At least 10 Texas incumbents will not be returning to Congress next term, a high-water mark for turnover in the delegation.
At least a quarter of Texas’ congressional delegation is headed for the exits next year, a massive departure that will weaken the state’s clout in the U.S. House and force its members to rebuild Texas’ oft-cited prestige on Capitol Hill.
Nine members of Congress from Texas — six Republicans, three Democrats — have announced they will depart at the end of this term. In addition, four incumbents are facing serious primary challengers. The new representative from Texas’ 18th Congressional District, who will be elected in a Jan. 30 runoff, will face either a primary with U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, or abort their short-lived congressional career, guaranteeing at least one more departure. And three incumbents in South Texas are facing competitive general election challenges.
Between 10 and 17 Texas members could end up leaving next year, a massive loss of the institutional knowledge, committee seniority and relationships that are the coin of the realm in Congress.
The rush for the exits in 2026 will at least tie the delegation’s high-water mark for departures in the past 50 years — 10 members retired or lost reelection in 2018 — if not surpass it. And the turnover will issue a blow to Texas’ sway in the lower chamber, which in many ways has yet to recover from the exodus of high-profile Republicans during Trump’s first term.
“We’re slim right now, [from] what we used to be,” said U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, R-Willow Park, who, having served for 13 years, is one of the longest-tenured Texans in the House. “But that’s ‘cause we’ve had a lot of retirements. That happens. Now you’ve got to rebuild.”
Texas’ political power in the House owes to its quantity of members. The state sends 38 representatives to Congress, more than any state but California, and contributes the greatest number of members — 25 — to the Republican conference. That number is set to grow come 2026, as Texas Republicans look to flip five seats they redrew this summer.
But their power has waned in recent years, as long-tenured members in both parties have left, and the Republican center of gravity has shifted from the Lone Star State to Florida, President Donald Trump’s adopted home.
At the start of Trump’s first term, seven Texans chaired House committees, giving the state influence over tax policy, the military, border security and banks. It was a familiar position for the state, which has long sent towering figures to Congress who have shaped national policymaking, from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to former House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Rayburn’s mentee, Lyndon Johnson.
Now, though, Texas is down to control of just three House committee gavels: Williams, who chairs the Small Business Committee; Woodville Rep. Brian Babin, who leads the Science, Space and Technology Committee; and Lubbock Rep. Jodey Arrington, who holds the powerful Budget gavel. Arrington is retiring at the end of the term as well, further dwindling Texas’ leadership prospects.
Still, if Republicans are able to hold onto all their existing seats in Texas and flip the five they’ve redrawn, they would enter the 120th Congress with 30 GOP members, easily dwarfing the 20 sent by the next-closest state — Florida.
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, an Austin Republican who is among the retiring Texans, contended that the state’s sheer numbers portend a recovery.
“I think hopefully we’ll see a return,” said McCaul, who has served in the House since 2005 and chaired some of the body’s most prominent committees. “I think with the five new seats — regardless of what you think about redistricting — that’s going to add a lot more muscle.”
The state does boast chairmanships of two of the House’s largest ideological caucuses. Reps. August Pfluger, R-San Angelo, and Greg Casar, D-Austin, chair the Republican Study Committee and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, respectively, and are key agenda-setters in their parties.
And several Republican members of the delegation expressed optimism that the added members will give Texas a louder voice in the Republican conference.
“Texas is going to be just fine,” Babin said. “We’re going to rebuild its clout, and we’re going to have more seats than we had before. We’ve got three chairmanships right now. I’m looking forward to having more.”
But the ability to use that power requires a combination of seniority and unity within the delegation. The new members — in both parties — will be starting from scratch, at the bottom of committee rosters and unlikely to have much say on major legislation or on leadership’s thinking.
“When you have people that leave, you have to start again. It’s like the minor leagues in baseball,” said Williams, who played in the minors himself for the Atlanta Braves’ system.
Some senior members of the delegation worried that narrow majorities and an increasingly polarized institution are sending well-meaning members packing, and that the frequent delegation shuffling makes it hard to build influence.
Texas Republicans’ weekly lunch — ideally a way for the delegation to set priorities internally so they can then use their strength of numbers to set the agenda for the Republican conference — has become more “unwieldy” than when it started, McCaul said, because there are so many more people.
U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Waco, who was first elected to Congress in 1996, said he has spoken to numerous candidates running for the House and advised them to be team players if they get elected. Texas’ ability to rebuild its clout, he said, hinges on new delegation members being willing to cooperate.
“I’ve said to them, for us to be a delegation [that is] going to be more powerful, we have to work together,” Sessions said. “We have to create a group of people that are around a nucleus, where we can then go and say, we’re going to bring 30 votes to the table. … And it has increasingly been more difficult to do that.”
The good old days
In modern times, the peaks of Texas Republicans’ congressional influence came first in the Bush era and then again in Trump’s first term.
In the early 2000s, with a Texan in the White House, the state boasted power across the federal government. DeLay was House majority leader, shaping the GOP congressional agenda and successfully pushing the Texas Legislature to redraw its congressional map mid-decade, netting Republicans five new seats in the 2004 election.
In Trump’s first term, when Republicans again had unified control of Washington, the Texas delegation’s numerical strength and seniority — including among some members of the class of 2004 — came to bear. Texas Republicans sat atop seven of the House’s committees and shaped landmark legislation, from The Woodlands Rep. Kevin Brady leading the tax-writing Ways and Means panel to Midland Rep. Mike Conaway chairing the Agriculture Committee to Clarendon Rep. Mac Thornberry setting military policy with the Armed Services gavel.
And even in committees they did not chair, like the influential Appropriations panel, the delegation still amassed considerable sway. Three of the 12 appropriations “cardinals” — those who craft spending bills for different government agencies and have enormous power to direct federal funds — were from Texas.
But the high of 2017 has long since worn off. Ten incumbents left after the following year’s midterm election, through a mix of resignations, election losses and retirements. Of the seven committee chairs and three cardinals from Texas that year, only three are still in Congress — and one, McCaul, is leaving. A total of 38 Texans have left or announced their impending departure from the House since the onset of the Trump era, more than half of them due to retirements.
With Arrington leaving his perch atop the Budget Committee, there will be few opportunities next Congress for Texans to take leadership roles. Seniority factors heavily into which members hold gavels, and history and polling data suggest Democrats are in a strong position to take back the lower chamber.
U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, a seven-term member who is retiring after being drawn out of his district, said it benefits Texans of both parties to have powerful members who can secure community project funding, or earmarks, for the state. He is worried that after he leaves, the city of Fort Worth will lack congressional champions to bring home money, due to lack of seniority, the opposition of some Republicans to earmarks and the city being carved between multiple districts.
Since the retirement of former Rep. Kay Granger, a Fort Worth Republican who rose to be Appropriations chair, Veasey has felt like he’s had to advocate for Fort Worth on his own.
“Kay and I worked very well together,” Veasey said. “We got a lot of money for some big projects in Fort Worth when Kay was on Approps, before she retired. It makes a big difference.”
The unity problem
Texas’ weakened political power, some delegation members say, goes beyond a lack of seniority. Texas Republicans have not been immune to the divisions, ideologically and stylistically, that have so often stymied the House GOP in recent years.
As the largest Republican delegation, Texas has members from all five major ideological caucuses on the right, from the centrist Problem Solvers Caucus to the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Without agreement among the delegation, it can be difficult to come up with unified requests to leadership or wield their power as a bloc.
And while many lament that their colleagues are leaving Congress, the remaining Texans can understand why some would want to leave.
Members offered different explanations for why so many colleagues are calling it quits. Sessions noted that members have not had a pay raise since 2009, and that Washington is an expensive city. McCaul said it’s frustrating to pour so much effort into bills that never become law.
“In spite of what it may seem, this really is a demanding job,” U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Victoria, said.
Many also blamed a political culture that has become increasingly toxic.
“I don’t want to speak for [the retirees],” Babin said. “I do know that it’s been very trying. We’ve been a very, very thin majority. It’s not always a whole lot of fun when you’ve got people out here sniping at you.”
The increased unproductiveness from Congress, heightened emphasis on attention over legislation and the breakdown of bipartisanship don’t help the issue, members said. Most of the Texans who had risen to chairmanships in the late 2010s had spent decades building relationships in the chamber and had reputations as serious legislators.
Source: Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune
Photo Credit: The U.S. Capitol is seen through a food truck window on April 14, 2022, in Washington. Shuran Huang for The Texas Tribune
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