Republican Party of Texas sets stage to censure members who stepped out of line in likely bid to block them from primary ballot

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The executive committee of the Republican Party of Texas was in Austin on Saturday to finalize its first-ever legislative review, outlining a list of censurable offenses that some within the Texas GOP want to use to block certain House Republicans from the 2026 primary ballot.

Those Republicans, made up of delegates chosen by county parties, want to use the list to hold their elected officials to the state party’s priorities. But others see it as an illegal effort to deny officials from the primary ballot if they don’t follow the most fervent conservative activists’ aims 100% of the time.

Texas GOP Chair Abraham George told The Blast that he and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, who spoke to members of the SREC at a separate meeting with Gov. Greg Abbott earlier Saturday morning, have not discussed the party’s censure effort, a new “accountability” mechanism the state party approved at its 2024 convention. Still, Burrows likely knew the SREC members would be approving a hit list that could be used to keep “RINOs” from the ballot.

Earlier this year Burrows and the state party were at odds with one another.

The Texas GOP has spent money in Burrows’ district with ads opposing his speakership.

At the time, Burrows dismissed George’s critiques that the House was letting GOP priority bills stall in the House in an interview with Spectrum News’ James Barragán published May 7.

“I don’t respond to him. He’s not worth responding to,” Burrows said of George.

But the political environment in Texas has shifted drastically since then. George told The Blast on Saturday that Democrats breaking quorum has brought every Republican together in a way that’s been good for the party and the “grassroots,” referring to the Texas GOP’s leadership and activists.

“We have an open line with the speaker,” George said. “You don’t have to agree all the time. We probably are still going to have some disagreements. That’s part of the process.”

State Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, who has previously been critical of Burrows, likened it to “a new day of mutual respect and courtesy and cooperation between the party and the speaker.”

List of Grievances

The State Republican Executive Committee, or SREC, hunkered down in the Capitol auditorium and outlined censurable offenses that would apply to a majority of the GOP caucus, particularly Burrows’ top committee chairs.

The report itself doesn’t censure lawmakers. It’s a list of transgressions that county parties can use to censure their representatives and ask to bar them from the March primary ballot.

State Affairs Chair Ken King of Canadian, whose committee was a bottleneck for several GOP priority bills, was the subject of numerous censurable offenses. Even Public Education Chair Brad Buckley of Salado — who quarterbacked Gov. Greg Abbott’s No. 1 priority, school vouchers, across the finish line — was mentioned for not advancing a bill to deny public education to K-12 students who are in the country illegally, House Bill 4707.

The list of offenses include bills that failed to pass in the regular session that Abbott has added to the call for the special session.

A common theme throughout the meeting was that the report needs to be airtight because they may have to defend it in court, as George noted. Eric Opiela, an attorney helping several House Republicans with pending censures, was in the audience.

“We are talking about providing grounds for possibly keeping an office holder off the primary ballot,” said Rolando Garcia, an SREC member for Senate District 15 in Harris County. “If it looks like we’re really being shady and squirrely and multiplying violations just to provide grounds for keeping people off the ballot, that is very damaging to RPT.”

Perhaps the most contentious part of the meeting came when the SREC took up the Legislative Review Task Force report on Republicans’ effort to ban Democrats from House committee chairmanships, a top priority of the Texas GOP. The House voted to reserve committee chairs for Republicans, but they left vice chairmanships for Democrats when it approved the rules package back in February. A majority of the House, including a majority of Republicans, voted to prematurely close debate and amendments on the rules and ultimately approved them.

Deborah Kelting-Fite, an SREC member for Senate District 7 in Harris and Montgomery counties, called the rules a “Trojan horse designed to give Democrats more control.”

Steve Evans, an SREC member for Senate District 28 in Burrows’ hometown of Lubbock and West Texas, tried to strip the entire Democratic chairs section from the report, pointing out that it named 51 members — a majority of the GOP caucus’ 88 members. Censuring that many Republicans felt like it would create too many unnecessary enemies, he said.

“This is pretty huge to name this many members when we have so many things going on,” Evans said. “We’ve got the messaging that’s going on from the White House to redistrict, we have the House trying to restore a quorum, and then we’re going to come in here, in their house, and do this?”

Burrows himself wasn’t completely absolved by everyone on the SREC. Some members tried to add an item that would have made voting in favor of Burrows as speaker to the list of political sins, arguing it was the culmination of a conspiracy to give Democrats more power. Before the legislative session started, the RPT opposed Burrows for House speaker, throwing its support behind his opponent Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield.

George shot down that effort, saying the speaker election was not a legislative priority. Only violations of legislative priorities were to be considered censurable offenses.

The SREC voted to delay the final report by a couple days to allow lawmakers an opportunity to try to explain some of their censurable acts to the committee by Wednesday. The committee will distribute the final report to county parties on Friday.

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