Texas could send a record four GOP women to Congress — if they make it through November

Despite sending more Republicans to Congress than any other state, Texas has elected only five GOP women to the U.S. House in its history. Redistricting and retirements could change things.

Since it joined the Union, Texas has sent just five Republican women to the U.S. House. Next year, there could be four at once.

That would be a high-water mark for the Lone Star State, which has more Republicans in Congress’ lower chamber than any other state, yet has continued to send mostly GOP men to Washington as the ranks of Republican women have grown elsewhere in recent years.

But that could change this November, thanks to Texas’ new congressional map and a wave of retirements, which helped make way for two Republican nominees in the Houston area — Alex Mealer and Jessica Steinmann — who are favored to win their red-leaning districts. They were among the 31 Republican women who filed for a U.S. House seat in Texas this cycle, outnumbered 4-to-1 by the 124 male candidates in the GOP primaries.

Also emerging from those contests were incumbent Reps. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, and Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving. But that cohort still has to make it through the general election, when De La Cruz will be defending one of Texas’ most competitive congressional seats. And while Mealer is running in a newly drawn district that President Donald Trump carried by 20 points in the 2024 presidential race, Democrats also see an outside shot of competing for her Hispanic-majority district if a blue wave lands this fall.

Two other GOP women, Martha Fierro and Lauren Pena, secured nominations in heavily Democratic districts that are generally seen as out of reach for Republicans.

The tough fight ahead for De La Cruz is one example of why groups like Winning for Women have focused their recent efforts on safer districts like those of Mealer and Steinmann, both of whom are backed by the organization.

Winning for Women, which operates a super PAC and a nonprofit arm, provides financial and mentorship support for female GOP candidates. They spent more than $300,000 on Steinmann’s campaign and over $450,000 on Mealer’s, contributing to a total $48 million raised and spent since the 2020 cycle, working to reverse the fallout from the prior midterms, when the number of Republican women in the House cratered to 13, a low point this century. Since then, Winning for Women and other like-minded groups have helped shepherd more than 30 Republican women in Congress.

Winning for Women President Danielle Barrow said her group made a deliberate choice to move away from battleground districts — and this year, Texas offered an opening to continue that approach.

“Having women serve in those battleground seats means it’s more difficult for them to really grow in seniority and build leadership if they’re constantly running to just save their seat every two years,” she said.

The pivot traces back to Mayra Flores, the former Republican congresswoman who won a June 2022 special election for a South Texas congressional district only to lose the seat five months later to Democrat Vicente Gonzalez. It was a reminder of how fragile any such gains have been since Kay Granger became the first Republican woman to represent Texas in Congress in 1997. It wasn’t until Flores’ election 25 years later that the number would grow to three in the House.

Mealer said the push for more GOP women is about securing seats at the table for voices like hers and Steinmann’s that she argues are underrepresented in the current Republican conference.

“It’s about being a mom with young kids — it’s a different set of issues, generically, much more focused on basic kitchen table issues, and I think a little bit more of an emphasis on trying to get something accomplished,” she said, noting that Steinmann is also a mother.

Mealer credited her candidacy to generational turnover in the Texas delegation, made possible in part by last summer’s redistricting that forced some members to retire or run in different districts — as was the case with U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat whose district was dismantled to make way for the new seat Mealer is seeking.

Green’s district was one of the five Texas Republicans approved redrew to be more favorable for the GOP in its new congressional map.

Mealer said the wave of departures, which also included retirements unrelated to redistricting, opened the door for more young parents like herself to run. Steinmann’s district opened up through one of the voluntary retirements, with U.S. Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Magnolia, deciding not to seek election after just two terms in the solidly Republican seat anchored north of Houston.

Even as Winning for Women tries to increase the number of GOP women in Congress, Barrow said her group is careful not to flatten its candidates into a single mold just because they share the same gender.

“They each bring their own unique value to the Republican conference and the Texas delegation, and the fact that they have diverse perspectives and represent diverse areas is what’s going to benefit” the party, Barrow said.

Since Winning for Women’s launch, Texas’ roster of GOP women has barely budged: of roughly 21 open primaries since 2017, only Van Duyne, who succeeded Kenny Marchant in 2020, has gone to a woman. Granger’s seat, after nearly three decades in the hands of the first Republican woman to represent Texas on Capitol Hill, went to then-state Rep. Craig Goldman.

Meanwhile, Democrats have made relatively more progress. Texas sent its first Democratic women, Lera Thomas, to Congress in 1966, and has since elected 8 more to the House.

Research on voter behavior suggests that voters in both parties use candidate gender as a cue for ideology, typically assuming women are more liberal than men. That dynamic works in favor of Democratic women in primaries while creating a headwind for Republican women in their intra-party contests, in which voters tend to favor the candidate perceived as most conservative.

“The fact that we still have to explain why there’s a value in electing women tells me that there’s still so much more work to be done,” Barrow said, pushing back on critics who dismiss her mission as “identity politics” by pointing instead to candidates’ qualifications, which she said was a big reason for Steinmann and Mealer’s success in their primaries.

During her campaign, Steinmann has pitched herself as ready to hit the ground running, pointing to a resume that includes time as Sen. Ted Cruz’s regional director, leading the Justice Department’s crime victims office under Trump and serving as executive general counsel at the conservative think tank America First Policy Institute.

“I’m not running to spend years learning how Washington works – I’m running with the experience, the relationships, and the proven record to deliver results for the people of Texas’ 8th District from day one,” Steinmann, whose campaign declined an interview request, said in a statement to The Texas Tribune.

Mealer, meanwhile, has touted her background as an Army bomb squad officer who went on to a career in energy finance before running for Harris County judge in 2022, a race she narrowly lost.

She is also pitching her experience raising two young children as a professional asset, one that taught her to be “more efficient with your time, more solutions oriented,” she said, because your kids “take up most of your bandwidth.”

Winning for Women’s Executive Director Meredith Allen Dellinger said female members often shoulder family obligations that limit their ability to build seniority.

“A lot of women members’ heartstrings are pulled to make sure they can go home,” Dellinger said, contrasting that with male colleagues’ greater freedom to travel and fundraise. Part of Winning for Women’s mission, she said, is to help members fulfill those competing demands whether with hard dollars or counseling.

But the party’s challenge is not just electing women, but also winning them over as voters. Statewide exit polls in Texas have consistently registered a sharp gender, with men voting for Republicans at much higher rates than women, who tend to lean Democratic. The GOP has struggled at times to sell itself to suburban women in particular, costing them their U.S. House majority in 2018, the most recent midterm under Trump.

“There’s clearly no shortage of conservative women, but we’re well aware we’ve had a problem with suburban women for a while compared to the Democrats,” Mealer said.

Winning for Women is not carrying the conservative cause on its own. Other groups include Maggie’s List, a federal PAC backing conservative women that launched in 2010, and the National Federation of Republican Women, which has been around since 1938 and launched a Texas chapter in 1955.

But Winning for Women says it remains the only group spending tens of millions to compete in Republican primaries. Still, that sum pales next to its Democratic counterparts such as EMILY’s List, which has raised more than $850 million since 1985 toward its mission of electing Democratic women who support access to abortion.

Mealer, who is Hispanic, said that gap underscores how rarely her party has been associated with candidates who look like her.

“When you look at most office holders, people of my demographic are typically only represented on the Democratic side,” she said.

If she makes it to Washington, Mealer’s gameplan is to lean into her district’s industrial backbone with the hopes it will keep her there. She is angling for a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee, with an eye toward its energy and water subcommittee, which could help her steer projects to her coastal district that includes the Houston Ship Channel and the many refineries and petrochemical facilities that line it.

“Taking care of the district to me is completely aligned with what people say is America First, because what’s more America First than high quality of living?” she said.

With Mealer and Steinmann favored to win, Winning for Women is already looking past November to the 2030 census and the reapportionment that will follow, when Texas is expected to gain three to four congressional seats. That means a new crop of open races — the next front in the fight to finally establish a lasting bench of Republican women in Texas.

“Jessica and Alex are the opportunity for that next wave,” Dellinger said. “How do we snowball that into two, ideally four? We will certainly still remain focused on getting Jessica and Alex elected, but we’re looking even beyond 2028 right now at what Texas opportunities look like.”

Source: Samanta Habashy, The Texas Tribune

Photo Credit: From left: Republican congressional nominees Alex Mealer and Jessica Steinmann. With Mealer and Steinmann both favored to win in their neighboring Houston-area congressional districts, Texas could see a record four Republican women in its congressional delegation in January. Campaign website/social media

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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