Texas GOP censures five lawmakers, but rejects banning anyone from the primary ballot

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The Texas GOP has voted to censure five of its own in the Texas House yet stopped short of banning them from the 2026 primary ballot, rejecting an untested provision that some House members say would have violated their constitutional right to appear on the ballot.

The State Republican Executive Committee, the party’s governing board, met in the state Capitol on Saturday to consider whether to reprimand 10 Republican House members for being insufficiently conservative. In the end, the board rejected half of the censures and dismissed attempts to bar them from the March primary, a deescalation of intraparty tension that reached a fever pitch at the start of this year.

The SREC concurred with local censure resolutions against Reps. Stan Lambert of Abilene, Angelia Orr of Itasca, Jared Patterson of Frisco, Gary VanDeaver of New Boston and Dade Phelan of Beaumont, a former speaker. Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows escaped censure, as did Reps. Angie Chen Button of Garland, Cody Harris of Palestine, Jeff Leach of Allen, and Morgan Meyer of University Park. Lambert and Phelan have announced their retirements.

Under the Texas GOP’s censure rule, 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 rebuke on Saturday, transgressions included voting for Burrows as speaker and advancing this year’s House rules package, which banned Democrats from serving as committee chairs but left them with other means of influence.

The Texas GOP overhauled its censure rule at its 2024 convention amid backlash to the House’s 2023 vote to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton. After years of urging from conservative activists, the convention heard overwhelming support for adding “teeth” to the censures and approved the possibility of banning censured members from the primary ballot.

Tensions peaked at the start of the 2025 legislative session, when the House elected Burrows and approved rules reserving committee vice chairmanships for Democrats, which conservative activists viewed as a failure to end the longstanding House practice of bipartisan power-sharing. The party spent nearly $50,000 opposing Burrows’ speakership bid.

But as the session continued, the House racked up conservative wins, passing 42 bills that aligned with the party’s legislative priorities, including bills to let the attorney general prosecute election fraud, crack down on the online sale of abortion pills and restrict which restrooms transgender people can use in government buildings and schools.

Before Saturday’s meeting, Burrows addressed the SREC remotely, telling members they should censure only him if they believed House Republicans had committed censurable offenses. Burrows and six other lawmakers facing censures wrote a letter to Texas GOP Chair Abraham George last week, arguing that banning lawmakers from the primary ballot would violate their rights to political association, ballot access and freedom of speech.

“The Republican Party of Texas must be a vehicle for voter empowerment — not disenfranchisement of its own members,” they wrote. “It must champion free speech, open debate and democratic competition, not exclusionary tactics and insider control.”

When the meeting convened, the Texas GOP’s general counsel, Rachel Hooper, implored the SREC to keep the censure meaningful and to only ban the worst offenders from the ballot, likening it to the death penalty.

“The point of censure is not an annual award or a legislative term award,” Hooper said. “Censure is something that should be used as necessary, break glass when needed, and the death penalty should be very sparingly used.”

Attorneys who wish to challenge George and the Texas GOP are trying to provoke the party into censuring members, she said, highlighting a social media post from Houston-area SREC member Rolando Garcia who said some House members are “trying to goad the SREC into a lawsuit” because the censures are weak.

“They’ve been raising millions of dollars for this fight, and they want it because they want to defeat penalty three in court and permanently take it off the table,” Garcia said during the meeting.

Emerging GOP megadonor Alex Fairly, whose daughter, Caroline Fairly, is a first-term representative from Amarillo, had pledged to fund representatives’ legal fight against the ballot ban using his $20 million PAC.

SREC members also feared that defending the ballot ban in court would split the party’s legal efforts as they sue the Texas Secretary of State to close the Republican primaries. Paxton this week sided with the Texas GOP over Secretary of State Jane Nelson in that case.

Early in the meeting, SREC member Steve Evans, the former county party chair in Burrows’ home county, Lubbock County, attempted to remove the ballot ban penalty, known as penalty three, from consideration. His effort failed, but the vote count signaled that the SREC would not meet the threshold to bar anyone from the 2026 primary.

“We need to send a message to activists that penalty three is not a toy, it is not a game, it is not a political strategy,” Garcia said. “It is for the worst of the worst, and none of these merit it.”

Although the ballot ban effort is dead for the 2026 primary, the rule still lingers as a threat for future Legislatures. Members will discuss potential for updating and clarifying the rule at the next party convention, slated for June 2026 in Houston.

The Texas GOP prides itself as being a grassroots organization, where delegates to its convention write the party rules, platform and legislative priorities. Its censure process begins at the local level, where county parties and district executive committees initiate censures.

“The pressure from the grassroots to the party works. The pressure from the party to the elected officials works. It needs to continue to happen,” George said at the start of the meeting.

SREC members, who don’t hold elected office, are elected at each convention, and could face challenges of their own should they fall short in the eyes of party activists. In effect, the SREC gets pulled between the grassroots and elected Republicans, who the Texas GOP must work with to pass its legislative priorities. They could also face pressure from higher up.

During the meeting, George warned the SREC that the White House was watching the livestream. Members expressed fears that banning members from the primary ballot would put them at war with President Donald Trump and risk fundraising. Trump has endorsed each House Republican who is running for reelection except for VanDeaver.

“They want to know what we’re doing and why we're doing it, and they have their opinion about it, and they’ve very strongly expressed it,” George said.

Disclosure: Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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