THE TEXAS TRIBUNE – In an already heated race for Texas House Speaker, state GOP officials are hoping to wield new powers that would ensure their preferred candidate wins — and give them unprecedented control over who can run in Republican primaries.
Last week, the Republican Party of Texas implied it would censure any GOP Texas House member who does not vote for Rep. David Cook as speaker. Under new party rules, that would bar those lawmakers from running in Republican primaries for two years.
The party’s statement came amid an ongoing and intense race between Cook, who was endorsed last week by a majority of the House Republican Caucus, and Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock Republican who says he has enough bipartisan support in the 150-member House to reach the 76 votes needed to become speaker. The acrimony has further inflamed an ongoing Republican war for control of the state party and Legislature.
Those fights could soon spill into the courtroom — and with profound consequences for Texas’ political system. Political experts expect lawsuits if the Texas GOP follows through with its censures, resulting in a high-stakes legal drama that could upend the relationship between political parties, candidates and voters.
“It's very unusual for a group of unelected party members to essentially say that they are going to deny duly elected officials the ability to run under the party's name,” said Joshua Blank, research director at University of Texas-Austin’s Texas Politics Project. “I think the one thing that's guaranteed here is that this will lead to a lawsuit if it's applied.”
At issue is Rule 44 of the Republican Party of Texas’ rulebook, which deals with censures — a way of punishing party members for defying or undermining the GOP’s agenda. After long and contentious debate during the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, delegates expanded Rule 44 to require that county or party chairs reject primary applications from any candidate that does not “swear or affirm, under penalty of perjury” that they have not been censured in the two years prior. The new rules also apply to judges, who are elected in partisan races but are required by the state’s judicial ethics code to be politically neutral on the bench.
Now, Rule 44 faces its first major test as part of a heated Republican fight for speaker of the Texas House. On Saturday, after the House GOP Caucus announced its support for Cook, the Texas GOP passed a resolution that called on House Republicans to rally behind him.
While the resolution does not explicitly call for censures, it repudiates numerous “subversive tactics” — including voting for a “Speaker who was not selected by the caucus” — that would violate the party’s platform and legislative priorities, and thus be “addressed by voters and by the Republican Party of Texas.” Since then, at least one local party, the Fort Bend County GOP, has passed a resolution vowing to censure its representatives on similar grounds.
The Texas GOP reaffirmed that stance in a Thursday statement to The Tribune that cited Rule 44.
“The Republican caucus has selected a speaker nominee, and the party stands firmly behind this choice,” the statement read. “Any member who opposes the caucus nominee will be viewed as acting contrary to our platform and principles.”
Intraparty tensions
Tensions simmered for years between the Texas GOP’s far-right and more moderate, but still deeply conservative, then exploded into all-out war in the wake of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s 2023 impeachment by the House and acquittal by the Senate. The infighting only escalated during the 2024 GOP primaries, when the far right ousted dozens of incumbent Republican House members and further consolidated its grip on the party apparatus.
Backed by West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, the state’s right wing has used its new influence to purge more moderate members, close its primaries and end what little powers Democrats have in the Texas House.
Censures were rare before the infighting, but have become central to the right wing’s ongoing efforts to rid the party of those they deem “Republicans in Name Only.” In the last two years, the party has censured numerous, more establishment GOP lawmakers: U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales and Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican who was reelected to the Texas House this year but recently ended his reelection bid for House Speaker following a yearslong campaign against him by the Texas GOP’s right wing.
Supporters of the Rule 44 changes say they are necessary to deter lawmakers from defying the party’s base and platform. Critics, however, argue that they increase purity tests and give a small group of party members the power to dictate who can run for office.
Rule 44 allows party members to be censured for working against the Texas GOP's top legislative priorities, or for not acting in accordance with broader principles outlined in the party platform and its preamble. Among those stipulations: "affirming a belief in God'; recognizing that "human nature is immutable" or that "economic success depends on free market principles"; upholding "personal accountability and responsibility" and the "sanctity of innocent human life"; and "honoring all of those that serve and protect our freedom."
Gonzales was censured for voting with Congressional Democrats in support of gay marriage and for a gun control bill in the wake of the shooting at Uvalde Elementary School, which is in his district. In their censure of Phelan, party leaders said he had violated numerous legislative priorities, including bills regarding border security and school finance — the latter of which was at the center of contentious debate over school voucher programs that failed during the 2023 legislative session because of rural, Republican opposition.
Also cited was Phelan's central role in Paxton's impeachment, an "expensive and time-consuming" process that party leaders argued was illegal and should never have moved forward because Paxton's alleged misconduct predated his most recent election. On those charges, Phelan was accused of violating principles of limited government and "personal accountability and responsibility."
Both Gonzales and Phelan were reelected this year, despite the censures and well-funded primary challengers who were backed by party leaders. Had the new Rule 44 changes been in effect at the time, neither would have been able to run in the GOP’s March primary.
Political experts say Rule 44 is evidence of increased polarization that is no longer confined to Democrats vs. Republicans.
“A remarkable feature of Texas politics is that, as the state has gotten more conservative, the result has been for Republicans to really ramp up their efforts against each other in order to maintain control over the levers of power,” said Blank, the UT-Austin political expert.
But the Texas GOP isn’t alone. Earlier this year, the Idaho GOP passed language similar to Rule 44, prompting one Republican lawmaker to decry the change as akin to communism. Nor are the efforts totally novel; for decades, state or federal courts have slapped down state parties’ attempts to exert more control over their primaries.
Earlier this year, a Missouri judge ruled that the state GOP must allow a self-avowed, former “honorary member” of the Ku Klux Klan to run in the Republican primary for governor, in part because the party had already accepted the candidate’s filing fee. In 2018, the Utah Republican Party similarly lost a legal challenge that sought to remove a candidate from its primary. In that ruling — which was later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court — a federal court wrote that election law “would be toothless if party bosses could dictate how candidates can qualify for the primary ballot.”
In Texas, courts have weighed in on related issues. In the 1920s, for instance, Texas Democrats lost multiple court cases that aimed to expand the party’s influence over its primaries by banning women from voting, prohibiting non-white primary candidates and barring primary candidates who’d endorsed the Republican nominee in the previous general election. In 1932’s Nixon v. Condon, the U.S. Supreme Court similarly ruled against Texas Democrats’ arguments that their party was a “voluntary association” and thus entitled to choose its own membership — by barring non-white candidates. In 1935 and 1944, the high court again struck down Texas Democrats’ attempts to maintain so-called “white primaries.”
Blank, the UT-Austin political expert, said he anticipates new court challenges related to Rule 44, noting that the Texas GOP has vowed to cover legal fees for party leaders who are sued for enforcing the new rules.
“Immediately after putting this rule in place, they acknowledge, in effect, that it's likely to lead to a lawsuit,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
