Texas Democrats have racked up their share of Charlie Brown moments whenever observers have predicted meaningful blue wins in the state.
Count State Rep. Dade Phelan, the Beaumont Republican who spent two terms presiding over the Texas House, as someone who thinks November is likely to break that cycle. In a new interview with Texas Monthly, the legislator said his own party faces palpable fear as voters turn against the Trump agenda.
“It’s real. People are freaking out. You see it in their faces,” Phelan told the magazine of fellow Republicans’ reaction to the current political environment. “There’s serious concern like I’ve never seen before.”
Phelan oversaw the passage of a slate of hard-right bills during his time as speaker. Even so, he ultimately found himself in the crosshairs of the state party and Donald Trump for overseeing the impeachment push against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over accusations of taking bribes and abusing his office.
The scandal-tarred Paxton, of course, is now running for the U.S. Senate. Recent polls show his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, with a narrow lead as he runs an energetic campaign leveraging voters’ concerns about affordability and corruption.
Phelan said Paxton presents a problem for the party this cycle as it also faces headwinds over affordability and the “grossly unpopular” war in Iran. He also bristled at the notion that this cycle is likely to be a rerun of 2018, when former Congressman Beto O’Rourke came within three points of beating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
“[P]axton is nothing like Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz worked hard. Ted Cruz is a good fundraiser. Ted Cruz will debate anybody,” the former speaker said.
“Paxton’s campaign has been . . . I don’t know who’s running it or how they’re running it, but every day there’s something new. There’s a new campaign leak, a new bizarre comment. And he’s totally beholden to super-PAC money, which is a terrible position to be in because you can’t control the message.”
However, the Senate race isn’t the only one Lone Star State Republicans stand to lose, Phelan told Texas Monthly. He said as many as 10 GOP seats in the Texas House are at risk — potentially more if Talarico wins his Senate race.
Phelan, who’s not running for reelection, told the magazine much of the blame will blow back on his own party for sticking with tired messaging about transgender kids playing school sports.
“This is 2026. This is not 2020. This is not 2018. I don’t know. But Texas is becoming a battleground state, and when people are spending $1,500, $2,000 a month on health care for their family, and we’re too afraid to even talk about health care, and we’re still talking about defund[ing] the police, which happened six years ago . . . I mean, we’ve got to catch up with the times.”
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