Political earthquake in Texas: Austin’s oligarchy cracked on Tuesday

Editor’s note: This piece has been edited to clarify that nine incumbent state legislators lost re-nomination after voting to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton.

In most places, Super Tuesday was uneventful, as Joe Biden and Donald Trump continued their widely expected marches to their respective party nominations.

Texas was a major exception. 

The Lone Star State’s Republican primary saw a political earthquake, including unprecedented incumbent losses. At least 12 legislative seats and three statewide elected judgeships shifted to the right. The May 28 runoff election could bring additional aftershocks, including even a loss by state House Speaker Dade Phelan.

The proximate causes are many. They include last year’s politically myopic impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), statewide issues of school choice and election integrity, and a host of local concerns. 

Most importantly, however, this happened because the powers that be in the state capitol lost control of the playbook they had previously used to great effect to stave off grassroots accountability.

Texas has a reputation as a conservative state, but it is overstated. Historically, Texas conservatism is “pro-business” rather than principled or “pro-market.” It gravitates toward political and economic power being held by a small oligarchy that ruthlessly resists reform attempts. 

Under this system, collusion between business and government has thrived, protecting the profits of incumbent businesses from competition. This domestic form of protectionism, combined with old-school political patronage in the state’s education system (especially in rural areas of the state), has created a remarkably stable established power structure over the decades, which survived even the state’s late twentieth century realignment from Democrat to Republican.

Texans don’t usually watch the workings of their state government closely — very few Americans do. This has permitted legislators to protect themselves for decades using an established playbook. First, they engage in typically three to five days of right-wing theatrics over each 140 day legislative session, passing enough bills on social issues to fill the back of a campaign mailer. Then they spend the rest of their scarce legislative time consolidating power on behalf of Austin’s oligarchs.

In the last few years, however, this balancing act has become untenable. First, the COVID-19 pandemic gave parents an unprecedented glimpse into the travesty of what public education had become. School closures evinced a lack of concern for families. Radical curricula were exposed. This all created an unprecedented parental demand for school choice which ran headlong into public education’s political patronage system. And so when Gov. Greg Abbott (R) made a belated push for school choice in 2023, parents paid close attention to which side their legislators chose.

Second, a 2021 ruling by Texas’s highest criminal court gutted a 1951 statute permitting the state’s attorney general to prosecute election fraud cases. This statute had been passed after “Landslide Lyndon” Johnson’s well-documented 1948 theft of a U.S. Senate election.

The case, Texas v. Stevens, revolved around illegal campaign donations in an East Texas sheriff’s race, which a local district attorney had refused to prosecute. In its ruling, the court offered a dubious interpretation of the separation of powers doctrine to claim that Paxton was usurping a judicial function and therefore had no business prosecuting the case himself.

The practical effect was that only local district attorneys, who are often complicit in these sorts of schemes, could prosecute them. At the time, the attorney general’s office had dozens of pending investigations into illegal ballot harvesting and illegal voting that it was forced to abandon as a result. 

This ruling’s merits were already dubious, but it was especially politically tone-deaf with so many Republican primary voters believing that the 2020 election had been rigged against Trump (although not in Texas, obviously). This had given a higher profile to issues of election integrity generally.

Then came Paxton’s 2023 impeachment. A former legislator, Paxton had always been at odds with Austin’s oligarchs. This tension had already led to aggressive attempts to defeat him electorally in 2014 and 2022. When those efforts failed, they ambushed Paxton with corruption allegations. The Texas House followed suit and impeached Paxton over Memorial Day weekend.

Given the underlying weakness of the impeachment charges, Paxton predictably beat the rap once they were given a public airing in his Senate trial. But the political damage to those who had supported impeachment was by then already done. Paxton emerged from his acquittal stronger than ever, with a mandate to hold accountable those who had backed his impeachment and removal.

These three factors combined to raise the profile of the Texas Republican legislative primaries to a degree never previously seen. Voters were paying a lot of attention for once, and the results speak for themselves.

In Tuesday’s primary, all three Court of Criminal Appeals justices who were on the ballot lost. At least six (mostly rural) anti-school choice Republicans were defeated, and several more are headed to runoffs. At least nine Republicans who voted for the Paxton impeachment lost renomination. Several more are headed to runoffs.

Most notably, the speaker of the Texas house, Dade Phelan, faces a runoff. Although Phelan is largely perceived as a puppet for the Austin lobby, he was nevertheless the public face of the Paxton impeachment. Additionally, Phelan provided political cover for anti-school choice Republicans and has helped boost Democrats’ influence in the House. Phelan will defend his Beaumont-area seat against local activist David Covey, who is endorsed by Donald Trump, in the May 28 runoff.

Tuesday night was a significant blow to crony capitalism and political patronage in the state of Texas. In 2025, when the Texas legislature next convenes, it will feature at least a dozen new members, who don’t fit the traditional mold. That number could grow further, depending on the outcome of May runoffs. The Austin lobbyists, well-served by the status quo, would be wise to take heed.

Adam Cahn is an Austin-based activist and a former political blogger.