San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
For voucher foes, Tuesday wasn’t so super
Afew feet up North New Braunfels Avenue from Alamo Heights Junior School, a red-and-white campaign sign praises Texas House District 121 incumbent Steve Allison.
“Teachers support Steve Allison,” states the sign, lauding the Republican state representative as “public education friendly.”
Allison is a former Alamo Heights school board trustee who has always prided himself on his dedication to public schools.
In recent weeks, Allison unabashedly defended his vote against Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher plan and noted that contrary to the arguments made by so-called “school choice” advocates, Texas parents already have plenty of choices when it comes to their children’s education.
It’s a message that has worked in this district before. Allison’s predecessor, former House Speaker Joe Straus, similarly advocated for public schools and faced the wrath of culture war crusaders in the GOP, but he always emerged victorious.
After all, Alamo Heights is a key part of Texas House District 121 and Alamo Heights residents are justifiably proud of their public schools.
But political realities are different now. That became clear when attorney Marc LaHood, a proponent of vouchers and a defender of impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton, handily defeated Allison in the Republican primary.
Allison was one of 10 Texas House Republicans targeted for ouster by a vengeful Abbott because of the voucher issue. Paxton also disliked Allison because the state representative voted to impeach the ethically challenged attorney general last year.
Abbott has gone after Republicans who crossed him before, but with limited success. San Antonians will remember the governor’s attempt to take out then-state Rep. Lyle Larson because Larson had the audacity to call out the apparent pay-to-play nature of Abbott’s statewide appointments.
This year, however, Abbott sunk real money and commitment into his effort. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s primary, he spent more than $6 million, the bulk of it dedicated to defeating those 10 anti-voucher Republican incumbents.
It worked. Five of those incumbents, including Allison, lost their primary races outright, and three others face runoffs.
The story is bigger than Abbott’s personal pique. On Tuesday night, we saw the continuation (and intensification) of traditional, pragmatic conservative Republicans being purged from a party that’s increasingly consumed by retribution, culture warmongering and disinformation-fueled conspiracy theories.
Consider the fact that Dade Phelan is the first Texas House speaker in 52 years to be pushed into a primary runoff. Paxton made it his mission to punish Phelan for stewarding Paxton’s impeachment process.
Among Paxton’s many abuses of his office was his bid to legally challenge the results of critical swing states that Donald Trump lost in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump repaid that loyalty by endorsing Phelan’s opponent, David Covey, and saying that any Republican who backs Phelan is “a fool” who “should be disassociated from the Republican Party.”
In U.S. District 23, Tony Gonzales, a two-term San Antonio Republican incumbent, got pushed into a runoff by Brandon Herrera, a gun zealot who calls himself the AK Guy.
Herrera’s candidacy felt more like a social media gimmick than a real campaign. But he hit the airwaves hard down the stretch with ads accusing Gonzales of betraying Trump by casting a vote for the formation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection by pro-Trump election deniers.
A year ago, the State Republican Executive Committee censured Gonzales, largely because he reacted to the horrific Uvalde school shooting in his district by supporting very modest gun reform and because he voted to codify protections for samesex marriage.
These are positions shared by the majority of Americans. But they’re out of step with the modern GOP.
It’s a party less attuned to passing legislation or solving real problems than stirring up cultural divisions.
That only became clearer Tuesday night.
Retribution, disinformation, culture wars all play a role
in this new political reality