Texas GOP Convention

The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) held its biennial convention in San Antonio, Texas last week where your Texas Values and Texas Values Action team were among thousands of like-minded Texans to participate in policy and media work. We also had a booth in the Exhibit Hall where we gave away numerous educational materials and merchandise, as well as conducted interviews with our on-site studio. Key interviews included Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Rep. Tom Oliverson. Check our social media sites for the videos or click here! We also hosted a private “Faith, Family & Freedom Breakfast” for our supporters who were attending this event. Notable elected officials and leaders attended this sold out event!

During the first half of the week, members of the Texas Values Action policy team, who were also delegates to the convention, advocated for RPT platform planks and Legislative Priorities that reflect strong Christian conservative values. This is important to our legislative work because the trend in the past 4-6 years has been the platform items and legislative priorities that get the most attention and support, usually end up having a lot of support going into the next state legislative session, which starts in January of 2025.

As many of you who are involved with the RPT are aware, the RPT platform reflects values and principles held by the party that thousands of delegates vote on at each convention.  However, select committees gathered Monday through Thursday to accept additions, edits, and deletions to the platform. Among some of the good additions to the RPT platform that your Texas Values team testified and advocated for were:

• Strengthening parental rights in schools by making sure schools share all physical and mental health information to parents
• Ensuring that the right to pray on campus is a protected right for students and employees. Also, advocate for school chaplains.
• Stopping the “classroom to clinic pipeline” i.e. liberal and “woke” influence in schools on leftist gender ideology and abortion
• Adding language to address the increasing threat of chemical abortion pills in our state
• Taking a stance against surrogacy as it relates to being abused by non-traditional families and taking advantage of vulnerable women
• Acknowledging the dignity of the human embryo by making sure embryos are not recklessly discarded or destroyed through in-vitro fertilization
• Making sure that a person is not allowed to change their “sex” on their driver’s license

In addition to adding to the platform, Texas Values made sure Christian values were not deleted from the platform. Like in past years, there were efforts early in the week and even later on once the convention began, to significantly water down the RPT’s stance on homosexuality. Outside groups who claimed to be Republican lobbied the entire convention to remove or modify platform positions that took a stance in opposition to LGBT and abortion. Thankfully, the platform committee voted to not modify the platform plank against homosexuality and kept all pro-life planks in the platform. Despite our team making several attempts to add online sports betting to the platform plank that opposes gambling, the committee voted against adding online sports betting to platform plank language.

After diligent work early in the week, the RPT platform appeared to solidly reflect faith, family, and freedom. However, we discovered that the Platform committee, at the very last minute, removed language from the Education plank on Gender Identity that states, “We hold that biological men shall compete only against biological men and biological women shall compete only against biological women in athletics in the public-school system of Texas and at the collegiate level”. We heard that members of the Platform committee wanted to delete the language because Save Women’s Sports bills have already passed in the Texas legislature. A member of the platform committee came to convention floor and argued this exact point. But as we stated, the platform does not only reflect ideas for legislation, the platform reflects the beliefs and principles of the party. Deleting “Save Women’s Sports” language would signal that the party no longer believes this fact to be true.

Texas Values sent out an emergency email asking convention delegates to speak up on the convention floor and ask that the Save Women’s Sports language be added back to the platform plank on Gender Identity. Right at the convention floor debate deadline of 11:45 p.m., the entire RPT convention delegation voted to add back Save Women’s Sports.

In addition to advocating for the platform, Texas Values Action wanted to ensure that key policy issues were voted on as the top legislative priorities for the Republican Party of Texas in the 2025 legislative session. Texas Values Action team members communicated to the committees early in the week that school choice, pro-life, and stopping gambling must be amongst the top priorities. The legislative priorities that we asked convention delegates to rank high were:

• Don’t Gamble Texas Future (which includes banning online sports betting)
• Abolish Abortion and Promote Adoption
• School Choice and Education Freedom
• Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids

In summary, Texas is better because of our work at this event last week, so we appreciate your support and participation as well!

Runoff Election Endorsement Results

Thank you for getting out and voting for your values, Texas values!

Texas Values Action only endorses candidates who demonstrate a firm commitment to protecting religious liberty, marriage and family, and innocent human life.

Six of our endorsed candidates won in their primary runoff races this week for the entire primary season, 28 Texas Values Action candidates WON in a contested primary, out of 35 total candidates endorsed.

Brent Hagenbuch – TX Senate District 30 (Denton, Collin)

A.J. Louderback – TX House District 30 (Dewitt, Lavaca)

Katrina Pierson – TX House District 33 (Rockwall)

Alan Schoolcraft – TX House District 44 (Guadalupe, Gonzales)

Keresa Richardson – TX House District 61 (Collin)

Tom Maynard – SBOE District 10 (Williamson, Bell, Burnet)

Notably, we were disappointed that Cheryl Bean lost by a slim margin of 300 votes. Turnout was very low in this election (only 5%) and surely, there were 300 more people who could have voted and changed the outcome of this election. John McQueeney won this Tarrant County Texas House race, and its been reported that McQueeney heavily supports bringing Casino gambling to Tarrant County.

Also, David Covey fell short by just over 300 votes, in his challenge to current Speaker of the House and Representative Dade Phelan, in one of the most expensive Texas House races in some time. Dade Phelan outraised and outspend Covey by a large margin and Covey stated he believes over 1,400 Democrats voted in this election, and likely most for Phelan.

This doesn’t mean that Phelan automatically becomes Speaker of the House again, it just means he can return to being a Texas House member. The vote for Speaker of the House has two (2) steps for Republicans. Texas House Republicans are required, by rule, to meet privately and vote for one Republican House member to be their Speaker of the House nominee when House members vote on this in January of 2025, on the first day of the 2025 Texas Legislative session. The second step is that House Republicans cast their vote for Speaker in January of 2025. This rule, that was passed by grassroots Republican delegates, was designed to keep Democrats from having influence over the Speaker of the House vote, when Republicans have the majority, when they have more than 75 members needs to have control of a voting majority in the Texas House. The vote for Speaker of the House is simple majority (50% plus 1).

Texas House Republican Rep. Tom Oliverson has already officially filed paperwork to be elected as Speaker of the House, so Phelan does have a major challenger. Rep. Oliverson was the House author for the state law that protects kids from gender transition surgeries and puberty blockers, which was passed in 2023. Rep. Oliverson has committed that he will not select Democrats as committee chairman if he is elected to be Speaker of the Texas House. More to come on this issue! Watch our interview here with Rep. Oliverson!!

Thank you to everyone who voted! If you see value in our work, please make a donation today!