Speaker Dade Phelan abandons bid for third term amid bruising leadership battle

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House Speaker Dade Phelan on Friday announced he is dropping his bid for another term leading the lower chamber, ending a bruising, monthslong intraparty push to remove him from power.

Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, had previously insisted he had enough votes to thwart a challenge from the right led by state Rep. David Cook of Mansfield, a former ally.

“Out of deep respect for this institution and its members, and after careful consideration and private consultation with colleagues, I have made the difficult decision to withdraw from the race for Speaker of the Texas House," he said in a statement. "By stepping aside, I believe we create the best opportunity for our members to rally around a new candidate who will uphold the principles that make our House one of the most exceptional, deliberative legislative bodies in the country—a place where honor, integrity, and the right of every member to vote their district takes utmost precedent."

Phelan abandoned the race one day before a scheduled meeting where Republicans are set to pick their nominee for the gavel.

Phelan’s withdrawal sets up a renewed scramble for control of the House. State Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock Republican and top ally of Phelan, has filed paperwork to run for speaker, according to two sources familiar with the matter. His path to the gavel rests on courting the chamber’s 62 Democrats and roughly 40 unpledged Republicans — and reports of his candidacy were already drawing swift pushback from Cook’s camp and grassroots GOP activists, who are set on selecting a speaker without relying on votes from Democrats.

Phelan was looking to the bloc of Democrats and uncommitted Republicans to secure a third term as speaker. But he never produced a list of supporters, while Cook gained fresh momentum this week by picking up two new backers, bringing him within striking distance of the votes needed to lock up the GOP caucus’ endorsement this weekend.

Under the caucus rules, whoever gets 60% or more of the votes at Saturday’s meeting will secure the group’s endorsement and receive support from all 88 Republican members when the vote goes to the full House in January — enough to win the gavel. Heading into this week, Cook had touted 47 supporters, including two unnamed backers. He picked up support from state Reps. David Spiller of Jacksboro and Trent Ashby of Lufkin this week, putting him four votes shy of the 60% threshold.

The Texas House speaker is one of the most powerful legislative positions in the state, along with the Senate president, wielding tremendous power over which bills pass and fail.

In a statement, Phelan said he was grateful to the “principled conservatives” who continued to support his speakership by showing “steadfast resolve and courage in the face of immense intimidation from outsiders wishing to influence our chamber and its processes.”

“Though the battle for my speakership is over, the war for the integrity of this chamber wages on — and we will win,” Phelan said.

Phelan’s fall

Phelan’s withdrawal comes just two years after he was at the height of his power, easily winning reelection as House leader after overseeing one of the most conservative sessions in recent memory. In his two terms as speaker, he oversaw passage of a litany of conservative priorities, including allowing permitless carry of handguns, restricting transgender rights, testing the boundaries of Texas’ role in immigration enforcement and banning nearly all abortions statewide. At the closed-door GOP caucus meeting before the 2023 session, Phelan’s critics mustered up just six votes for his conservative challenger.

Phelan started to lose his grip on the House last year when Attorney General Ken Paxton — months after being impeached on corruption charges in the lower chamber — survived his trial in the Senate. The acquittal was a major rebuke of Phelan, who supported the impeachment effort. Paxton and his far-right allies vowed payback against the speaker and any Republican who voted for impeachment.

Soon after, Phelan’s standing took a hit among supporters of Gov. Greg Abbott’s push to enact a school voucher program, some of whom accused the speaker of not doing enough to get the bill through the House.Phelan narrowly survived a brutal primary challenge in May, but 15 other House Republicans lost their seats, many of them Phelan supporters who were ousted by challengers running on explicit pledges to oppose the Beaumont Republican’s speakership. Some of these insurgent candidates also received financial support from Abbott, who remained publicly neutral in Phelan’s race while spending millions to unseat anti-voucher Republicans who sank his priority issue.

Most incoming GOP freshmen are part of a coalition, led by the House’s rightmost faction, that wants to reshape the chamber by disempowering Democrats and weakening key levers of power used by the speaker to control the House. They have called for an end to the practice of appointing Democrats to chair any House committees — a longstanding tradition Phelan has continued by putting Democrats in charge of eight of the chamber’s 34 standing committees, while reserving most of the high-profile assignments for Republicans. They also want to ensure that GOP priority bills reach the floor before any Democratic measures and limit the speaker to two terms.

With Phelan out of the picture, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the rest of the GOP’s most conservative faction could have a willing ally in driving a hardline agenda through the Legislature. Patrick, the Senate leader, has sparred bitterly with Phelan over property tax relief and a host of other issues, frequently casting Phelan as a feckless capitulator to Democrats who slow-walked conservative priorities approved by the Senate. The feuding culminated in Patrick’s attempt to end Phelan’s political career by backing his top primary challenger earlier this year.

After eking out a 366-vote win in the May runoff, Phelan insisted he would hold onto the gavel, telling supporters that “I will be your state rep. for HD 21 and I will be your speaker for the Texas House in 2025.” He had remained defiant in the months since, even as he faced a mounting lineup of speaker challengers that included some of his former allies. Though a majority of House Republicans eventually coalesced behind Cook, nearly half the caucus remained silent about their votes, with some publicly vouching for Phelan’s conservative bona fides.

But while Phelan has shepherded the passage of key conservative priorities once seen as a bridge too far for some Republicans, his critics have also pointed to a number of hardline priorities that died in the House. Those measures, which could face better odds of passage under a new speaker, include school vouchers; expanding state control of elections in Democrat-run counties; barring the sale of Texas farmland to citizens and entities associated with China and other countries; and various laws aimed at infusing more Christianity into public life.

Resistance to Burrows

After Phelan announced his withdrawal, the House Democratic Caucus issued a statement saying that “[f]or any Speaker candidate interested in serving the House, the Democratic Caucus is available to listen, and hear their plans to finally give Texans a legislative session that puts people over politics."

It was unclear if House Democrats would unite behind Burrows. On Thursday evening as Burrows was courting Democratic support, state Rep. Ana-María Ramos — a Richardson Democrat who chairs the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus and is running for speaker herself — made clear she opposed Burrows’ bid for the gavel. She cited his role as the lead author of a sweeping new law aimed at sapping the power of local governments, particularly in Texas’ bluer urban areas.

“Working Texans deserve a leader in the House who will stand up for them, and not do the bidding of corporate donors,” Ramos posted on social media, along with a video of her sparring with Burrows on the House floor over his measure, dubbed by opponents as the “Death Star bill.”

Abraham George, the chairman of the Texas GOP, who has amplified the voice of the party’s most conservative activists in calling for a ban on Democratic chairs, pushed Republican lawmakers to vote for a speaker candidate who would honor that commitment.

“Now that Speaker [Phelan] is no longer in the race, it's time for every Republican representative who has yet to back a reformer to answer a straightforward question: Will you stand with your constituents and [the Texas GOP] or will you continue to enable Democrats to hold power?” George said on social media.

He followed that question with a not-so-veiled threat: “Keep in mind, the primary is just 452 days away!”

Lawmakers in Cook’s camp celebrated Phelan’s announcement and immediately tried to push back against the notion that a new candidate could win over their support.

“Phase One accomplished,” Rep.-elect Shelley Luther wrote on social media. “Also, we will NOT vote in a Dade 2.0.”

Phelan’s rise

Phelan, a 49-year-old real estate developer, first secured the votes to become speaker toward the end of his third term, in late 2020. He emerged from a GOP scrum to succeed then-Speaker Dennis Bonnen, who retired after losing support from House members after he was recorded encouraging the political targeting of fellow Republicans in the upcoming primaries.

Phelan was among Bonnen’s lieutenants, serving in 2019 as chair of the influential House State Affairs Committee, which tends to oversee the Legislature’s hot-button issues. He was regarded as middle-of-the-road ideologically, voting for major conservative priorities while also taking occasional stands against party orthodoxy. Notably, when a bill passed through his committee seeking to prevent cities from restricting how businesses schedule their employees’ shifts, Phelan advanced a retooled draft with new language protecting local nondiscrimination ordinances. Explaining the change, Phelan said he was “done talking about bashing on the gay community.”

Phelan nonetheless secured the gavel with the backing of a more conservative GOP faction led by Bonnen’s allies, a group pitted against more ideologically moderate members who had helped drive Bonnen into retirement amid his recording scandal. But what helped Phelan lock down the speaker’s race was his support from a coalition of Democrats, who backed him after he told them he “would do his best to make sure we are on track” when asked how he would handle contentious social issues.

While far less controversial at the time, Phelan’s Democrat-aided ascent sparked backlash from some on the far-right — a sign of what was to come four years later. After Phelan announced he had the votes to become speaker, then-Texas GOP Chair Allen West wrote in an email to supporters that the party "will not support, nor accept" Phelan, calling him a “Republican political traitor” for relying on support from Democrats.