In Showdown Over GOP Control in Texas, the Race for the Speaker of the House of Representatives Heads to a Runoff

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan and a local Republican activist backed by former President Donald J. Trump will compete in a runoff in May after neither received enough votes to win on Election Day, according to The Associated Press.

The contest was part of a painful and bitter Republican primary across Texas, in which dozens of incumbents faced well-funded opposition, whether from supporters of Attorney General Ken Paxton, who vowed revenge last year for his ouster by the Texas House, either from the government. Greg Abbott, who wanted to oust opponents of his school voucher plan.

It remained unclear Tuesday how many of the embattled incumbents, mainly in the Texas House, would survive or would have to continue fighting until the May 28 runoff. Candidates, advisers and voters said they had never seen a Republican primary so tough. fought over, expensive and widespread in so many districts.

But Phelan’s failure to secure his seat on Tuesday indicated that these battles over the future direction of the Republican Party would continue to roil the state.

Mr. Abbott has not made a statement of support in Mr. Phelan’s race. But he campaigned aggressively against state representatives who opposed his proposal to give parents public money to spend on private schools. His campaign received a $6 million contribution from a Pennsylvania school voucher supporter, and more than that amount was spent on House races.

His goal was to shift the balance of power in the Texas House so that a private school voucher measure would pass in the next legislative session. It was not yet clear on Tuesday whether that effort had paid off.

Mr. Paxton also aggressively targeted three Republican judges who serve on the Court of Criminal Appeals, hoping to revive the state’s highest criminal court. The Attorney General criticized the justices as “Republicans in name only.”” for their part in an 8-to-1 ruling by the all-Republican court that bars Mr. Paxton from unilaterally prosecuting criminal voter fraud cases without the involvement of local prosecutors.

All three judges were in the back on Tuesday night – two of them by wide margins.

Mr. Phelan had been a key focus for Mr. Paxton, who campaigned heavily for his opponent David Covey, a little-known party leader in the province, and helped secure a crucial endorsement for Mr. Covey from Mr. Trump. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s conservative leader, also canceled sharply critical ads against Mr. Phelan.

Mr. Phelan had not faced an opponent from either party in his Southeast Texas district in a decade.

“Why am I against it now?” he said in an interview outside an early voting center last month. “Because I tackled corruption within my party and said: ‘I’m not going to stand for that. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. ”

Mr. Covey received support from Texans United for a Conservative Majority, a group whose two main backers are Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, religious conservatives and West Texas oil and gas billionaires who together have contributed more than $4.5 million to this year’s races, mainly in support of challengers.

Both men have supported Mr. Patrick and Mr. Paxton in the past and have spent years trying to push Texas politics to the right through various groups and political action committees.