AUSTIN, Texas — When Texans cast their ballots in the November election, they will not be electing a Speaker for the Texas House of Representatives. But the races they can and will decide could shape the race for a new Speaker.
Incumbent Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who has served as Speaker for two terms, faced high-profile challenges in his primary elections, which he narrowly won after a runoff. Several House Republicans have publicly endorsed a challenger to him for the next Speaker, Mansfield Republican David Cook.
Cook claims the support of 48 House Republicans, which would be a majority of the House Republican caucus. But, some of those forty-eight are not yet elected to the House; other incumbents are in toss-up races.
“Any talk about who’s going to be the Speaker of the House is premature until the election is settled,” Joshua Blank, research director at the Texas Politics Project, said. “We don’t know what the composition of the electorate for the Speaker will be. The electorate for the Speaker will be the members who have been elected to the Texas House of Representatives for the 2025 session. Until that group is set, it’s really hard to say who is going to emerge as Speaker. And even once that group is set, it’s not going to become that much clearer.”
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Experts have identified two key toss-ups among the House races. One is a high-profile bid to replace Democrat Tracy King in House District 80, a district that includes Uvalde, who announced his retirement. Republican Don McLaughlin, the former mayor of Uvalde, is against DemocratCecilia Castellano, in a race that has garnered the attention of state-level Republicans.
The other key toss-up is House District 70, currently occupied by Democrat Mihaela Plesa, who became the first Collin County Democrat in decades after winning her seat by just a few hundred votes. She’s challenged by Republican Steve Kinard.
“If the Republicans in those races, Don McLaughlin in [District] 80 and Steve Kinard in [District] 70, are able to flip those seats, those are two votes for the more conservative, anti-Phelan forces in the Texas House,” Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said. Both McLaughlin and Kinard have backed David Cook’s bid for the Speaker’s chair over Dade Phelan.
Other races, identified by Jones, as critical are the seats occupied by Angie Chen Button, R-Richardson; Janie Lopez, R-San Benito; John Lujan, R-San Antonio; Caroline Harris Davila, R-Round Rock; and Morgan Meyer, R-University Park.