Texas is the second largest state in the US by population, sending 38 representatives and two Senators to the US Congress. In recent decades it has become a very Republican – or red – state, and no Democrat has won statewide office for 30 years. In this Q&A, based on an interview with Peter Finn, Calvin Jillson, gives an overview of the Lone Star State’s politics and some of its recent political controversies.
- This article is part of ‘The 2024 Elections’ series curated by Peter Finn (Kingston University). Ahead of the 2024 election, this series is exploring US elections at the state and national level. If you are interested in contributing to the series, contact Peter Finn (p.finn@kingston.ac.uk).
Can you briefly explain the political history of Texas?
Texas is the largest Republican State, and it’s been securely Republican since the turn of the 21st century. No Democrat has won a statewide office in Texas since 1994. And so, whenever there’s a Democratic administration in Washington DC, Texas leads the resistance to that administration. This is like when California, which is the largest blue or Democrat State, leads the resistance to Republican administrations. So, Texas is a major focus of American politics.
Is Texas a red, blue, or purple state?
Red. Though people with a historical sensibility will need to know that Texas was a Democratic state, what we would call a Blue State today from its inception in the mid-19th century all the way into the middle of the 20th century when the national Democratic Party began to become more liberal and focused on civil rights. As that happened, Texans who were Conservative Democrats, increasingly became Republicans, and over the last quarter of the 20th century Texas became a red Republican state. Looking forward, though it is deep red today, demographic change suggests that over the coming decades, it may well evolve toward being a more competitive purple state.
Who represents Texas in the US House and Senate?
As with all states, Texas sends two US senators to Washington, and Texas has 38 representatives in geographically defined districts that are in the House of Representatives. Because Texas has been Republican consistently over the last several decades, if you are elected as a Republican and there’s no scandal attached to your name, you’re likely to be re-elected to future terms. This means you build up seniority within the Senate and the House, ensuring you move toward committee chairmanships, and greater influence within those legislative bodies. As such, the two Texas senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, are prominent national figures. Cornyn, for instance, will run for Republican majority leader to replace Mitch McConnell at the end of this calendar year, and he may well win that position which would make him the leader of the likely Republican majority going forward in the Senate. There are also similarly prominent senior Texan Republican members of the House. Michael McCaul, for example, is a chairman of a major foreign policy committee. So senior members of the Texas Republican Party play critical roles in Washington.
Who are Texas’ most prominent state level elected representatives?
The most prominent state official is the Governor of Texas, currently Republican Greg Abbott. He was first elected to that office in 2014, after having long service as a state judge, then as a Texas Supreme Court Judge, and then as Attorney General. He was re-elected as Governor in 2018 and 2022 and is now serving his 3rd term. At this point, he has held the office for ten years, and is likely to be elected again if he chooses to stand in 2026. He is very popular among Republicans. Although some do worry that he is not quite conservative enough. He works hard to assuage those doubts, but he is secure in his position. Texas’ Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was a radio talk show host before he became a Texas State Senator, and then Lieutenant Governor. In Texas, being Lieutenant Governor is more influential than Lieutenant governors might be in many States, because you are the presiding officer of the Texas Senate. Having presided over the Senate now for a decade. Patrick runs the place with an iron hand. Most State Senators, Republican or Democrat, do not challenge him directly. He pretty much gets his way.
Another prominent figure is Attorney General Ken Paxton. Elected in 2014 and re-elected a couple of times; he has been plagued by scandals of various sorts. He stood for an impeachment trial in the Texas Senate last year. Paxton, although clearly a malefactor, was not removed from office through an attempt to remove him via impeachment, so he remains as Attorney General. But there is a Federal investigation at the moment that might give him trouble later.
Photo by Franky Magana on Unsplash
What are the key political issues facing Texas right now?
Republican control of the state means that the issues that are most contested are the border and illegal immigration. Because the Republican Party in the US is largely a white party, 80 percent or so of its votes come from white Americans. Immigration, which is largely Hispanic and Asian, strikes fear in the Republicans, which they try to couch in national security terms rather than in personal identity or electoral terms. But Governor Abbott has proposed to build a wall on the Texas border, and President Trump was enabled to complete the wall. Abbott says, I will do it to stop illegal immigration. So that’s a major issue. Crime is, in the Republican mind, a closely related issue, because of illegal immigration. And so anytime a person in the country illegally commits a crime, it is advertised broadly as illegal aliens committing crimes.
Education is also a key issue. Abbott fought very hard for a school choice voucher program in the 2023 legislative session, gives public money to parents to send their kids to whatever schools they choose: public or private, religious or otherwise. Democrats worry a lot about access to healthcare, but it does not get a lot of play in Texas.
Have there been any political scandals or controversies in Texas recently?
There are two that merit mentioning. Earlier I mentioned State Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is often described as the leading law enforcement official in the State of Texas, has, like Donald Trump, on the national level, experienced multiple investigations and criminal charges. Because he is a leading law enforcement official and trained in the law, Paxton has been able to stretch out these cases for a decade or more. These charges never came to trial nor to a conclusion. But this has shaped the way people view Ken Paxton. Republicans view him as a political fighter against socialists and communists, but Democrats see him as corrupt and a thief. So, he is always roiled in turmoil of one sort or another, but from the Republican perspective he is a fighter, even if corrupt in some sense.
The second one was in 2021, when there was a major freeze in Texas. Despite generally having a temperate climate it will freeze every winter in Texas, but not a real deep freeze for several days as in 2021. However, our electrical grid is not integrated into the major national electric grids because we are a red state that is anti-federal government and anti-regulation. However, under that sustained very cold weather our electric grid collapsed, and more than 240 people died, and so there was a lot of finger-pointing and blame. Some moves have since been made to buttress the electrical grid, but it is likely to be insufficient in terms of the summer heat going forward and to cope with winter cold – which happens irregularly but may be more frequent under the volatility of global warming – and the huge amounts of energy used by data centres and Bitcoin mining operations. So that is a major policy debacle that many office holders wanted to be sure they were out from under clear of not taking a political responsibility for.
- This article is based on a podcast recording with Calvin Jillson, The Politics of Texas.
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- Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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