In primary, Phelan defends conservative bona fides
BEAUMONT — Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan hasn’t had the best start to 2024.
The state GOP censured him this month for his efforts to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton. His main Republican primary challenger was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Ads attacking his conservative record are sweeping his East Texas district, including one featuring Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the powerful Senate leader who has feuded with Phelan over property taxes and border security.
Police recently arrested a man on suspicion of threatening to kill Phelan. And this week, political critics showed up at his house in Beaumont to confront his wife. Now, Phelan is fighting back. “This is a war,” he told a crowd of roughly 400 at a campaign event Thursday night.
“This is the nastiest, most negative campaign I’ve seen in Texas legislative history — millions of dollars,” Phelan said. “They’re going to lose on March 5, and they’re going to regret every damn dime they spent.”
Phelan, who has spent two terms leading the lower chamber, typically uses his campaign cash to help reelect members of the GOP majority. But in recent weeks, he’s had to focus more on making it through his own race, launching ads attacking David Covey, the energy consultant and GOP activist challenging him in the March 5 primary, and Paxton, who has led the charge to unseat Phelan since the attorney general was acquitted by the Senate last year.
Phelan also has been promoting his own conservative credentials and touting the benefits of having a hometown representative as the powerful speaker of the House. And he’s leaned into his record responding to the string of natural disasters to hit his coastal district in recent years, including Hurricane Harvey.
The seat covers all of Jasper and Orange counties and part of Jefferson County, including about a quarter of Phelan’s hometown of Beaumont.
Much of the race has centered on charges from Phelan’s critics that he has held up conservative legislation and ceded too much power to Democrats over his two terms as speaker. Phelan faced similar criticism after his first stint with the gavel in 2021, mostly from a small but vocal faction of conservatives, but the House’s move to impeach Paxton — paired with its failure to pass a school voucher proposal — has turbocharged GOP backlash toward Phelan and other House Republicans.
Covey said Phelan is more beholden to “his liberal donors and friends in the Texas House” than the constituents of his district.
“This race is a chance to put every elected official in Texas, and in the entire county, on notice,” Covey said in an email to Hearst Newspapers. “Our victory in this race will serve as a reminder to every elected official that they work for the people, and when they don’t, there are consequences.”
Phelan has countered by pointing to the parade of conservative legislation passed since he took over the speaker’s gavel in 2021, including laws banning abortion, overhauling the state’s elections, banning “critical race theory,” allowing the permitless carry of handguns and empowering state officials to essentially deport people who are suspected of crossing the border illegally.
The speaker has enlisted former Gov. Rick Perry to vouch for his conservative bona fides, featuring the former governor in a recent ad and at the campaign event this week. Perry told the crowd on Thursday that the attacks against Phelan were baseless, and that they should weigh the value of “sitting at the table when every big issue gets decided in Austin” through Phelan’s status as speaker.
“This in-house fighting and all that kind of stuff — I don’t understand, frankly, why this is happening,” Perry said. “I don’t know why I need to be in Beaumont, Texas, telling you that you will be absolutely out of your mind if you get rid of Dade Phelan.”
Phelan also has sought to refocus the race on the needs of the district and urged voters to reject the attacks lobbed by two West Texas oil tycoons, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, who have been dropping tens of thousands of dollars on attack ads against him.
“This election is about Southeast Texas,” Phelan said at the campaign event. “It’s actually about more than Southeast Texas — it’s an inflection point in the Republican Party of Texas. It’s about right and wrong. Are you going to allow this seat to be bought back by West Texas billionaires?”
The crowd offered back a chorus of “no’s.” “I say hell no,” Phelan agreed.
Also challenging Phelan is Alicia Davis, a retired hairdresser from Jasper County who has focused her campaign on eliminating property taxes. Davis, who did not respond to a request for comment, framed herself in a recent social media video as an “anti-career politician” who is “fighting for the regular folks like us.”
While Davis is running a far less visible campaign than Covey, having spent only a few thousand dollars, her candidacy could force Phelan into a runoff if he does not win an outright majority. It would be a major embarrassment for the speaker.
Phelan said Thursday he isn’t worried about a runoff, but he appealed to attendees for their votes and any extra support they could gather from their families and friends. At least 10 state representatives traveled to Phelan’s district to lend their support to the speaker, who spent much of his time on stage railing against Paxton, Patrick and other right-wing critics.
State Rep. Jared Patterson of Frisco said he “can’t wrap my brain around” the effort to trade a speaker of the House for a “freshman legislator who’s not even going to know where the bathrooms are in the Capitol.”
“He’s the most conservative speaker that we’ve had in Texas, not only in the history of the state of Texas, but leading the conservative agenda forward in the entire nation,” Patterson said.
Covey acknowledged that the speaker has “tremendous power” but argued that Phelan “did not wield it for the benefit of Texans, let alone his district.”
“Phelan and his liberal lieutenants killed conservative legislation on border security, election integrity, and educational freedom at every turn,” Covey said. “Southeast Texas will be better off with a representative that fights for our community’s values than we ever were with a liberal Speaker.”
Lori Rape of Nederland attended Phelan’s event on Thursday just to get a feel for the speaker and what kind of support he has. Rape used to follow politics closely, and she still keeps tabs on what’s going on, but things have gotten so divisive that it’s hard to be fully invested, she said.
“I hate that we have such infighting,” said Rape, 60, as she sat at a table with her son and two grandchildren. “I hate that they keep fighting, and I wish they’d quit.”
She saw that Trump endorsed Phelan’s primary opponent, but she also knows “that wouldn’t be a thing” if the party wasn’t at war with itself. There are so many local issues that need attention, she said, and she hopes Phelan — in his high-profile job — can help residents address them.
“He’s the speaker of the House,” she said. “He’s got a lot of control and power.”