austin (Texas Tribune) – The year was 1930, and Texas Democrats had a problem.
State Senator Thomas B. Love announced his intention to run for governor as a Democrat, just months after campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Herbert Hoover. Because of this unacceptable violation of party loyalty, the state Democratic Executive Committee wanted him removed from the primary ballot.
But they could do no such thing, The Texas Supreme Court saidruled that Texas election laws “jealously guarded the power of voters” by forcing the state’s political parties to place qualified candidates on the ballot, regardless of their adherence to party rules or loyalty tests. The state Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld this ruling, Note in 1958 With some frustration that “no other property is consistent with sound public policy.”
But 95 years after Democrats were forced to keep the issue of love on the ballot, Republicans are about to test the issue again.
The state Republican Party’s Executive Committee meets Saturday to decide whether to censure lawmakers it deems insufficiently loyal, for violations that include voting for an establishment-aligned presidential candidate over a challenger backed by the House’s far-right faction. Under party rules passed last year, such reprimands could bar candidates from running in the Republican primary for two years.
As private ideological groups that run state-sanctioned primaries, political parties occupy a limited space in our democracy. Courts have struggled to balance their free speech rights with their role as state actors, allowing parties to remove candidates from the ballot in some states while invalidating such efforts in others.
But in Texas, the courts have been consistent: Party leadership cannot impose its own purity tests to remove candidates from the primary ballot. The state party’s willingness to consider testing this precedent has frustrated even some loyal Republicans.
“We are the party that has less state and local control,” said David Stein, chairman of the Smith County Republican Party. “I don’t want 64 SREC members to decide who gets elected from Smith County, Texas. That’s up to our voters, and I feel strongly about that.”
From blame to removal
In 2016, amid public frustration with moderate Republican House Speaker Joe Straus, the Texas Republican Party approved new rules allowing local party leaders to censure elected officials for three violations of the party platform. The tool has rarely been used, even as infighting has increased between pro-business Republicans and right-wing social conservatives.
Then came 2023. House Republicans impeached the attorney general Ken Paxton He helped frustrate the government. Greg AbbottSchool voucher program payment.
When the committee met the following year, anti-incumbent energy was running high, especially after Abbott helped oust most of the GOP representatives who challenged him. Many state GOP leaders and rank-and-file delegates wanted to add more force to the threat of censure. San Antonio attorney Justin Nichols drafted the rule that would allow convicted members to be barred from the primary ballot for two years.
Nichols declined to comment to the Texas Tribune about the legality of the measure, but said it was “what everyone wants.”
“Do you want the opportunity to do this? This is your chance,” Nichols said.
Stein, the Smith County chairman, said the rules were hastily passed amid “blame fever.” He said the threat of recalling ballots has deteriorated relations between the party and lawmakers, to the detriment of Republican voters caught in the middle.
He added: “The goal behind this was to influence the primaries, but that is up to the voters.” “We want a mechanism to hold people accountable, and we’ve got that. It’s a primary every two years.”
In January, amid a contentious race between Speaker of the House, SREC Make a decision Which indicates that voting for the representative would be contrary to the party’s program. Dustin BurroughsR. Lubbock, for Rep. David CookR. Mansfield – A possible first strike toward censure.
As pressure mounted, the Texas Republican County Sheriffs Association asked a law firm to look into whether members could actually be barred from the ballot after censure. The short answer? no.
“Although the Election Law calls for political parties to adopt internal rules, nothing permits this, let alone explicitly allows a political party to impose additional restrictions on access to ballot boxes or reject applications that the Election Law orders them to accept.” The 10-page memo is over.
The party might try to challenge that outcome on First Amendment grounds, but it would be a “steep, uphill battle,” the memo said.
Dual constitutional status
Until the late 19th century, political parties were private entities, where Boss Tweed-style kingmakers in smoke-filled rooms could choose candidates however they wanted. Then came the Progressive Era, with its emphasis on government transparency. States began passing laws giving themselves more oversight of primaries, even when parties were still running them.
In 1916, district attorney of Gilmer and Corpus Christi asked the Texas Attorney General To clarify the new election laws in the state. Assistant Attorney General W. A. Keeling wrote that the right to determine who would vote was “inherent in the sovereign electors of such a political party,” not the party itself.
But the loyalty tests continued. In 1926, Dolph Briscoe Sr. – father of future Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe – File a lawsuit against The Uvalde County Democratic Executive Committee on a rule prohibiting people from voting in the Democratic primary if they have previously voted for a Republican candidate.
The party said, “The procedure in question is merely a party regulation, and therefore political, and the courts may not interfere with it.” That was once the case, the Texas Supreme Court ruled, but now, the Legislature has “seized the machinery” of the primaries, imbuing it with “statutory regulations and restrictions to deprive the parties and their managers of all discretion in manipulating that machinery.”
“The true spirit of the election laws is to extend the right of suffrage to all persons ordinarily entitled to that right,” the court said, noting that the only acceptable restriction “is that against negroes.”
But even as the state controlled some party activities, these groups retained their status as independent activists to achieve party goals.
“Opposition parties are supposed to organize against the government and run candidates against incumbents, and really think about what the government should do,” said Michael Kang, a law professor at Northwestern University who studies political parties. “You would think, in that capacity, that the government shouldn’t be regulating these things so much.”
This has created what Kang calls a “dual constitutional situation,” where parties are strictly regulated when running in primaries, but have strong freedom of expression protections when dealing with their internal affairs.
“The government can’t just say no party can be against abortion. That’s not allowed and would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment,” he said. “But you can regulate and force political parties, for example, to run in primaries to determine their nominations.”
The states parties argued that forcing them to place someone on the ballot conflicted with their First Amendment rights of association. Sometimes they succeeded — in 1992, the Georgia Republican Party was allowed to keep Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke off the presidential primary ballot.
But in 2024, when another member, a self-proclaimed “honorary,” ran for governor of Missouri, the party had to put him on the ballot. His presence in the primary elections “does not necessarily mean that the party supports the candidate.” The judge wrote, according to NBC News.
Legal challenges loom
Most cases in which parties have been allowed to remove someone from the ballot involve candidates who clearly contradict the party’s values, such as Duke, or a member of the opposing party seeking an electoral advantage, Kang said. In Texas, the lawmakers facing censure are longtime Republican elected officials, including current and former House speakers, who represent one of the party’s main factions.
“This is a much more difficult case, when someone is in the mainstream of the party, and what the party leadership is trying to do is impose some kind of party doctrine or position that is not necessarily an agreed-upon view within the party,” Kang said.
Some county GOP parties have condemned the effort as undemocratic, noting that it is exactly the kind of party-level control that voter-driven primaries are intended to eliminate.
“Such a concentration of power in a small, centralized body bears no resemblance to the open democracy our founders envisioned, but instead reflects the undemocratic practices of the old Soviet Politburo, where a handful of elites determined who could or could not run for election,” the Republican Party of Lubbock County, Burroughs’ hometown, said. he wrote on Facebook.
Alex Fairley, a major GOP donor, has pledged to leverage his $20 million political action committee to challenge any potential removals. The effort is “not only illegal, it is disastrous for the Texas Republican Party.” He said in a statement.
A group of seven House Republicans facing potential criticism, led by Burroughs, sent a letter to party leadership on Wednesday asking them to reconsider.
“It sends a message that loyalty to grassroots and national conservative agendas is subject to the whims of local or state party insiders, not Republican primary voters,” they wrote. “Choosing a nominee in the Republican primary should fall to the people, not party leaders.”
Texas Republican Party Chairman Abraham George did not respond to a request for comment.
The “blame fever” within the state Republican Party has abated significantly after a unified summer that saw the state redraw the state’s congressional map and attack Democrats who tried to stand in the way, heralding what appears to be a warmer relationship between House Republican leadership and state party officials.
But even if the party’s board doesn’t move forward with a censure on Saturday, the rule remains on the books, looming over the heads of state lawmakers as they decide how to govern.
“Be that as it may, those who feel the censure motion must be weaponized will be emboldened and continue to look for stronger measures,” Stein said. “I believe in passing good public policy, but when you talk about how we can change the laws to benefit our situation, you lose me.”
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This article originally appeared on Texas Tribune in https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/10/texas-republican-party-censures-primary-ballot-court-precedent/.
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