Republicans in the Texas House are currently wrestling with who will lead the chamber when the state Legislature reconvenes next year. Amid growing pressure from the party, embattled Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, released a surprise announcement on Friday saying he wouldn’t run for the leadership role again. Now, two Republican House members are vying for the high-powered gig: Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock and Rep. David Cook from Mansfield. And it looks like they could be in for quite the fight over who will ultimately wield the speaker’s gavel.
Republicans are the majority party in the Texas House, so much so that they could hypothetically elect a new speaker on their own, without votes from the chamber’s Democrats. That is, if they were all on the same page. Which they’re not.
On Saturday, the House’s GOP caucus endorsed Cook, the more conservative candidate. But shortly afterwards, Burrows — who’s considered the more moderate choice — announced that he has enough support from breakaway Republicans and Democrats to become speaker.
“The speaker’s race is over,” he said. “I have secured enough to be speaker of the House for the next session.”
While this squabble may seem like political inside baseball, it’s actually pretty important. The person who ultimately holds the speaker job will have a huge hand in determining what the Texas Legislature does — or doesn’t do — during its session next year.
Why would anyone want to be Texas’ speaker of the House?
The role of Texas House speaker comes with lots of power. The speaker decides who will chair key legislative committees, plays an influential role in controlling what legislation gets voted on and is the person responsible for keeping up decorum in the Texas House.
Speakers also “have a great deal of influence over the day-to-day business of the House,” said Alison Craig, an assistant professor at the University of Texas.
That influence is what makes the job so attractive. A speaker can determine what types of bills make it to the floor to be voted on. Sherri Greenberg, a former state representative and assistant dean at UT Austin, says the person who wins will, ultimately, “determine how extreme the legislation that gets passed will be.”
That ideological divide is part of the reason moderate Republicans in the Texas House are fighting with more extreme Republicans over which faction the next speaker will come from.
In fact, it’s rumored Rep. Dustin Burrows is promising Democrats that, if chosen, he’d squash a school voucher proposal — an issue uniting Democrats and many rural Republicans who’ve been staunchly against any voucher-like programs.
So, what happens next?
The official vote to decide the next speaker of the Texas House won’t take place until the Legislature reconvenes on January 14. That means this could be an interesting month for the chamber’s lawmakers.
The Texas House has 150 members, and Republicans hold an 86-64 majority. Over the weekend, a majority of House Republicans, 48, voted to back Rep. David Cook for speaker. But a majority vote of at least 76 is needed to snag the role. Cook knows it is unlikely he’ll have much backing from the chamber’s Democrats but believes he should win if everyone follows the rules. That’s because GOP Caucus rules say all House Republicans must vote for the speaker candidate who wins the caucus vote.
As of right now, it seems that some 38 Republicans are willing to break that rule to elect Burrows as speaker. So what happens if they go against the rules of their party? That’s unclear since the situation playing out right now is fairly unprecedented.
But if the House GOP Caucus chooses to follow its (relatively new) rules as written, then any Republicans who don’t vote for Cook would be censured. “They’d lose their committee assignments in the 89th [legislative session], then not be eligible to run in 2026,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
(There are the occasional Republican outliers on speaker votes. In 2023, Reps. Jeff Cason and Bryan Slaton voted against the election of Rep. Dade Phelan. And previously, Republicans have faced off against one another on the House floor.)
If Burrows ultimately does win the speakership with votes from Democrats, UT’s Alison Craig believes it could put him in an awkward position during the session.
“If you are dependent upon Democratic votes to get the chair, then assuming that you are then also dependent on them to maintain it,” said Craig.
Over the holidays, lawmakers in the Republican party will have a lot of thinking to do. While they may be simply voting for who the speaker will be, Greenberg says the vote could have a direct impact on their individual political career.
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