I have one thing to say to these Republicans.
Rep. Glenn Rogers
State Rep. Glenn Rogers is mad as hell, and he’s not being shy about it.
“Kiss my ass!” he recently told a statewide Republican official who had endorsed his primary opponent.
“Beware of this belligerent run on power,” he warned his followers on social media.
The Graford Republican is quoting Winston Churchill, calling out “grandiose lies” by his well-funded primary opponent, Mike Olcott, and challenging Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller to a duel in a text message as he seeks to hang onto his House seat.
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He’s among a group of Republicans facing heat from big names in their party in a primary that has pitted former allies against each other, prompted big spending and left a pile of hurt feelings in its wake. Incumbents like Rogers have become targets over two key votes last year: on whether to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton and whether to allow school vouchers. Many feel those attacks ignore conservative records built up over years.
Rogers is facing conservative backlash on both. Since he was first elected in 2020, he has voted against the creation of a private school voucher program, a priority issue for GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The proposal would have diverted state funds to private or church schools for parents who want to exit the public school system and want help paying for part of tuition. The resistance of 21 Republicans, most of them rural, led to the repeated failure of the proposal last year.
Advocates have said the public schools in Rogers’ House District 60, a mostly rural area west of Fort Worth covering Palo PInto, Stephens and Parker counties, would lose more than $3 million if vouchers were to pass.
And like the majority of his fellow House Republicans, Rogers supported the impeachment of Paxton on charges of bribery and unfitness for office. In the months since he was acquitted by the Senate, Paxton has campaigned hard against the GOP lawmakers who accused him of corruption.
Now Rogers has found himself in the crosshairs of just about any Republican with any official power in Texas — except for House Speaker Dade Phelan, who is facing his own well-funded GOP primary opponent in Beaumont. In addition to Abbott, Paxton and Miller, Olcott has the support of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi. On Tuesday, he received the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
That has been frustrating for Rogers, who called the governor’s recent decision to endorse his pro-voucher opponent “a single-issue endorsement” in an interview with a local CBS station. The endorsement ignored his efforts to fight for his district and ignored his voting record, he said.
“It doesn’t seem to matter about the integrity of the candidate, what their legislative productivity is,” he said. “It’s simply, ‘Do you support vouchers and I’ll endorse you.’ I think that’s unprecedented. I’ve been a very strong supporter of his, and we differ on this one issue, and he’s chosen to endorse my opponent.”
Other Abbott and Paxton targets are similarly upset.
Rep. Ernest Bailes, R-Shepherd, lamented the governor’s “vindictive nature” against Republicans he said were simply trying to represent their constituents’ best interests.“Governor Abbott is expending an astronomical amount of resources this campaign cycle, in order to unseat members who serve their districts, instead of his will,” Bailes wrote in a Facebook post Monday. “He made one trip to my district last week and [is] coming back again later this month, in order to do his absolute best to make sure that our next representative is someone who has sworn fielty to his agenda, rather than that of representing this district.”
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In some cases, Abbott’s and Paxton’s focus on single issues has pitted them against each other in primaries.
Rep. Travis Clardy, R-Nacogdoches, opposed vouchers, but also opposed impeachment, earning him the backing of Paxton. That forced Paxton to defend himself from backlash from many conservative voucher supporters on X.
“I’m not ashamed at all. Travis Clardy took a lot of bullets to stand up for me,” Paxton wrote. “However, you feel about him, he stood with me and the voters of Texas, and I appreciate that.”
Meanwhile, Clardy had harsh words for Abbott, who endorsed him in past races, but has now come out strongly against him for his anti-voucher vote.
“Threatening and bullying is not effective leadership,” Clardy told the Texas Monthly last year. “I think you can go over and review the entire lexicon of Dale Carnegie and Zig Ziglar and not find bullying and threatening as a desired tactic. But here we are. And I don’t get it.”
To Reps. Rogers and Bailes and Clardy and Stan Lambert and anyone else who opposed vouchers and/or supported impeachment and now are being attacked and vilified by Abbott and Paxton and their billionaire theocrat enablers, there’s only one thing you can do whether you survive this primary or not. You must do everything in your power to oppose Abbott and Paxton and whoever else is on that same train with them in 2026. Easy enough to do in the next primary, but you have to do it in the general as well, because we know they’ll survive their primaries. Do that however you want – voting third party, writing someone in, and skipping those races are all options if supporting the Democrat is a bridge too far – just be loud and proud about it and tell everyone who supported you to do the same. These guys are never going to stop coming after you as long as they’re in power. The one way to fix it is to get them out of power.
Up to you. Stand up for yourself, or take all this abuse and reward the abusers by trotting back to them and forgetting it ever happened. Which one will make it easier for you to look in the mirror going forward?
One more thing:
Rogers also has the endorsement of the Associated Republicans of Texas, a 50-year-old political group that has endorsed most of the targeted Republicans in the House primaries and had upwards of $3 million cash on hand last month.
Jamie McWright, president of the organization, said the group’s focus is to elect pro-business Republicans that represent their districts and can win in a general election against a Democrat.
“There is no litmus test, there is no scorecard, there is no conservative ranking for us,” McWright said. “We really do look for business-minded conservatives who want to come to Austin and get things done. We believe in a big-tent Republican party, and winning where we can with Republicans.”
And while a healthy primary that forces discussion on the issues is nothing new in Texas politics, McWright said, it’s “extremely disheartening” that the especially divisive tenor of this cycle threatens to confuse and deter the participation of “thoughtful Republicans” in the entire process.
“I think you’ve got a lot of really good Republican voters who may end up staying home because they’re so confused,” she said. “And I think anytime we discourage people from voting, we’re hurting our own democracy. And that’s just a real shame.”
The same advice applies to groups like the Associated Republicans of Texas, except I would insist that they do support the Democratic opponents of Abbott and Paxton in 2026. I know, Democrats can’t win statewide in Texas, blah blah blah. You know what might help? Having a couple hundred thousand Republicans vote Democratic in those races. I mean, assuming that groups like ART have that kind of actual clout. If they’re nothing but a clearinghouse for a few big-money donors, then yeah, just whine impotently and keep on keeping on. But if you do have a decent number of likeminded supporters, and you want to effect change, well, that’s how you do like. Like I said, up to you and the person looking back at you in that mirror.
“It doesn’t seem to matter about the integrity of the candidate, what their legislative productivity is,” he said. “It’s simply, ‘Do you support vouchers and I’ll endorse you.’ I think that’s unprecedented. I’ve been a very strong supporter of his, and we differ on this one issue, and he’s chosen to endorse my opponent.”
So you’ve ignored the moral rot spreading through your party until it came for you.
Cry me a river, Glenn Rogers and the rest of your ilk – this is what your Party has become.
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