San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
GOP censures House speaker over Paxton impeachment
The state GOP’s executive committee censured Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan on Saturday for facilitating the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and appointing Democrats to chair committees.
The resolution was approved overwhelmingly by a vote of 55-4, with four abstentions. It needed 39 votes to pass.
As a result, the party will not financially support the Beaumont Republican during the GOP primary and may endorse an opponent. Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi has already personally backed one of Phelan’s challengers, former executive committee member David Covey, who is running against the speaker from his right in the March 5 election.
“If we were judging Dade based on his generosity, this could never pass. But we’re not,” said executive committee member Chris Breaux of Beaumont, who added that he has long considered Phelan a friend. “We’re voting on what he’s done that’s violated our rules. I wish that I could support Dade Phelan in this, but I can’t. He’s wrong. He’s been obstinate in his wrongness.”
The censure comes amid an ongoing civil war within the Texas GOP, which has fractured in recent months over Paxton’s impeachment and the House’s rejection of Gov. Greg Abbott’s private school voucher plan. Rinaldi and other conservatives have lambasted Phelan as a “RINO,” or a Republican in name only.
After the vote, Cait Wittman, a spokeswoman for Phelan, took aim at the committee over its past actions, including watering down a resolution condemning antisemitism by removing a provision that would bar the party from associating with people or organizations that “espouse antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies, or Holocaust denial.”
“The SREC has lost its moral authority and is no longer representative of the views of the party as a whole,” Wittman said in a statement.
Phelan has remained defiant in the face of the criticism and has touted the House’s work to ban abortion and allow the permitless carry of handguns as conservative wins passed under his leadership.
Phelan has also accused Rinaldi and his right-wing critics of weaponizing the party and turning a blind eye to antisemitism and white supremacism.
Phelan is the second speaker of the Texas House to face a censure by the state party. The executive committee similarly condemned former Speaker Joe Straus of San Antonio in 2018.
Party leadership also censured U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio last year for his bipartisan votes on guns and same-sex marriage.