Conservatives, let’s keep winning — not fighting each other

Over the last two decades, there has been a stark rise in mega-donors who seek conservative policy outcomes. For at least the last 12 years those donations have not achieved the level of conservative policies sought by this handful of conservative mega-donors: movement conservatives with tremendous financial resources.

Last session this changed. And changed dramatically with a remarkable string of conservative policy victories. Unfortunately, some of these mega-donors seem to be acting out of habit and are still targeting incumbents. That's a strategic mistake.

Politics in Texas has a long history of being dominated by a handful of very large political donors. Our election laws allow unlimited donations to state candidates, so just a few megadonors often dominate the political and policy process. A $1 million dollar campaign donation is not common but happens, and $250,000 donations are often expected of the larger donors to statewide candidates or members of significant influence.

As a member of the “movement conservatives” in Texas, I remain amazed by the bills that finally passed the Texas House last session: the heartbeat bill, election integrity, constitutional carry, spending restraints, banning critical race theory, UIL sports protections for female athletes, significant funding for building a wall on our southern border and many other conservative policies which finally became laws.

After suffering through former Speaker Joe Straus' decadelong war on conservative policy, movement conservatives finally found success under Speaker Dade Phelan. The two-year period of Speaker Dennis Bonnen's leadership in-between Straus and Phelan is perhaps best labeled a transitional session: a significant improvement for conservatives over Straus, but nothing like last session in 2021.

The Texas House's evolution from Speaker Straus' hostility toward conservative values to Speaker Phelan's advancement of conservative policies into law is extraordinary.

I don't know Speaker Phelan and suspect he's less philosophically conservative than I am, but there's no question about the outcomes he and his leadership team delivered. For most movement conservatives, policy outcomes matter, not the individual leaders (or even the party in control).

Movement conservatives tend to be policy focused, and last session saw more conservative outcomes by the Texas House than I've seen since my work in the Texas Legislature began in 1993. As a result, our multi-decade legislative quest to overcome the House obstacles of the past ended... in wild success.

I fear this success is unlikely to continue next session. If my suspicion is correct, then the failure of conservative policy outcomes will fall squarely on our shoulders — the shoulders of movement conservatives and our mega-donors. Not because our policies are flawed, but rather our political strategies are flawed.

Our political strategies are flawed because a few conservative mega-donors just spent and continue spending millions of dollars to defeat incumbent House Republicans in their primaries. Of course, contested elections are a positive for democracy but our campaign efforts come immediately after this same body of House Republicans performed better on policy than I remember any other House doing in the last 30 years.

These campaign attacks may have just been a reflex from so many cycles of conservative policy failures in the House. Will Texas' conservative activists ever reach a point where we credit Republican House members for these policy outcomes? If we, movement conservatives, are still going to raise and spend millions of dollars seeking to defeat more than a dozen of these same House Republican incumbents who just delivered the most conservative policy session in a generation, then what is their incentive to continue to do so next session?

And why are strong conservatives state representatives such as Houston's Mike Schofield and Tarrant County's Stephanie Klick targeted when much more moderate Republican House members are not? Even Representative Andy Murr, who authored the election reforms sought by conservatives, was a target of their political ire in the recent primary.

The conservative movement's campaign tactics forced House leadership to raise and spend millions defending these same House incumbents who just passed so many of our marquee conservative policies. The effort to defeat so many incumbents creates a political disincentive for House leadership to continue advancing our policies.

Conservatives are signaling that no matter how many legislative priorities House Republicans deliver, movement conservatives will still try to defeat many of these same incumbents in their primaries. This is a flawed strategy for future policy success.

In years past it was one thing to spend millions seeking to defeat moderate incumbents when policy outcomes were not there, but to do so again, when this House delivered so many conservative policy outcomes disincentivizes the members and House leadership from repeating that policy success.

Republicans in the Texas House deserved better treatment than what we showed them over the last few months during their primary campaigns. Our actions call into question the notion that what we really care about are policy outcomes. Instead, it is fair to wonder if personalities, not policy outcomes, are really driving this effort?