After Punishing Primaries, Key Runoffs Could Tilt Texas Legislature Further Right

The man who walked in the door last fall looked like Texas personified. A sixth-generation rancher, he carried a gritty, everyman vibe that would lead his new friend to call him “Mr. Smith Goes to Austin.” That new friend was Texas author Lawrence Wright, and “Mr. Smith” was, in fact Glenn Rogers, a Republican state representative for House District 60, west of Fort Worth. The two men agreed to meet at a Starbucks in the Tarrytown neighborhood of Austin, where Rogers wanted to tell Wright how Texas politics really work. 

“He found my number somehow and called me up,” Wright told the Observer. “He was pretty steamed.”

In a GOP divided by issues such as school vouchers and the Paxton impeachment, Rogers found himself with more opposition than usual, and most of it from within his own party. Far-right billionaires like the Wilks brothers (oil) and Tim Dunn (also oil) were bankrolling his primary opponent, as they had in the last two contests. Now, they were joined by Gov. Greg Abbott, who endorsed Rogers in 2020 but soured on the lawmaker after Rogers opposed school vouchers. Rogers’ primary opponent, Mike Olcott, received endorsements from Abbott, Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton, Sen. Ted Cruz and former President Donald Trump.

This is the way things are now, Rogers told Wright: In the modern Texas GOP, you get in line or you get primaried. A small number of influential donors are working to bend the Legislature to their will by throwing millions of dollars behind candidates like Olcott. As a result, seemingly “disloyal” Republicans like Rogers suffered major losses in the recent March 5 primaries.

“He gave me material that would’ve been perfect for my book,” Wright says, referring to his recently released novel, Mr. Texas. The book’s hero, Sonny Lamb, is a rancher-turned-politician who discovers the Legislature is rife with corruption. “Unfortunately,” Wright adds with a chuckle, “it was already in galleys.”

Then he turns serious, reflecting on Rogers’ loss.

“It’s a shame,” he says, “because, as you know, it’s hard to get good people in politics.”

On March 5, half of the challengers endorsed by Abbott won their races, and another five advanced to the May 28 runoffs. Only two lost.

The attorney general had a much lower win rate, but it’s hard to say he wasn’t successful in his efforts as well:

Eight Paxton-endorsed candidates won their races, and 21 lost; eight others are headed to runoffs. Sometimes Abbott and Paxton endorsed the same challenger. Other times, a Paxton enemy would earn Abbott’s imprimatur, likely because of support for school vouchers.

“The rural wins were the most impactful, because that’s where Abbott found the most resistance,” says Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston.

At the same time, Rottinghaus says the messy nature of warring endorsements — not to mention the presence of former President Donald Trump and gobs of oil money — makes it difficult to attribute victories to a sole person. Nevertheless, Abbott claims he now needs just two more votes to pass his school voucher bill, and he could get even closer after the late May elections.

The runoffs represent another installment inthe ongoing GOP civil war,and experts, strategists and candidates interviewed for this story worry the results of those races could tilt the ultraconservative Legislature even further to the right.

“The conservative wing of the Republican Party has made their bones on forcing their opponents into runoffs and then picking them off,” Rottinghaus says. “But runoffs can be unpredictable.”

One of the most compelling races is that between Dade Phalen, the current speaker of the House, and David Covey, a Paxton-backed candidate vying for House District 21 in the Beaumont area.

In the March 5 primaries, Phelan received roughly 1,000 fewer votes than his Paxton-backed opponent, forcing the first runoff involv ing a House speaker in 52 years. Both Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are vocal critics of Phelan, who led the House — and voted to oust Paxton — when his chamber impeached the attorney general on abuse of office charges in May 2023. (Paxton was acquitted by the Texas Senate four months later.)

In many ways, the Phelan-Paxton feud personifies their party’s infighting. In the runup to the primaries, Phelan’s team cut a campaign ad calling attention to an extramarital affair of the AG that was brought up time and again during the Paxton impeachment.

Paxton, meanwhile, has repeatedly accused Phelan of being in league with liberals. An ad supporting Covey echoed this claim, prominently featuring Paxton and a tweet by Trump, in which the former president calls Phelan a “RINO” (Republican in Name Only).

Further, the “too liberal” critique of Phelan was at the heart of the censure the Texas GOP’s executive committee delivered to the House speaker a few weeks before the primaries. Phelan had demonstrated a “lack of fidelity to Republican principles and priorities,” the censure argued. His specific sins were his role in the Paxton impeachment and his appointing of Democrats to chair roles on House committees.

“The civil war has left countless Republicans politically homeless.” – Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright

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Notably, the pro-Covey ad featuring Paxton and Trump was funded by Texans United for a Conservative Majority, a PAC funded by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks — the same billionaire thorns in the side of Glenn Rogers and dozens of other Republicans this past primary season. The PAC is a spinoff of Defend Texas Liberty, another Dunn and Wilks PAC that met serious controversy afterThe Texas Tribune reported that its then-president, Jonathan Stickland, met with white supremacist Nick Fuentes for seven hours in early October 2023.

A few months earlier, the PAC donated $3 million to Lt. Gov. Patrick. Patrick, who is not up for reelection until 2026, was presiding over the Paxton impeachment trial at the time. When news of the donation surfaced, Phelan called on Patrick to return the money. Patrick, in turn, called on Phelan to resign.

The lieutenant governor has since aligned himself with Covey, even appearing at the challenger’s election night watch party.

“Dan Patrick has been pushing for a more conservative House even longer than Greg Abbott,” notes Rottinghaus. “He’s the big winner [of the primaries], and that’s gone a bit unheralded. Dan Patrick helped to put Dade Phelan into a vice grip.”

Once it became clear that he was headed to a runoff, Phelan released a statement decrying the “tidal wave of outside influence and the relentless flood of special interest dollars” that shaped the primaries.

He wasn’t the only target of that tidal wave.

Texans United for a Conservative Majority spent millions on a smattering of far-right candidates, including former Trump aide Katrina Pierson, who forced Justin Holland into a runoff in his Rockwall-area district. Holland has been the target of criticism from his own party since at least last May.

Shortly after a gunman killed eight people at an Allen outlet mall last May, the Republican state representative voted to advance a bill that would raise the legal age for buying semiautomatic rifles. The bill ultimately failed, but the Rockwall County Republican Party cited Holland’s vote (as well as his support for Phelan and his opposition to school vouchers) in a January notice to voters that said the lawmaker has “belittled Republican voters” and “disregarded Republican principles.”

Gov. Abbott eventually endorsed Pierson (after the primary), and according to SMU political scientist Cal Jillson, the former Trump aide stands a strong chance in the May runoff.

“There’s a solid group of Republican voters that want a steadier brand of conservatism, not someone like Pierson,” Jillson notes. However, “the fact that it’s going to be a low-turnout election bodes well for Pierson.”

According to Jillson and other experts interviewed for this story, runoffs typically attract a lower turnout than primaries, which themselves have significantly lower turnouts than general elections. In other words, the most motivated voters (or, in this case, the most conservative voters) will likely turn out to vote in the late-May GOP runoffs. Beyond that, the turnout may pale in comparison to the relatively high vote tallies seen in March.

Like the Phelan-Covey matchup, the Pierson-Holland race is a contest between old-school conservatism and the GOP’s far right. But if Pierson wins, her victory may be more about school vouchers and less about Holland’s perceived lack of party loyalty.

“Most voters want to see proof,” Rottinghaus says, “and just saying someone is more conservative won’t do the job.”

Some polling indicates vouchers have more fans than detractors. This may help explain why Abbott-endorsed candidates had a higher win rate than Paxton’s chosen politicians in the most recent primaries. The governor has made school vouchers a clarion call, while Paxton seems more intent on ousting those who voted for his impeachment.

“Republican voters care about both school vouchers and the Paxton impeachment, but the former is more concrete,” Jillson says. “There’s actual polling about it. I think there are a lot of voters who think Paxton is a drag on the party, even as they defend him against the RINOs.”

Meanwhile, many Democrats are also preparing for runoffs in May. In Houston, Lauren Ashley Simmons is running to replace Shawn Thierry in District 146. Weeks before the primary, Thierry voted for Senate Bill 14, which bars gender-transitioning care for children and teens.

“There’s a fear of what our Legislature is going to look like,” Simmons told the Observer in an interview. “We have to protect public education and protect our families.” Thierry did not respond to a request for an interview.

This is Simmons’ first race, and she says she “had a hard time visualizing” what thousands of votes would look like. Now that she believes her race is truly winnable, she is more determined than ever, in her words, “to finish this thing.”

“I took maybe 72 hours off, and then the next weekend we were back in the field,” she says.

In Dallas, former sheriff and gubernatorial hopeful Lupe Valdez is headed to a runoff for her old seat. As the Observer has reported, current Sheriff Marian Brown has faced repeated criticism — including from her own staff — for her and her team’s handling of the pandemic and the winter storm that devastated Texas in 2021. Valdez is no stranger to controversy, either. Between 2005 and 2016, when she was sheriff, there was a death in Dallas County Jail roughly every six weeks.

“The battle lines are drawn, and our resolve has never been stronger.” – Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general.

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Despite these tight, headline-grabbing contests, much of the focus this May will be on the GOP side, where conversations between candidates are light on substance, instead often devolving into a referendum on what it means to be conservative and a Texan.

In a statement after March 5, Paxton cast the ongoing elections as a “battle for the soul of Texas.”

“​​This runoff is not a defeat, but rather a call to arms for all who stand for the principles of the America First movement,” he said. “The battle lines are drawn, and our resolve has never been stronger.”

Lawrence Wright doesn’t identify as either a Democrat or a Republican (“I’m a pragmatist,” he says), but he cares deeply about Texas. And like Jillson, the political scientist from SMU, Wright sees the influence of high-dollar donations pushing the state Legislature further to the right.

“The civil war has left countless Republicans politically homeless,” he says. “They don’t want to vote for Democrats, but they hate Republican leadership. From the outside, it seems impossible to reconcile.”

He doesn’t know how this war will end, but he worries that Republicans like Rogers — people who, in his estimation, are trying to represent their district — will become harder to find. When this happens, he says, “what you get is a collection of zombies parroting the official line from people with a billion dollars who want to shape the world in their perspective.”

That’s one area in which the gritty “Mr. Smith” and his author friend agree.

In an op-ed for the Weatherford Democrat after his loss, Rogers wrote that it had been “the greatest honor” to serve his district. He argued that he wasn’t the biggest loser, though — that title belonged to Texas public schools, rural Texas and representative government.

“History will prove that our current state government is the most corrupt ever and is ‘bought’ by a few radical dominionist billionaires seeking to destroy public education, privatize our public schools and create a Theocracy that is both un-American and un-Texan,” he wrote. “May God save Texas!”