01/17/2025

Texas House elects Dustin Burrows as speaker, rebuffing far-right challenge

Houston Chronicle | Edward McKinley, Taylor Goldenstein, Isaac Yu | Jan. 145, 2025

Texas House elects Dustin Burrows as speaker, rebuffing far-right challenge

The Texas House on Tuesday elected Rep. Dustin Burrows as its next speaker, elevating a conservative Republican and former top House deputy who has sought to rein in local Democratic elected officials.

The bipartisan vote, 85 to 55, was a rebuke of far-right Republicans and their wealthy donors, who had gone all in on a challenger, North Texas Rep. David Cook. Their campaign became especially heated in recent weeks, with attack mailers going out in lawmakers’ districts and the state GOP threatening to block any Republican members who voted for Burrows from appearing on its future primary ballots.

In the end, 49 of the chamber’s 62 Democrats joined 36 Republicans to lift Burrows over the edge. The victory was an assertion of the chamber’s longstanding independence, and it set up another session of likely clashes with the more conservative Texas Senate. 

Burrows called for unity in a speech after the vote, recalling that former Houston Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman once told him constituents are alike in that they all have problems in need of solutions.

“The House is at its best when we’re tackling problems that are seemingly insurmountable,” he said. “We do that by building broad coalitions, united by shared values that are bigger and stronger than our geographical or our political differences.”

The Lubbock Republican was first elected in 2014 and previously chaired the House’s influential Calendars Committee, which schedules bills for floor votes. He served former Speaker Dade Phelan as a top lieutenant and was supported by others from Phelan’s leadership team. 

Phelan announced late last year he would not seek reelection to his position, facing opposition from the state GOP, many statewide elected officials and the influential West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. Critics of the former speaker pointed in part to his push to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2023 on corruption and abuse of office charges. Paxton, who was later acquitted by the Senate, campaigned for Cook in the weeks leading up Tuesday’s race.

Cook emerged late last year as the consensus challenger, promising to strip Democrats of their few committee chairmanships and remove procedural roadblocks to the House quickly forcing through conservative measures. 

Cook won the endorsement of the Texas House Republican Caucus in December and appeared to have both Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads the Senate, on his side. But Burrows was able to prevail thanks to support from a coalition of old-guard Republicans and Democrats, many of whom said they were voting against Cook and his supporters.

“I understand the urge to ignore the Democrats and push our Republican agenda through without their consent,” Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, said in a floor speech nominating Burrows. “We're here to work for and with each other, for and with our constituents, and our constituents are not just Republicans, not just Democrats.”

Burrows first took office in 2015. He runs his own law firm focusing on construction, agriculture, civil litigation and mediation. In 2023 he sponsored legislation that beefed up school security requirements in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting and a measure, known as the “Death Star bill,” that sought to block municipal governments from adopting left-leaning policies. 

Rep. Mitch Little, a newly-elected Dallas Republican who represented Paxton in his Senate impeachment trial and backed Cook, said he expected the session to be “borderline chaotic” with Burrows leading the chamber. He warned that relying on Democratic support was a slippery slope, and that leaders should have the full backing of their party first.

“I think most Republican voters will have a hard time seeing how that's sustainable,” he said.

Patrick slammed Burrows in a statement for having been "handed the speakership by Democrats, as has happened behind closed doors session after session since 2009." He laid out several of his priority items for next session, including school vouchers, bail reform and banning ownership of Texas land by "foreign adversaries." 

"The voters will hold our new speaker accountable to keep his promise of being the most conservative speaker in Texas history," Patrick said.

After the vote, Cook appeared collegial, standing and applauding Burrow’s victory.

 “We ran a good, honest race, and I’m very proud of the support that we were able to garner,” Cook told reporters. “From an effort standpoint, I don’t know that I could have done anything else.”