Texas GOP to consider blocking lawmakers from 2026 primary ballot in first test of new censure rule

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

---

The Republican Party of Texas’ governing board is set to meet in the state Capitol on Saturday to consider censuring state representatives who party leaders deem insufficiently conservative to bear the GOP brand, potentially banning them from the 2026 Republican primary ballot.

The tribunal will be the first of its kind, a daylong meeting to determine whether 10 Texas House Republicans tried to thwart GOP priorities during the Legislature’s 140-day session earlier this year. Although many Republicans lauded the 2025 session as the most conservative ever, some party activists believe members of House leadership scuttled long-sought GOP priorities and should be barred from the primary ballot under an untested rule adopted at the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention.

Among the lawmakers who could be formally reprimanded by the State Republican Executive Committee is first-term House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, who faces a lesser censure that would not explicitly threaten his access to the ballot. But seven members of his leadership team could be banned from the primary: Reps. Angie Chen Button of Garland, Cody Harris of Palestine, Jeff Leach of Allen, Morgan Meyer of University Park, Angelia Orr of Itasca, Jared Patterson of Frisco and Gary VanDeaver of New Boston. Two more retiring members could be banned, as well.

The effort comes after delegates at last year’s convention expanded Rule 44 — the part of the Texas GOP’s rulebook dealing with censures — to bar officials from the primary ballot if they have been censured within the last two years.

Lawmakers can be reprimanded for working against the state party’s legislative priorities or the broader principles outlined in the party platform and preamble. For members facing censures Saturday, the transgressions include voting for Burrows as speaker and approving this year’s House rules package, which banned Democrats from serving as committee chairs but left them with other means of influence.

Activists in the party initially teased a more sweeping effort to censure the 36 House Republicans who joined with Democrats to elevate Burrows to the speakership in January. But enthusiasm within the party to invoke Rule 44 has waned after the Burrows-led House shepherded numerous conservative bills to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, and as Abbott and President Donald Trump have thrown their support behind the first-term speaker.

Some within the party have argued the infractions don’t merit such a drastic maneuver as denying ballot access, which critics have long framed as an illegal tactic that runs afoul of democratic norms.

“Rule 44 is not a campaign strategy, it is not a substitute for the primary,” SREC member Rolando Garcia wrote on social media recently. “It is an extraordinarily penalty intended to be used sparingly on only the most egregious cases.”

How Rule 44 came to be

In 2023, the divide between the business-oriented establishment and the socially conservative grassroots of the Texas GOP reached a boiling point. However, those tensions had been simmering for years.

The Texas GOP first defined Rule 44 at the party’s 2016 convention in Dallas, allowing local party leaders to initiate censures against their elected officials for three violations of the party platform. The language also allowed the state party and local parties to campaign against a censured official.

The idea of reprimanding insufficiently conservative officials was partly inspired by then-House Speaker Joe Straus, whose opposition to school vouchers, certain abortion restrictions and the “bathroom bill” drew the wrath of the GOP grassroots. In early 2018, the State Republican Executive Committee narrowly voted to censure Straus over those issues, followed several months later by a censure against then-House State Affairs Committee Chair Byron Cook of Corsicana, whose committee was a bottleneck for conservative legislation.

However, both members had already announced their retirement by the time they were reprimanded, and the censure process laid dormant for the next several years.

At the Texas GOP’s 2022 convention in Houston, some members of the convention’s rules committee wanted to leave Rule 44 untouched while another faction wanted to take it further, echoing calls at county GOP and tea party meetings around the state to add “teeth.” The compromise was a censure rule that counted violations of the party’s legislative priorities toward the three-strikes requirement and authorized the party to formally discourage a censured official from running in the Republican primary.

With the revamped Rule 44 in place, the Texas GOP censured moderate U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio, citing his support for a bipartisan gun law following the shooting at Robb Elementary School in his district. The party also censured then-House Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont and retiring state Rep. Andrew Murr of Junction, the lead impeachment manager against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

At the SREC’s June 2023 meeting, less than a month after the House ignited a firestorm by impeaching Paxton, then-Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi argued the party should be proactive in ensuring those running with an R next to their names were actually Republicans.

“Is our purpose to improve our country, our state, by electing Republicans, by electing the right Republicans and making this country and state a better place for our kids to grow up?” Rinaldi asked. “If that’s the case, we should play an active role in selecting Republicans that will actually improve our country and state.”

While Gonzales and Phelan were both forced into runoffs, the prospect that they could survive despite the censures — and despite the formal discouragement against running in the GOP primary — galvanized the effort to implement stricter penalties.

During the 2024 state GOP convention, delegates were steeped in the insurgent sentiments felt among the primary base. Only two months earlier, primary voters had ousted nine state representatives amid Abbott’s school voucher campaign and backlash to the Paxton impeachment. Eight more, including Phelan, faced runoffs.

Early voting for those runoff elections was underway as delegates met in San Antonio, where many of them urged the convention’s rules committee to strengthen Rule 44 so that censured officials could be banned from the primary ballot.

Justin Nichols, an attorney from San Antonio who served his third stint on the convention rules committee in 2024, drafted the language for the primary ballot ban. In an interview with the Tribune last week, he said the rules committee had prioritized revamping Rule 44.

As drawn up by Nichols, the rule contained a new requirement that prospective candidates affirm that they are not under censure, along with a provision allowing the SREC to direct county GOPs or the state party chair to bar censured officials from the ballot.

“It came down for me that this is what everyone wanted,” Nichols said. “You want the opportunity to do this? This is your opportunity.”

Committee member Jon Bouché argued the party should push forward with those changes despite questions surrounding the rule’s legality.

“Somebody has to blink, and I think this is the right time,” said Bouché, who is now challenging Conroe state Rep. Will Metcalf in next year’s primary. “I think the sense of the Republican Party is that we need to put teeth. We’ve heard testimony, person after person, saying we need to put teeth in this.”

The convention ultimately approved the overhauled censure rule, delivering on the decade-long effort to enact stiff penalties for GOP officials deemed insufficiently conservative.

The 2025 session

The new rule faced its first test in the leadup to the 2025 legislative session. After eking out his primary, Phelan hoped to cling to the speakership with help from Democrats won over by his pledge to continue the longstanding practice of letting the minority party chair some committees — a violation of the Texas GOP’s legislative priorities. When Phelan bowed out of the speaker’s race in early December, Burrows emerged as the preferred candidate of Phelan’s coalition, leading to fears among the conservative grassroots that he would similarly empower Democrats.

As Burrows worked to assemble a bipartisan coalition, the SREC adopted a resolution establishing that it would be considered a violation of the party platform and legislative priorities to vote with Democrats for a speaker who would let the minority party chair any committees.

Over opposition and campaign marketing from the Texas GOP, Burrows was elected speaker with support from 49 Democrats and 36 Republicans, prompting immediate vows for retribution from GOP Chair Abraham George.

Soon after, the House adopted a rules package that banned Democrats from leading committees, though they could still chair subcommittees and were given every committee vice chairmanship, with more powers for those positions.

The Republican grassroots and state party leaders viewed it as a bait and switch, and the SREC adopted another resolution declaring that Burrows’ supporters had committed a censurable offense by taking a procedural vote that silenced debate on the rules — the second of three potential strikes.

The bad blood continued into early May, when George called out the House for being slow to take up a ban on local governments hiring lobbyists and a bill allowing the attorney general to unilaterally prosecute election fraud. Burrows dismissed George’s critiques in an interview with Spectrum News.

“I don’t respond to him. He’s not worth responding to,” Burrows said.

But the House delivered on other GOP priorities, including stricter bail provisions, giving parents more say over school library content and barring land purchases from people tied to foreign governments designated as “hostile.”

During the recent special session, lawmakers also passed the bill letting the attorney general prosecute election fraud, cracked down on the online sale of abortion pills and approved the “bathroom bill” — which had evaded conservatives since Straus’ speakership. And the party unified around Burrows when House Democrats fled the state to delay a Republican-led redistricting effort, during which Burrows partnered with Abbott, Paxton and law enforcement officials to try to compel Democrats back to Austin.

While the House was at a standstill, the SREC held a pre-scheduled meeting to take up the party’s report on the 2025 regular session, which was expected to become the basis for censures against GOP state lawmakers. On the morning of that meeting, Abbott hosted the SREC at the Governor’s Mansion along with Burrows and other House members.

It marked Burrows’ first communication with the SREC as speaker, and he used it to make the case for the House’s role in conservative victories and what he was doing to end the quorum break.

By then, George had softened his tone toward Burrows, telling the Tribune later that afternoon that the party has “an open line with the speaker” and acknowledging, “You don’t have to agree all the time. We probably are still going to have some disagreements. That’s part of the process.”

Waning appetite for censures

Although Burrows and his leadership team ended the summer on steadier ground with the Texas GOP, momentum was already rolling toward censures and keeping members off the ballot.

In February, the Dallas County GOP, led by former state party Chair Allen West, initiated the first censures under the new Rule 44, asking the SREC for permission to ban Button and Meyer from the 2026 primary ballot.

Several county parties followed suit, censuring their own members and calling for ballot bans, but each struggled to follow the letter of Rule 44. As the state party did with the 2023 censures, George and the SREC intervened, helping county parties firm up their censure resolutions and properly notify officials that they might be reprimanded.

In June, George formed a task force to evaluate how the party’s legislative priorities fared during the regular session. He also announced a timeline for the censure process that began with the release of the task force report in August, culminating in Saturday’s special SREC meeting to consider censuring members.

At first, SREC members and local party leaders interpreted the task force report as a compilation of the censurable offenses that county GOPs could point to when drafting their Rule 44 resolutions. But the report itself encouraged local parties to consider the Texas GOP platform preamble and principles when deciding who was eligible for censures.

The process was further muddled when the SREC gathered in Austin to finalize the task force report and discovered inconsistencies, prompting a last-minute decision to send the document as a draft to state lawmakers to gather their responses, which they would incorporate into the final version.

“I want the right people censured if they deserve a censure,” George said, urging the SREC to delay the report. “I do not want anyone getting censured by county parties or districts if they don’t deserve a censure. This is a serious matter for the party as a state party, so we want to do the right thing.”

The SREC received 23 responses from lawmakers. Before the committee could adopt its final version the following weekend, Amarillo businessman Alex Fairly, an emerging Republican megadonor, announced that he would use his $20 million PAC to fund the legal defenses of lawmakers blocked from the primary ballot.

Across two evenings of meetings, the SREC walked back significant portions of the report, leaving only three state lawmakers with enough transgressions to be censured based on the report alone: Phelan and state Sen. Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, both of whom had already announced their retirement, and House State Affairs Committee Chair Ken King, whose panel still served as a bottleneck for conservative legislation like it did under Cook. Originally, that count had been as high as 41 representatives.

Adding to the uncertainty, despite George’s call for a “comprehensive evaluation,” the final document included a disclaimer that “this report is not intended to be comprehensive.” And there was the instruction to consider the platform preamble and principles, signaling that more than just the three lawmakers could be eligible for censures.

The Collin County GOP’s resolution, for example, does not fault Leach for voting for Burrows but condemns him for 13 other votes, most of which weren’t included in the task force report. At a public event in Austin on Monday, Leach minimized the role of the precinct chairs that had voted to kick him off the ballot and highlighted the conservative legislation he shepherded through the Legislature this year.

“None of that matters to these people,” Leach said, adding, “I’ll beat their ass in court if I have to.”

The fervor for banning incumbents from the primary ballot seemed to die down as the party racked up legislative wins and George and party leadership expressed more support for Burrows. But even as Burrows won over members of the GOP caucus, some party activists felt they had to claw tooth and nail to push conservative legislation through the House. The fact that Burrows and one-quarter of his supporters face censures on Saturday shows that there’s still an appetite among some activists to invoke the nuclear option. (Two of the 10 members facing reprimands — Phelan and Rep. Stan Lambert of Abilene — are not seeking reelection.)

And despite George’s more recent support for Burrows, his and the SREC’s handholding of local parties through the censure process helped make the resolutions a reality.

Justin Nichols, the attorney who drafted the Rule 44 ballot ban language, said he was surprised by the way the censure effort has played out. He called George’s direction to consider all the censures at a single meeting rather than as they come in a “novel approach.”

Garcia, the SREC member who criticized using censures as a replacement for the primary, predicted that none of the 10 censures will pass.

When the SREC meets on Saturday, each resolution will need approval from three-fifths of the 64-member panel in order to pass. The resolution targeting Burrows would stop short of an outright ballot ban, instead authorizing the party to campaign against him and formally discourage him from entering the GOP primary.

Although the Burrows resolution originated from a county party outside his district, the SREC can still vote to censure him thanks to a change to Rule 44 proposed last year by Rachel Hooper, the Texas GOP’s general counsel.

But even Hooper has increasingly sided with Burrows. At the SREC’s September meeting, she urged members to only censure the worst offenders.

“There’s been criticism, ‘Oh my God, we’re unifying with the speaker,’” Hooper said. “Hell yes, he’s the speaker of the House. We want things done. None of us want to be one of those people who’s just yelling and getting nothing done.”

---

The wait is over! The full TribFest program is here. Join us Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin and hear from 300+ thinkers, leaders and change-makers shaping Texas’ future. TribFest gives you a front-row seat to what’s next, with 100+ sessions covering education, the economy, policy, culture and more. Explore the program.

TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.