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After hardline conservatives in the Legislature scored a laundry list of wins last session, state Rep. Mitch Little says conservatives won’t slow their roll if there’s a blue wave in the Texas House.

The rightmost flank of the lower chamber grew its ranks from single digits to two or three dozen members after the 2024 election, depending on how you slice it. They tasted victory last session after pushing the House into a far more conservative position, leading to the passage of many grassroots priorities that were left on the table in past sessions.

Now, with the midterms about a month out, Texas Republicans are locked in tight races atop the ballot that threaten to spill over into lesser-known legislative contests. The last time Democrats shocked the Republicans — when they flipped 12 seats in the House in 2018 — the Legislature responded in 2019 with the “kumbaya session,” largely avoiding culture war issues and infighting. At the Republican agenda panel at last week’s Texas Tribune Festival, Little suggested the conservative flank would refuse to go along with another session like that if the GOP majority narrows in November.

“I think it will be more demanding than ever of our Republican colleagues,” said Little, a leader in the House’s rightmost wing despite serving in his first term.

The Lewisville Republican added, “None of us are willing to go backwards and say, ‘Oh, well, we lost a few seats, so our policy agenda is going to change.’ You can count me out of that.”

Like others in the caucus, Little praised Speaker Dustin Burrows of Lubbock for overseeing passage of GOP priorities in 2025 and working hard to boost Republicans on the campaign trail. Rep. Daniel Alders, a freshman Republican from Tyler, said, “You’re going to see that train keep on rolling.”

The House currently stands at 86-62, with vacancies in two GOP-leaning districts. But Little acknowledged there could be roadblocks to another conservative session, and “things could change” on the unity front, if the split falls to something like 80-70. At that point, there’s the threat of moderate Republicans breaking ranks and teaming up with Democrats to reach the magic number of 76 votes to pick the speaker.

That’s exactly what happened in 2009, when the session began with a 76-74 split in favor of Republicans. The GOP has held more comfortable margins ever since, even after the 2018 wave narrowed their edge to 83-67.

“Right now, we’re at a place where we’re working together, unified,” Little said. “But if you have five or six Republicans who are really, really interested in power, might they do something obscene from the standpoint of unity? Yeah, they might.”