A potentially transformative runoff election in Texas’s golden triangle 

Overshadowed by the Memorial Day weekend and the district’s location outside of Texas’s major media markets is a single Texas state House primary runoff that has the potential to significantly transform public policy in the Lone Star State in 2025 and beyond.

If the incumbent is victorious, then it is likely that policy dynamics in the Texas Legislature will not shift notably in 2025. However, if the incumbent loses, then for the first time ever, the most conservative wing of the Texas Republican Party may be able to govern relatively unfettered by the institutional constraints imposed by the party’s more pragmatic wing.

The Texas House District 21 Republican Party primary runoff pits incumbent Dade Phelan (the Speaker of the Texas House since 2021) against challenger David Covey.  The district is located in southeast Texas, containing one-quarter of Jefferson County (Beaumont) along with the counties of Orange (to the east along the Louisiana border) and Jasper (to the north) in their entirety. The region is known as Texas’s “Golden Triangle” due to the immense wealth generated by the Spindletop oil field in Jefferson County in the early 1900s.

During recent legislative sessions, the Texas House has represented the principal barrier preventing some of the most controversial conservative legislation from being converted into law in Texas.  Legislation passed by the state Senate, but then blocked by the state House, includes bills which would have barred transgender people from using public bathrooms not matching their biological sex, adopted school vouchers, banned the teaching of critical race theory in public colleges and universities, and prohibited the sale of land to citizens and businesses with ties to China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. 

Under Speaker Phelan (2021-24) and Speaker Joe Straus (2009-2018), the Texas House has served as the principal counterweight to the increasingly conservative Senate under the leadership of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) and to an increasingly conservative governor’s office under Gov. Greg Abbott (R).  

In the March primary, Phelan became the first Texas House Speaker forced into a runoff since Rayford Price, who lost his runoff more than 50 years ago. Phelan finished second with 43 percent behind Covey’s 46 percent in the first round, with Alicia Davis winning 11 percent. 

Covey was endorsed in March, and continues to be endorsed, by state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), Patrick and former President Donald Trump, among others. Paxton’s endorsement is due in large part to Phelan’s lead role in passing articles of impeachment against Paxton in May of 2023 (the Senate acquitted Paxton on all charges in September). 

Patrick’s endorsement of Covey is due in large part to his frustration with Phelan’s consistent blocking of legislation supported by Patrick during the 2023 legislative session, ranging from school property tax reductions to school choice. Both Paxton and Patrick are strong Trump supporters, with Patrick serving as Trump’s campaign chair in Texas. Both were instrumental in obtaining the former president’s endorsement of Covey. 

In addition to a host of other endorsements, Covey received the backing of Davis, who despite winning only 11 percent district-wide, won 27 percent of the vote in her home county of Jasper. 

But the GOP’s pragmatic wing and its allied lobbyists in Austin are not going down without a fight, with over $15 million expected to have been spent by the Phelan campaign or on its behalf by the time the dust clears on May 29. 

Backing Phelan are a host of former Texas Republican power brokers including former House Speaker Straus, former Gov. Rick Perry and former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R), along with a group of pragmatic multimillionaire and billionaire donors. The main fear of these Phelan supporters is that, left unchecked, the conservative wing of the Texas GOP could take the state so far to the right that it could open a door for progressive Democrats to take power in Texas by the end of the decade. 

The outcome of this primary runoff tonight will be determined by Phelan’s ability to mobilize Republicans, independents and Democrats in the Jefferson County portion of the district who did not vote in the March primary to turn out to vote in the runoff. This supercharged mobilization effort could in theory provide Phelan with a sufficient vote surplus to make up for his near certain defeats in Orange and Jasper counties, where Donald Trump’s approval ratings are off the charts and GOP primary voters are unlikely to be persuaded by Chamber of Commerce-style arguments about all of the very real benefits that a Speaker can bring home to their district. 

Jasper and Orange were part of Charlie Wilson’s old 2nd District, which Tom Hanks (as Charlie Wilson in the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War”) accurately described when he said “I represent the only district in America that doesn’t want anything. They want their guns. They want their low taxes. That’s it.” 

In sum, one of two things will happen today. One is that Phelan will win and very likely return as Speaker of the Texas House in January, albeit relying more on Democratic support than he did in 2021 and 2023.   

The second is that Phelan will lose and his speakership will end in 2025. In this latter case, the principal brake on the policy agenda of the conservative wing of the Texas Republican Party will likely be severely weakened. The conservatives will, as a consequence, have nearly unbridled legislative power.    

Mark P. Jones is the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies at Rice University. He is a professor in the department of political science, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy’s Political Science Fellow and the faculty director of the Master of Global Affairs Program.