It was no secret that Governor Abbott was intent on passing voucher legislation by any means necessary. In 2024, he called four special sessions to demand a voucher law, offering a big increase in public school funding as a sweetener. A coalition of rural Republicans and Democrats voted them down again and again. Rural Republicans know that their schools are the most important institution in their community. They know the teachers and the principal. They and everyone else in the community support the school and its activities. In rural areas, the public school is not only the hub of community life, but the largest contributor to the economy.
With the help of out-of-state billionaires and home-grown evangelical billionaires, Abbott succeeded in defeating most of the Republicans who opposed vouchers. He blatantly lied about them, claiming they opposed his tough tactics at the border (they didn’t), he claimed they didn’t support increased funding for their local schools because they voted against his bribe. He blanketed their districts with lies.
The Houston Chronicle tells a straightforward account of how the voucher vote went down, based on Abbott’s strong arm tactics. Fear won.
Benjamin Wermund and Edward McKinley of The Houston Chronicle wrote the back story:
Pearland Republican Jeff Barry has long been skeptical of school vouchers, but on Thursday morning he voted to create what could become the largest voucher program in the nation.
Barry, a freshman House lawmaker, said it felt like he had no choice.
“If I voted against it I would have had every statewide and national political…figure against me – not to mention all of my bills vetoed,” Barry wrote in a post responding to one user who called his support for the measure a “betrayal.”
He added: “The consequences were dire with no upside at all.”
Barry wasn’t the only Republican House member who felt cornered after an unprecedented, years-long pressure campaign by Gov. Greg Abbott to bend the chamber to his will.
Only two GOP members joined Democrats in opposing the measure on Thursday, a remarkable turnaround from their widespread opposition to vouchers just a few years ago. It was a major vindication of Abbott’s governing approach of strong-arming lawmakers into submission.
Where his predecessors, including Gov. Rick Perry, often cozied up to members of the Legislature, Abbott has looked to exploit their weaknesses. His success on what was once seen as an impossible issue marks a potentially major power shift in state leadership, where lieutenant governors have long been seen to hold as much or more power than the governor, because of their control over the Senate.
“What Perry got by finesse, Abbott gets by force — and that definitely matters for the power structure,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “He, through expending a tremendous amount of political capital and money, was able to reshape the Republican party in his image. That’s something very few governors have been able to do.”
Abbott spent months on the road advocating for vouchers and poured nearly $12 million into unseating fellow Republicans who opposed the same legislation in 2023. Ahead of the vote this month, he met privately with GOP lawmakers on the fence, and on Wednesday morning he gathered the caucus for a call from President Donald Trump, who not-so-subtly reminded them of his success rate in Texas GOP primaries.
Just four years ago, before Abbott began seriously campaigning for vouchers, four out of five House members publicly opposed the thought of using taxpayer dollars for private education. That included House Speaker Dustin Burrows and state Rep. Brad Buckley, the education committee chairman who carried the bill this year in the House.
Just one of the remaining Republican holdouts voted the same way early Thursday morningas they did in 2021: state Rep. Gary VanDeaver of New Boston, who narrowly survived a primary runoff election last year against an Abbott-backed challenger.
State Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, also defeated one of Abbott’s primary challengers last year. He voted for vouchers this time, calling it a pragmatic move to retain at least some modicum of leverage.
“We made this decision with a clear understanding: the bill would pass with or without our support,” Darby wrote on social media shortly after the vote. “Rather than stand by, we chose to stay in the fight, negotiating critical amendments to reduce the impact on our communities.”
Those concessions included annual public audits of the voucher program and its contractors, clarified residency requirements for participants, a requirement that private schools be accredited for at least two years before participating and a permanent one-fifth cap of slots going to students from families that make more than 500% of the federal poverty line — or $160,750 for a family of four.
One of the aims, Darby and others said, was to block unproven private schools from popping up in areas with few other options, just to access the new state dollars. And critics hoped to prevent existing private school students with wealthy families from taking up a bulk of the voucher slots, as has happened in other states.
Darby’s wife, Clarisa Darby, also posted online that not backing vouchers would have jeopardized billions of dollars in new public school funding for teacher raises and special education.
“School funding would be cut by the Senate in retribution and bills affecting our west Texas economy had a high chance of being vetoed if they voted against the bill,” she wrote. “Bills affecting school funding, oil, gas, water, jobs, ASU, Howard College, are too important to be vetoed.”
Ahead of the vote Wednesday night, state Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat, accused Abbott of intimidating Republican colleagues with the threat of a primary “bloodbath.”
“No one including the governor should ever threaten a lawmaker,” Talarico said. “We do not serve the governor, we serve our constituents.”
Abbott’s office denied the claim. But whether threats were real or implied, House Republicans were clearly feeling the heat after Abbott’s all-out offensive in last year’s primaries.
“He’s working behind the scenes to make sure he’s got the vote. There’s no question about that,” state Rep. Sam Harless, a Spring Republican, said Wednesday as the voucher debate was beginning.
Trump’s call Wednesday morning helped quash any lingering doubts among Republicans.
“Many of you I’ve endorsed, and I’ll be endorsing,” Trump told the members. “I won Texas in a landslide. Everybody who was with me got carried.”
State Rep. Wes Virdell, who campaigned on supporting school vouchers, said earlier this week it was “no secret that the governor is pressuring a lot of people” to support the proposal.
Steve Allison, a former Republican state lawmaker from San Antonio who lost his seat to an Abbott-backed challenger after opposing vouchers last session, said he liked the changes fought for by Darby and others but would have still voted against the bill.
“I think that members need to prioritize their districts… and I think that was interfered with here, not just in (my) district but elsewhere,” he said, adding that he’d spoken with several current lawmakers who’d been threatened by Abbott. He declined to say who. “It’s just unfortunate what the governor did,” Allison said.
The House GOP shift on vouchers stretched all the way to its top leadership. Even as he has helped block voucher legislation in the past, newly-elected Speaker Dustin Burrows was a vocal champion of the bill this year, appearing at multiple events with Abbott.
“Speaker Burrows was the real X factor in the debate,” said John Colyandro, a former Abbott adviser who lobbied for the legislation.
Burrows took the gavel from state Rep. Dade Phelan, one of only two Republicans to vote against the bill.
As speaker, Phelan had not openly opposed the legislation. And heading into the speaker’s race he said he would prioritize it.
But before the vote, he explained he was planning to vote against it because he felt voters in his Beaumont district did not support vouchers. He wanted to put it on the ballot in November, a failed proposal offered by Talarico.
Phelan, who narrowly fended off a Trump-backed primary challenger last year, shrugged off the fear of political threats — real or implied. He brought up the Trump call in an interview ahead of the vote, saying he wasn’t in the room but heard audio of it.
Trump noted only one of his endorsed candidates lost, apparently referencing David Covey’s failed bid to unseat Phelan, though the president did not name either candidate.
“He said he went 42 and 0,” Phelan said. “And then he remembers he lost one.”