Report on HD 17 Campaign and Special Sessions

Today, September 3, 2025 is exactly 6 months away from the March 3, 2026 Texas Republican primary. By the end of that day, we will know whether we have prevailed in our quest to continue to change the culture of the Texas House from one that is beholden to the voters and the principles, priorities, and platform of the Republican Party of Texas instead of to the Democrats and the Austin swamp.

This is a report on the status of my campaign for Texas House, District 17 in Milam, Burleson, Lee, Bastrop, and Caldwell Counties and on the high (and low) lights of the special sessions of the Texas Legislature.

Tom Glass for Texas House District 17

At this stage of the campaign, we are building campaign infrastructure and fund raising:

• Our new campaign manager, a home-schooling mom and volunteer firefighter living in the district, starts work on Friday. Her primary role will be to coordinate the volunteer efforts across the five counties of the district. I figure no one knows how to juggle and coordinate like a home-schooling mom!
• We have printed and started distributing our first updated literature with a reformulated slogan and prioritized issues.
• We are keeping the Let Texas Run Texas in the logo because that is a core part of my approach to my contribution to the Texas Legislature, but have reformulated the lead for my campaign.
• The new slogan:

To Make America – and Texas – Great Again,
we must drain the Austin swamp!

• You cannot prevail if you fight the last war. You have to skate to where the puck will be. The issues on the top of the mind of the voters are different this cycle because so much has changed from two years ago. So we have reformulated the priority issues on our literature to be used in talking to the GOP primary voters in the district. The issues are listed on the back of our printed business card circular:
  
• For the first time, I have hired a commission fundraiser, and I am spending a substantial amount of time fundraising, so we can do the advertising and volunteer efforts necessary to flip the 2,000 votes to our side in this election.
• We will be block walking very soon.

People have asked me how this campaign will be run differently from the last two so that we can prevail this time. President Trump says that never quitting is an essential part of victory. I agree, but doing the same thing the same way over again and expecting different results is not the path to victory. I won’t give away all of our secrets here, but the big three differences are:

1. We have started earlier on a bigger base. I started this campaign on June 25. I started my second campaign on August 30, and my first, if you can believe it, on November 4.
2. We will focus on coordinating the grassroots, volunteer effort. Nothing works better than word of mouth from neighbor to neighbor in campaigning.
3. We are raising more money for the volunteer coordination and advertising needed to take us over the top.

How can you help in the campaign?

• Donate! -  at tomglass.org/donate

• If you want to help reach out to HD 17 primary voters systematically, whether through networking, block walking, sign distribution, or other, reply to this email to let us know. The campaign manager will need that info as she builds our organization.
• If you live in the district, get me in front of your neighbors by hosting an event or inviting me to speak or attend your organization’s meeting.
• Forward my posts on X or Facebook. Although most of my voters are not on social media, many are.

The Good and the Bad of the Special Sessions

Redistricting

The redistricting of the US House seats in Texas and the fleeing of the Dems is, of course, the biggest news of the two special sessions. The first special session passed nothing because of the Dem walkout.

I will not focus on the national arguments over Texas leading the pushback on the game the Dems in other states had already rigged or the changes in the judiciary that allowed this wonderful start to fight back against the Dems for control of the US House. I will focus on the dynamics in the Texas House, specifically, the attempts by Team Burros and the swamp to talk about “unity.”

Of course, the Texas House Republicans had to unify against the Dems to achieve this victory. Burrows was in the hard spot of having been installed by mostly Dems and a minority of betraying Republicans. Ever since his ascension to the speakership, he has been acting to get his GOP team ready for the upcoming challenges in the primary by trying to deliver enough conservative results to stave off conservative challengers.

There are two aspects to the way the Burrows team acted during this fight that are worthy of note. First, the link between the Trump endorsements of all but two Texas House incumbents, including the Speaker Burrows, himself, and redistricting. Second, the failure of consensus (and therefore “unity”) in the Texas House Caucus on delivering real punishments to the Dems for walkout.

If you follow me, you know I have been critical of the capture and cheapening of the Trump endorsements of all Texas House incumbents. I had always been puzzled about how Trump could be bamboozled into endorsing on one vote on one issue, even if it meant endorsing the worst of the Austin swamp who are definitely no friends of MAGA. The Trump endorsement of my swampy opponent makes my challenge to him that much more difficult. But I have now heard from several well-placed sources that Trump was not bamboozled, after all. They tell me that Trump was doing a deal with those endorsements. And Trump’s price for the endorsements was the redistricting of the US House!

While I don’t like the deal’s impact on the future of the Texas House and our campaign to drain the Austin swamp, this view is much more understandable and believable to me. It was not just Trump that had to drag Burrows and his team into getting redistricting done. Governor Abbott and Attorney General Paxton had to push hard, too.

The grassroots have got to realize that the rallying cry of the swamp during primary season is “Republican unity.”  By talking “unity” during the primary, the swamp incumbents are seeking to stop themselves from being held accountable.

The time for party unity is during the general election. Primaries are the time to hold incumbents accountable for betraying their party and voters. One big lie that establishment incumbents and their mouthpieces tell is that to win the general election, the most squishy, moderate Republican must be elected in the primary. Rush taught us long ago how wrong that is. Unity does NOT mean backing the swam betrayers in the primary! Unity has to mean agreeing on pushing the principles, priorities, and platform of the RPT. It CANNOT mean agreeing to follow the swamp in the betrayal of such.

One of the pieces of evidence that “unity” was VERY short lived after passage of the redistricting bill was that the Texas House Republican Caucus met to plan how to punish the Dems for their waste of taxpayer resources by fleeing to the worst gerrymandered states to protest Texas redistricting. Sadly, 27 “Republicans” voted against substantive punishments in a secret ballot in caucus. We cannot know for sure which 27 voted against holding Dems accountable, but we cannot help but notice that the number is almost the same as the 26 who walked out of the Caucus back in December over the speaker selection vote, only to go join with the Dems to select the speaker. To be honest, even if they deny voting against Dem accountability in a secret ballot, I will continue to believe that most of the original betrayers also voted against unity on Dem punishments.

Property Tax Relief

It appears that one of the big fails of the second special session is that no substantive relief will be provided. I have not been able to keep up with the detailed ins and outs, but it appears that the only bill that might pass is one to once again slow the rate of increase, instead of providing real consequential cuts. Even an amendment by grassroots House member, Brent Money, to expand the slowed increase rate without a vote of the people to small counties appears to have gone down in flames.

So far, I do not see leadership allowing any progress to bind future legislatures to using future surpluses on buying down the maintenance and operation (M&O) portion of the school tax to zero over time. It also appears that leadership will do nothing to return the $11 billion federal refund to Texas for border security expenditures solely for property tax relief.

One of the key messages of my campaign is that to get either elimination of property tax – or merely substantive property tax relief – we are going to have to have new House leadership to replace the current Ways and Means Chair, Morgan Meyer, who blocks such efforts at every turn. That is accomplished by voting out the betrayers who put him into power in their alliance with the Dems.

Election Integrity

We have had two key victories in election integrity. I have played a small part in both.

State Level Enforcement of Election Law

First, a bill by Senator Brian Hughes (SB 12) that restores the ability of the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) to independently prosecute crimes defined in the Election Code has been sent to the governor!

Ever since the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals filed its State v Stephens opinion in 2021, opining that the OAG did not have constitutional authority to independently prosecute crime, despite having done so for violations for over 70 years, I have been pushing to get independent, state level prosecution of election and other vital Texas law, working with Senator Hughes to do so.

The governor put the issue on the call during the first session, limiting the option to a constitutional amendment which would have required support from the Dems to pass. I posted on social media after that call, asking for a revision of the call to allow more options and gratifyingly, the governor did so in the second session, allowing SB 12 to pass.

Note that this approach may be challenged again in the Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), but this time it is likely to pass CCA muster. The original decision was 8 to 1, but only three of those eight justices will be on the court come January, 2027. Three were defeated in the 2024 primary over this issue due to the leadership of Ken Paxton and President Trump. Two more have seen the writing on the wall, and are not running again in 2026. Justice Kevin Yeary, the one justice who dissented in State v Stephens is running again in 2026 and will likely be on the court again come 2027.

BTW, the Texas House tried the constitutional amendment approach the governor put on the first session call, too, during the second session (HJR 1) and as I predicted, it failed due to lack of Dem support.

Reversing Same Day Voter Registration from Bad Amendment in Regular Session

On Thursday evening, August 21, long time Harris (and Lee) County election integrity activist called me to tell me about an amendment that had slipped through in the late days of the regular session that threatened the implementation of the redistricting effort the Texas Legislature had just passed.

The amendment allowed organized efforts within the big counties to “move” voters out of Democrat majority districts to newly created US House districts to be able to stop the implementation of the flip of US House seats to Republican in the 2026 election. Ed asked my to spread the word about that and urge Texans to contact the governor to ask to add this topic to the second special session.

I did such a post on both X and my Texas Legislative Priorities Facebook group on Friday afternoon, August 22.

Usually, when you post on a Friday afternoon, you don’t get much traction on social media. But to my surprise, my post on X went viral. Within 24 hours, my post had over 40K views. That post is currently sitting at 54K. Facebook always delivers less for me, but my original post there now has 3.8K.

Monday morning, the governor added the topic to the second special session call, and as of yesterday, September 2, the bill chosen out of a number to implement this (SB 54) has passed both chambers and is about to be sent to the governor!

Several commentators on Texas politics have given me credit for this, but I was just the lucky messenger. Over that weekend at a statewide gathering of grassroots conservatives, I learned that at least three SREC members, Andrew Eller, the head of the Election Integrity Legislative Priority Committee, Debroah Fite, and Christin Bentley were already working the issue behind the scenes. And, of course, Ed Johnson, the man who identified the issue and sounded the alarm, was not mentioned, either. Grassroots effort is a team and a band of brothers and sisters, all working for the common good. There are LOTS of unsung heroes in this effort, and every once in a while, they deserve credit.

Medical Freedom

One of the big victories this session was getting over-the-counter ivermectin. Texans for Vaccine Choice pushed the governor to add it to the call, and Joanne Shofner’s HB 25 has already passed, been shepherded through the Senate by Bob Hall and been sent to the governor. The debate on the floor was wonderful. Shelley Luther showed up the Dems for the virtue-signaling wannabe dictators that they are on medical issues. Note that Wes Virdell deserves credit for being the first to file this bill in the regular session. Because Joanne Shofner was on the Public Health Committee, she was picked to carry it, and she did so ably.

For those who want an hour of entertainment watching progressives virtue signal on the subject and multiple grassroots people, including myself, making the case for medical freedom, check out the hour long regular session hearing, here.

Taxpayer Funded Lobbying

It appears that ending taxpayer funded lobbying is another big fail of the second special session. And the blame for that can clearly be laid at the feat of Ken King, House State Affairs Chair and one of the inner sanctum members of the Burrows team.  SB 13 by Senator Bob Hall, implementing this RPT legislative priority passed the Senate, but is languishing in State Affairs, despite many calls to release it. King also has refused to hear Mike Olcott’s companion to Hall’s SB 13, HB 186.

Do you detect a theme, here? If Texas Republican primary voters and the Republican Party of Texas wants to actually get their most important issues passed, we must replace the betrayer Republicans like my opponent who put into power the Burrows team that is thwarting us.