe we will see multiple ballots on the floor, just like what happened in Congress in January 2023, in which California Republican Kevin McCarthy didn't get the votes for Speaker until the 16th ballot, after he made extensive concessions to conservative members.