Texas GOP runoff takeaways: Vouchers are coming. Maybe a bloodbath in Austin, too | Opinion

The final battle for control of the Texas Republican Party may be paused after mixed results in Tuesday’s primary runoffs.

But it’s coming. It’ll inform everything about governing Texas for the next two years, including what could be a messy 2025 legislative session. And it could eventually risk the long-term governing conservative majority in the most important Republican state in the union.

Business-friendly Republicans — we can’t really call them “mainstream” any more, given where the bulk of the party is — notched a few important victories. The survival of Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan despite an onslaught that included everyone from Donald Trump to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, was one.

In Fort Worth, Craig Goldman’s victory and likely ascent to Congress to replace Rep. Kay Granger ensures a responsible hand will be in place for the city’s economic priorities. In southwest Texas, Rep. Tony Gonzales beat back a hard-right challenger in the closest thing Texas has to a swing congressional district.

But a handful of Texas House incumbents lost, including some who had attained valuable leadership positions. Fort Worth’s Rep. Stephanie Klick is a prime example. When she first ran a decade ago, she was instantly one of the most socially conservative House members. The idea that Klick isn’t conservative enough for typical Republican voters or her district is laughable.

Definitions are getting difficult here, whether it’s “MAGA” Republicans or certain varieties of Christian conservatives.

The real problem seems to be that Klick actually worked with leaders and forged compromise to pass legislation. That made her “establishment,” and opponent David Lowe was able to tie her to Phelan as part of the “swamp.”

It happened to several other House veterans, including Rep. Lynn Stucky in Denton County. Perhaps their votes to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton mattered more in the smaller voter pool of primary runoffs.

Their vanquishers face a choice: Get little done in Austin other than tormenting those actually trying to improve or do the work of legislating that will, in this GOP, get them targeted as traitors in just a few years. It’s a smaller-scale version of what’s happened in Congress, and we see how well that’s working.

The best-case scenario in Austin come January is that the blood-letting has eased some of the pressure and that there’s enough common ground among Republicans on issues such as school vouchers — and enough surplus cash to make several priorities achievable — that the Legislature avoids meltdown.

Gov. Greg Abbott put considerable political capital on the line to elect voucher-friendly Republicans, even over several incumbents. While he wasn’t able to save members such as Klick or Stucky, his cause didn’t lose ground with their losses, either. Abbott claimed victory Tuesday night, and he’s probably poised to get an even more robust school-choice policy than seemed possible in last year’s legislative session.

Activist Republicans seem, though, more focused on purging the party of heretics than growing and sustaining a conservative governing coalition. At the GOP state convention in San Antonio last week, delegates voted to close the party’s primaries to all but declared Republicans. They adopted platform positions that, while not likely to become legislation, place the party far outside the mainstream on issues such as abortion.

Republicans have led Texas so long that some can’t see a day when that might change. Yes, Democrats here have been down for decades and are likely to remain that way for some time. But Republicans should note that in the last two presidential campaigns, Trump has struggled to match previous GOP nominees here. They should remember how close Sen. Ted Cruz came to losing in 2018, largely due to a Trump backlash.

If Trump wins again this year, 2026 could suddenly be a lot more competitive than Republicans currently imagine.

All of this is why more Republicans and independents should be voting in party primaries. They might be able to save the party from itself, and in so doing, keep Texas on the track of smart, business-friendly growth and governance.