In private school voucher push, Gov. Abbott breaks through by playing hardball

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Early Wednesday evening in the Texas House, Rep. James Talarico made a last-ditch play to derail the chamber’s private school voucher bill. The pitch: put the issue up for a statewide vote in November.

Until recently, Talarico said, there was “growing bipartisan support” for the idea in the Republican-controlled chamber. But that changed, the Austin Democrat alleged, when Gov. Greg Abbott “started calling members into his office, one by one, and threatening to veto all the bills of any member who votes for this amendment.”

Abbott also told wavering Republicans he would “make their primary elections, quote, a bloodbath,” Talarico claimed — a threat that would carry extra weight after Abbott spent millions from his campaign war chest targeting GOP members who tanked his prior voucher proposal in 2023.

Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Abbott, said Talarico’s allegations were “absolutely not true.”

“Governor Abbott has been speaking with members encouraging them to vote for school choice,” Mahaleris said in a text.

In any case, Talarico’s proposal attracted just one Republican vote, well short of the crossover support it needed. Hours later, when the chamber voted on the voucher bill itself, only two Republicans joined Democrats in opposition — a stark departure from the 21 GOP members, largely from rural areas, who helped defeat the 2023 voucher bill.

Rep. Jeff Barry, a first-term Pearland Republican who campaigned against vouchers in a primary against an Abbott-backed rival, cited the same threats mentioned by Talarico in explaining why he voted for the bill.

“If I voted against it I would have had every statewide and national political figure against me. Not to mention all of my bills vetoed,” Barry wrote in a Facebook comment, responding to an aggrieved constituent who called his vote a “betrayal.” Noting the bill would have passed with or without his vote, Barry added, “The consequences were dire with no upside at all.”

With the House’s vote to approve private school vouchers, Abbott has notched perhaps the biggest victory of his political career. And he cleared the hurdle less through diplomacy or deal-making than by deploying the same hardball tactics Talarico accused him of threatening this week.

In 2023, Abbott tried to put the screws on GOP voucher holdouts by vetoing a number of their bills and holding public school funding hostage until lawmakers sent a bill to his desk that would let Texans use taxpayer money to pay for their children’s private and religious schooling. And he spent more than $8 million from his campaign account backing primary challengers against anti-voucher Republicans and ensuring retiring voucher holdouts were replaced by supporters. The effort, which helped net more than a dozen pro-voucher House seats, unraveled the bipartisan coalition that has resisted voucher-like proposals for years in the lower chamber.

This week’s decisive votes, marked by a near-absence of GOP defections, underscored the brutal effectiveness of Abbott’s cutthroat tactics in getting his way with the Legislature — and his success in stacking the deck so that skeptical Republicans had little choice but to confront political annihilation if they bucked the governor on his top priority. Meeting with House Republicans before Wednesday’s floor fight, Abbott patched in President Donald Trump to rally support for the voucher bill and, perhaps, remind members of the firepower awaiting them if they fell out of line.

Among the 86 Republicans who supported the voucher measure, Senate Bill 2, were six of the seven returning members who voted against the 2023 proposal, most of whom represent rural districts. Most of the Republicans who flipped their votes explained the change by arguing that, because the bill seemed destined to pass, it was worth trading their support to secure improvements to the bill.

“We could’ve walked away. But instead, we rolled up our sleeves, stayed in the fight, and worked to make it better,” Rep. Jay Dean, R-Longview, said in a statement, in which he highlighted changes agreed to by Rep. Brad Buckley, the Salado Republican carrying the bill.

Those changes included removing the expiration date on a provision that would cap how much of the voucher budget could be reserved for wealthy recipients; a requirement for private schools to have been accredited for at least two years before joining the program, aimed at deterring so-called pop-up private schools; and more oversight power for the state auditor to review the activities of organizations contracted to administer the program.

Another GOP flip, Rep. Drew Darby of San Angelo, said he remains “deeply skeptical of this program,” yet “chose to stay in the fight, negotiating critical amendments to reduce the impact on our communities.”

After “countless conversations with school leaders, constituents, and lifelong supporters,” Darby said, “it became clear: allowing this bill to move forward unchanged would be a disservice to the very people I represent.”

But in a now-deleted Facebook comment responding to a critic, Darby’s wife, Clarisa Darby, suggested there were other factors at play. If Drew Darby opposed the measure, she claimed, “bills affecting our west Texas economy had a high chance of being vetoed.”

Clarisa Darby also suggested that, if the voucher bill had failed, it would have jeopardized a $7.7 billion school funding package that, if approved, would give local districts more money per student — an amount that has remained unchanged since 2019 — and raise teacher salaries.

In 2023, public schools missed out on billions in new funds, which Abbott had made conditional on the approval of vouchers. Some districts have grappled with budget shortfalls — exacerbated by growing costs fueled by inflation — in the years since.

In another show of the results yielded by Abbott’s tactics, Clarisa Darby alluded to the threat of school funding again getting caught up in the voucher fight.

“In talking to district superintendents BEFORE the vote, they made it clear that it was imperative to have school funding. They understood the choice…..and school funding was more important to them. Can not go another 2 years without it.”

Asked about the comments, Drew Darby’s chief of staff, Laramie Stroud, clarified that the San Angelo Republican was “not approached with any veto or funding threat.”

“Those were allegations flying around the building at the time and she was defending her spouse in the heat of the moment,” Stroud said. “She has since amended her words as facts came to light.”

The two GOP holdouts included Rep. Dade Phelan of Beaumont, the former House speaker, who cited opposition within his district and his own concerns about “the unknown short-term and long-term financial impact this legislation could have on the state budget and public education funding.”

“Ultimately, my vote was about listening to the people of House District 21,” Phelan wrote on social media. “Time and again, my constituents have expressed their strong support for our public schools and concerns about diverting state resources away from them. I heard you—and I voted my district.”

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