This is a third in a series of status reports on the Texas House speaker race that will be decided on Tue, January 14, 2025 on the first day of the 89th Texas Legislature.
We have covered in great detail the results on December 7 of the Texas House Republican Caucus choice of David Cook for speaker, the boycott by the Dustin Burrows team, the fake news announcement from Burrows saying that because he had the votes "the speaker race is over," the blunders and bleeding of the BurrowCrats up through the last report, December 15, and the announced support for Cook and the Republican caucus speaker selection process from Donald Trump, Jr., Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, 6 Texas Congressmen, the RPT leadership, and the grassroots.
The twelve days since has seen more good news for the grassroots and bad news for the beleaguered BurrowCrats.
Here are significant events since December 15, most of which that have more detail and commentary below.
- Matt Shaheen predicted that the Republicans would unite behind Cook before the January 14 vote.
- M. Lozano reminded the public and fellow Republicans of the back-stabbing behavior of Dustin Burrows back in 2019 when he and then Speaker Dennis Bonnen tried to target fellow Republicans in the 2020 primaries after declaring that no incumbent should help challenge incumbents of either party. That scandal caused Bonnen to not seek re-election and Burrows to resign his seat as President of the Texas House Republican Caucus that he is currently disrespecting.
- Three candidates have indicated they are challenging members of the Burrows team in the 2026 primary.
- A new PAC designed to target in the 2026 primaries House members that go against the RPT was announced and funded with $20 million by Alex Fairly.
- A poll was released finding “significant awareness” by GOP primary voters of the speaker race and opposition to representatives who enable Dem chairs.
- Several Burrows team members went public trying to justify their disrespect of their fellow Republican members, caucus, party, and voters. It did not go well.
- House members of the Cook team also appeared on talk shows and posted on social media in favor of unity.
- We now know that Dustin Burrows has been using his old close associate and retired speaker Dennis Bonnen to spy on Democrat Caucus meetings!
- More and more counties are urging their representatives to support the caucus pick and the party, many following the SREC lead, and clearly communicating that a vote against the caucus choice or a vote for secret ballot will be considered the first censurable act of the upcoming legislative session.
- Bo French, Tarrant County GOP Chair, released a letter calling the refusal by the Burrows team to support the caucus choice a “betrayal” and urging party unity via voting for Cook. As of Dec 18, French reported that he had 125 county GOP chairs signing. I know of more that are in the works.
- On Dec 17, Bo French claimed to know of 62 Republicans planning to vote for Cook. I try to keep a detailed list and have 55 votes for Cook with 4 uncommitted.
- On Dec 20, David Cook sent out a Christmas truce message, urging those within and without the chamber to cease fire on the speaker race until after Christmas. I forwarded that message on social media and committed to that gracious respect for the season.
- There appear to be more players behind the scenes sending text messages to voters about the speaker race than I can keep up with. Texts are even going into Democrat districts.
- The deadline for ordering Ban Democrat Chair T-Shirts to get them in time to wear them at the Capitol on January 14 is December 31.
Fact, Not Threat
In the classic western Chisolm, the John Wayne character confronts the big man that has been orchestrating a series of illegal maneuvers with the objective of gaining more wealth and power that has hurt John Wayne and his friends. Wayne tells the bad guy, that any future harm to others will be laid at the bad guy’s feet and justice will be visited upon the bad guy. The bad guy, asked, “Is that a threat?” John Wayne knocks him to the ground, and then says, “Fact. Not Threat.”
The grassroots have been repeatedly telling the Uniparty establishment of the Texas House that the betrayal of the party and the voters to the benefit of the swamp and the Dems cannot continue. Many in the Burrows camp have just survived a bruising primary season in the battle between the grassroots and the Uniparty with the aid of large quantities of swamp money. The money men behind them, their consultants, and their fellow BurrowCrats tell the incumbents that they survived 2024, so they can serve the Uniparty again and survive 2026 primaries, too.
On December 16, three candidates surfaced that are running in the 2026 primary campaigns against three members of the Burrows team:
Jon Bouche, long time grassroots activist, current Montgomery County GOP Vice Chair, and businessman, announced he would be challenging Will Metcalf in HD 16, who had pledged to support the caucus pick, but has betrayed that pledge and is on the Burrows team. Metcalf did not have a primary challenger in 2024.
Jack Reynolds, Fort Worth teacher, professor, and Army veteran, confirmed that he will challenge again the only remaining member in the House of the Republicans who put Joe Straus into power in 2009, Charlie Geren in HD 99.
Chris Woolsey, Corsicana City Councilman, filed to run against Cody Harris in HD 8.
But the big news making these announcements and others sure to come a fact that pain is coming to them, dropped the next day, December 17. Amarillo businessman Alex Fairly announced that he was funding a new PAC called the Texas Republican Leadership Fund with initial funding of $20 million. That alone can easily pump half a million or more into the campaigns of grassroots challengers to Uniparty Republicans in 2026.
Alex Fairly has been involved in Panhandle politics and support for West Texas A&M in the past, but this announcement propels him onto the statewide stage. He is also the father of incoming grassroots freshman Rep. Caroline Fairly. Alex Fairly said in his announcement:
“In spite of the progress made in this past election cycle . . . toward conservative priorities, there may still be work to do in the next primary cycle. These funds will be available to help expand a true Republican majority.
Democrats don’t give their votes away for free; they want things in return. So, we end up with a House that’s not really run by the majority. It’s co-run by Democrats and a minority of Republicans. It puts Texas in such a weak position to accomplish what we could if we were truly led by a majority of Republicans. This time, we’re bringing this out into the light.”
And more facts surfaced to prove the Burrows team is being watched and disapproved by primary voters. A poll was released by Christopher Wilson conducted in five Burrows-supporter districts (Gary VanDeaver, Jay Dean, Stan Gerdes, Dade Phelan, and Jared Patterson), trying to determine awareness and sentiment regarding the speaker race. “What we found was a significant awareness of the race,” Wilson said. The range across districts was 62% to 76% of primary voters were aware. And GOP primary voters in those districts opposed Dem chairs in a range of 56% to 81%.
When You are Explaining, You are Losing
That is especially so when you are explaining betrayal.
Because the PR wars in the first week after the caucus loss were so devastating to the Burrows team, four members of the Burrows team chose to go public, explaining their betrayal of their fellow Republican members, their caucus, their party, and their voters.
Terry Wilson published a piece on December 17 for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, the hometown newspaper of Burrows and Carl Tepper, claimed that the caucus is “broken” and the results “illegitimate.”
In one of my comments about this article on X, I said:
[T]he only substantive argument of the Wilson article was that the third caucus vote after the Burrows-led walkout was "illegitimate" because the vote "failed to reach the 60% threshold to secure the endorsement." But that attempted rationalization of betrayal fails because that is an incorrect statement of the caucus rules.
The very rule that Burrows helped write was designed to produce a caucus vote and intentionally made the threshold 60% of the "votes cast," (Rule 9.02) not 60% of the entire caucus. That provision, making it necessary for a member to be present and not abstain to have his or her vote used in determining the threshold was designed to prevent defiant losers from invalidating the process via the very walkout the Burrows team engineered. Cook won 77% of those present and voting (the votes cast) on the third round (48 to 14), making him the legitimate caucus endorsee.
The rest of the article was sore-loser weak sauce, claiming that communication between members before the caucus and having come into the caucus with a pre-determined choice was somehow beyond the pale. As if the Burrows team did not do that. The article also claimed the process “compromised” due to Tom Oliverson, the President of the caucus running the meeting, having his own choice for speaker. Other than the previously addressed misstatement of caucus rules, there is no claim to support that Oliverson did not enforce caucus rules.
On December 19, Cody Harris sent an email to his district, responding to what he called being “flooded with calls” regarding speaker (and obviously for Cook), admitting that he sees the speaker “fight” as being “about control and nothing else.” He accused grassroots donors Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilks of being “political terrorists” for supporting the candidates of their choice. Somehow, other big donors who give more dollars to the Uniparty candidates are not. Rep. Ellen Troxclair was on KLBJ Austin talk radio on December 19 talking about the speaker race, and pointed out that Dunn/Wilks money was used against her in her primary, and her support for Cook “has nothing to do with them.”
Cody Harris also claimed Burrows is more conservative than Cook, despite two independent, fact driven analysis showing differently. First Rice University’s Mark Jones final, recalibrated 2023 ranking of the Texas House from most conservative to most liberal ranked Cook much more conservative than Burrows. There were 35 Republicans ranked below Cook and ahead of Burrows. The Rice survey ranked Burrows as the 12th most liberal Texas House Republican in 2023.
(By the way, I have seen one commentator on X use the first 2023 version of the Rice survey that showed Cook ranked just ahead of Burrows. The big difference in rankings is explained in the methodology comments in the second released survey. Saying that a recalibration was done “primarily due to the calculated effort this year by a small number of Republican House members to make their Lib-Con Scores appear more conservative than they actually were.”
By the way, I took the average Rice rank number of the returning Burrows Republican team members versus that of the returning Cook team members. A lower number means an average higher conservative ranking. The Cook team had the more conservative average rank of 28.1 vs. Burrows 47.4.
The other independent analysis showing Cook more conservative than Burrows came from a grassrootspriorities.com tool comparing who different incumbents vote against. See results here:
Democrats Learn that Burrows Used Former Speaker Bonnen to Spy on Their Caucus!
As Republican support for Burrows erodes, his need for more Democrat support grows more urgent. His campaign puts him and his supporters in the middle between the conservative Republicans rock and the radical Democrat hard place. When the Burrows supporters spin to their voters that they are supporting Burrows because he is more conservative, the progressives become more justified in opposing Burrows. Sure, they know that Burrows is lying about his record to the grassroots, but the Dems also know that whatever promises he makes about preserving the bi-partisan culture of the House may or may not be true. And regardless, they know that Dem chairmanships will only go to a few of the more swamp-oriented Dems, not the hard-core leftists that make up an increasing number of their ranks.
So, when Republican State Rep J.M. Lozano broke the news on December 19 that a former member of the body lobbyist had conspired with a current Dem chair to spy on the Dem caucus meetings and report back to Bonnen, a bomb went off in the already weakened Burrows campaign.
The next day, Texas Scorecard revealed that the spy was none other than Burrows old buddy, former Speaker Dennis Bonnen!
Plans for showing the RPT banner for speaker on January 14
Plans are well along the way by the RPT No Dem Chairs Legislative Priorities Committee. To sign up and pay to ride a bus to the Capitol on Tuesday, January 14, go to bandemocratchairsinfo.com. Also found at that website are links to purchase Ban Democrat Chairs T-shirts and find out contact info and status of which reps need urging to move to the Cook team.
The permutations of how a speaker gets to 76 are almost infinite. The key to a grassroots victory is to peel enough of the Burrows team and those on the fence into the RPT fold, so that the Republicans can deliver the 76 votes for the win, or a combination of Democrats and Republicans will deny enough votes to Burrows on the first vote in a three-way vote to knock out Burrows (or replacement) and produce a two-way race between Cook and a Dem.
That is why continued pressure from us on the holdouts is so important.
Toward liberty,
Tom Glass
832-472-4726
txce.org
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