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Of the 11 Texas Republicans who lost their seats this year in Gov. Greg Abbott’s quest to create a school voucher program, none went down swinging quite like state House Rep. Steve Allison.
Last session Allison, a former Alamo Heights ISD board president, was one of 21 Republicans in the Texas House who joined Democrats in stripping school vouchers out of a broader education funding bill.
The move turned him from a longtime ally of the governor into an overnight political target, drawing a deluge of attack ads from his own party’s leaders in his primary race.
In the face of that fight, Allison’s long record as a conservative lawmaker has quickly been overshadowed by his unusual cross-party efforts to keep public education in the spotlight.
The roughly $4.5 billion that Texas lawmakers approved for public schools last session never made it into districts’ hands after the governor demanded school vouchers be included in the legislation. Even after losing his primary, Allison tried unsuccessfully to rally lawmakers back to pass a school funding bill over the summer.
“When [schools] have to lay off staff, lay off teachers, discontinue programs, that is moving towards a breaking point,” Allison said in a Dec. 18 interview. “The money was there this last session. And for it to be held up over this voucher scheme that could have just been separate, it’s really heartbreaking.”
In a stunning rebuke to his party’s leaders, this fall Allison joined forces with the Democrat running for his seat who shared his views on school finance.
He’s also been speaking out about a messy 88th legislative session that left public schools scraping for money while Abbott cashed campaign checks from a billionaire voucher proponent and Attorney General Ken Paxton sought taxpayer dollars to cover his own legal defense.
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“I’ve been asked several times if I regret my vote on Paxton’s impeachment, or regret my position on school vouchers, and I don’t regret either one one bit. I’d do the same thing again,” Allison said. “Integrity is so important and I think we’re missing that … I’m not haunted.”
When state lawmakers return to work on Jan. 14, House District 121 will be represented by a new face. Republican Marc LaHood, who defeated Allison in the primary, and is a member of the conservative wing who found success in a district that’s elected moderates.
While wrapping up his final weeks in office, Allison spoke about a changing Republican Party, rifts with party leaders and lessons learned from six years in the Texas House.
San Antonio Report: When you were first running in 2018, the incumbent, then-Speaker Joe Straus, had just been through his own disagreements with the party’s conservative wing, and a crowded field of Republicans signed up to run for his seat. What was on your mind when you joined that race?
Steve Allison: Education. Education was terribly important. And then I thought it was important — and the encouragement I was receiving was — that Joe Straus was well-respected in our district and had done a good job. I think there was a strong interest in having someone older and more experienced, that had been around, to try to fill that role. My background in business and education and transportation, and my experience at the capitol, seemed to fit. I wasn’t planning on it at all, it just kind of snowballed.
SAR: So even though the party as a whole was shifting right, this district was still in the market for someone more moderate. What do you think changed in this election?
Allison: I think I’ve got a pretty conservative voting record… so to be labeled a RINO [Republican in Name Only], or Democrat sympathizer, more recently. Even sometimes to be called a moderate, I guess I do kind of tend more there.
But I think we’ve seen it around the country — we saw it in this primary in particular — a lot of outside influence. A tremendous amount of money and mailers and campaign efforts came from outside [the district], some pro-choice, some pro-voucher, and some just on extreme conservative issues. Then the governor picked up on that, and that changed everything.
There was a feeling, really up until this election, that House District 121 was changing and becoming a more middle, moderate — however you want to describe it — that there was a Democrat increase. I won the first two times by seven or eight percentage points, and the last time by 10. But then you see this time LaHood won it by just under five. So what does that say? … That kind of supports the fact, I think, that this district is still a little more middle of the road.
SAR: You’ve been working on public education issues in Texas for a long time, well before running for a seat in the legislature. How have those policy discussions changed in recent years?
Allison: When I first got involved… it was primarily over school finance. That’s when recapture and Robin Hood started [which is the practice of redistributing property tax dollars from wealthy districts]. Alamo Heights was one of the original Robin Hood districts and it was devastating. What’s frustrating is, it’s come full circle. This was back in the ’90s, and it’s where we are again: There’s a funding issue.
This last session, going into it, I thought if there was any place we had a consensus, it was to fix education, improve education and address the needs that we know are there. And we didn’t do it because it got bogged down. I blame the governor 100%.
[Abbott] suddenly wanted to push what he was calling “school choice,” and when he held funding for important educational needs hostage for his school choice scheme, that was just devastating and inexcusable in my mind.
We’ve got some important, important educational needs and financial needs for the development of our students that hit over so many different things: Mental health issues, safety issues, accountability issues, financial issues. We’ve got to address those.
This “school choice” thing, as [Abbott] likes to call it — I don’t care what you want to call it, it’s a voucher — that is totally separate, and they ought to be kept separate.
I know [Abbott] thinks that he has the votes, now that he was able to get rid of [11] of us. So be it. Do it. Don’t let it interfere with the more important educational needs.
SAR: What does it say about the state of Texas politics, if the policy fights boil down to rooting out the people who disagree with you until you get your way?
Allison: I think it’s a very bad statement, and particularly the way he did it. It’d be one thing if [Abbott] opposed me or any of the others over the school choice or school voucher issue. But he didn’t do that, and I think that is very sad and quite inexcusable and really goes to character and integrity.
Rather than taking us on over school choice, he accused each one of us — me included — of being weak on the border and being weak on property taxes, and wanting to raise taxes. Those were absolute falsehoods.
This past session, I was put on the Select Committee on Sustainable Property Tax Relief. On the border, I was on Appropriations and I supported and voted for every request [Abbott] made. It got sizable. We spent a lot of money on the border. But I supported it. So for him to come back and say I was not supportive on the border, or weak on property taxes, it’s just outrageous.
And then he makes it worse. While [Abbott] used those issues to get rid of us, the border and property tax, then he flips back and says, “See, people wanted school choice.” … That is so disingenuous.
SAR: You wound up backing the Democrat, Laurel Jordan Swift, in the race to replace you this fall. How did you come to that decision and did it surprise folks in your personal life?
Allison: I knew because of the way the campaign went, and just what I saw as qualifications as experience, that I could not support Marc LaHood, so I was just going to stay out of it. The education problem is so important to me … it was troubling when I saw that he was in alignment with the governor.
Then I started getting a number of calls and running into people, and they’d say, “I can’t support LaHood, what do you know about the Democrat?” I didn’t know much at all, so I decided I’ve got to look into this.
I met with [Swift], talked to her several times. She was very strong on education. Strong on health care. She had a health care background. Those are two very important things to me, but particularly education.
There were some issues that we didn’t agree on at all [like her support for abortion rights]. But I determined, with the current makeup of the House and the Senate, those issues aren’t going anywhere. The ones that are going to go somewhere — education, health care, property tax — she was good on, or much better than LaHood, so that’s where I went.
SAR: Do you plan to continue to be involved in Republican politics? And what’s next for you?
Allison: I don’t know. I just don’t really recognize the Republican Party. It’s changed, and I don’t think for the good. I’ve been a Republican my whole life. Ronald Reagan was my hero, and I’d like to see us back in those days. We’re not there now, that’s for sure.
I know I’m going to stay involved in education issues. … Beyond that, we’ll just see what’s in store next. I’ve been a stalwart for education for many, many years and continue to be, and I really see that as the most important issue facing the legislature this next session.
I get so very frustrated over the single-issue mentality, people getting bogged down over a single issue and being blind to everything else and voting just over a single issue … but I don’t see education that way at all.
It is so multifaceted and so foundational and so important for our children’s development for society, development for our workforce, development for our economy.
If you don’t have an educated populace and an educated workforce, I don’t think you have much of a society or much of a community, state or country, and that’s what we’re on the throes of.
I think there needs to be some changes in direction of what I’m seeing from the Republican Party, if anything’s going to get accomplished, I think the worst thing we’d have is go to a stalemate, and we’re sure on that road. I think it’s become so horribly partisan. That’s just not good for our district, and it’s certainly not good for the state. I think we’ve got to work in a bipartisan way to the extent possible on any occasion to get things and things accomplished.