As an addendum to my previous Reality Check with respect to the federal elections, I want to take a brief moment to separately discuss my home state. After the elections in the Great State of Texas, it’s pretty hard not to be happy.
But I’m gonna give it a shot.
Yes, Texas Democrats did what everyone thought was impossible and they will inherit a whole lot of power in January. Having a Democratic Governor, a Democratic AG, and a Democratic House will be huge. However, Democratic power won’t be quite as limitless as many seem to think.
Our new Lt. Governor will also be a Democrat and she will be the presiding officer of the Texas Senate with a tie-breaking vote. However, many of the important powers wielded by our current Republican Lt. Governor – including assigning committee chairs and deciding legislative calendars – are not guaranteed to be passed on the Democrat. Those powers have been granted by Senate rules, not by the Texas Constitution. Since Republicans will retain a solid majority in the state Senate, they could – and probably will – simply change the rules by majority vote and severely downgrade the Lt. Governor’s office. In any case, the Republican Senate majority will be able to block new Democratic initiatives and, very importantly, will be able to prevent Democrats from repealing some really crappy existing laws. To get anything done, both parties will need to compromise and that hasn’t happened in Texas for decades.
Democrats also won 4 seats on the Texas Supreme Court. Again, that’s a huge win. However, Republicans still control the other 5 seats and thus still have a majority. While one of the Republicans (Debra Lehrman) has historically been more moderate than the others and could occasionally be a swing vote, SCOTX is likely to remain a conservative Republican court that could be a major headache for Texas Democrats.
For completeness, I’ll end with an old complaint. The 2025 Republican gerrymander in Texas certainly backfired on Republicans. While they expected to walk away with 30 seats in the U.S. House, they won only 24 seats – one less than they had before the gerrymander. Karma. My problem is that 24 seats is still too high. As I discussed last year, Republicans should have been able to rightly claim only 21 seats before the prior gerrymander. In any case, both sides are now stuck with the district map that’s in place. Another mid-decade redistricting effort won’t happen with a divided state government.
Don’t get me wrong. The Democratic wins in Texas are a great start. Let’s just recognize that real change won’t be easy and that there’s still a whole lot of work to do.