Over the next week, a last-minute fight for power will play out across Texas. The legislative session begins on Tuesday, Jan. 14, and whoever wins a contentious battle for the position of Speaker of the Texas House will drastically shape the state government next year.
The struggle pits two factions of Republicans against each other.
Inside the capitol, the speaker is arguably the third most powerful position in the state. Recently, he's sat atop a Republican-led but bipartisan coalition with Democrats, which largely decides which bills come up for a vote.
A large group of Republican die-hards came to the Tarrant County GOP headquarters Monday aiming to change that power structure this year.
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“Until the Texas House is fixed, everything else is a Band-Aid," said incoming state representative Mitch Little.
The Texas GOP, led by its chairman Abraham George, is helping organize a dozen bus tours to take people to Austin next week to pressure Republican lawmakers to back Mansfield Republican David Cook as speaker.
Cook is the Republican caucus's choice and has pledged to scrap the bipartisan coalition and govern the Texas House closer to the style seen in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched his own tour, putting his shoulder into the effort. While Cook was among the majority of House Republicans to impeach Paxton in 2023, it appears the two have mended fences. Paxton is supporting Cook in the struggle for House leadership.
"Whatever they do. It’s going to be public and it’s going to be transparent. And the voters will then decide what happens, not me," said Paxton at the Monday event in Tarrant County.
The other faction of Republicans is supporting Lubbock lawmaker Dustin Burrows, arguing the 150 members of the Texas House should decide whether to allow Democrats to hold powerful committee chairs.
“Chairman Burrows believes that every single member of the House is an elected representative of the people and that their voice deserves to be heard," Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, argued earlier on Lone Star Politics.
Many of the members in the Burrows coalition were supporters of the incumbent Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who chose not to seek the position after a bruising campaign season. They see themselves as defending the state constitution and a Texas House that checks on other statewide powers across Texas, such as Paxton, Republican Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who is the leader of the Texas Senate, and several high-profile West Texas political donors.
"Our founders designed our system to be independent from each other – the chambers. So if one chamber controls the other, that’s not the way it was intended to work," said Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine.
That vote for speaker happens next Tuesday, the first day of the legislative session in Austin.
