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The Blast - June 30, 2025 [1]

['The Texas Tribune']

Date: 2025-07

COACHING COUNTY PARTIES ON HOW TO CENSURE RINO “THUGS”

As the Texas GOP looks to censure alleged RINOs and potentially ban them from the primary ballot, GOP leaders are coaching county parties on how to navigate the party’s revamped and legally controversial censure process.

The State Republican Executive Committee’s resolutions panel met for an hour with Taylor County GOP leaders on Friday evening, workshopping how to batten down the county party’s censure resolution against state Rep. Stan Lambert. The Blast joined the Zoom room to get a sense of how Texas GOP officials are approaching the censure process.

County parties have so far struggled to follow the Texas GOP’s strict guidelines for censures under the party’s new Rule 44. Local party officials must identify at least three times the elected official in question violated the party’s legislative priorities in their current term, and they must give the official enough notice to come and plead their case.

The SREC’s Resolutions Committee recently rejected some of the censures passed by county parties, telling those parties to redo the censures to make sure they drafted the censures by the book.

The rejections don’t mean the resolutions are dead on arrival. In 2023 and 2024, party officials went back to the drawing board multiple times for censures that ultimately passed against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, then-Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan and then-state Rep. Andrew Murr, the lead impeachment manager against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“I wanted to get you on in Taylor County so we could at least take a look at your resolution, and if there are issues that come up, we can kind of give you some feedback to help you with that going forward,” SREC Resolutions Committee Chair Andy Eller kicked off the Taylor GOP Zoom call.

The SREC wants the censures to be air-tight. Once the GOP blocks censured incumbents from the primary ballot under the 2024 rewrite of Rule 44, those members are all but certain to sue.

The SREC has a task force that’s combing through the legislative session to identify censurable acts for county parties to include in their resolutions. Eller suggested the Taylor County GOP and other county parties wait to censure members until the task force presents its report at the Aug. 9 SREC meeting.

That task force met for around 10 hours last week, according to Eller.

The task force has already identified some votes it’s considering as censurable acts, like voting to stifle debate on the House rules, backing Republican Rep. Matt Shaheen’s amendment to the foreign-owned land bill (Senate Bill 17) and supporting Democratic Rep. John Bucy’s bill about requesting mail ballots (House Bill 2442).

County parties have until Sept. 6 to send their censure resolutions to the Resolutions Committee. At least 39 of the 64 SREC members will need to approve a censure to move forward with a Rule 44 punishment, such as removing the censured official from the primary ballot.

One hiccup for the censure resolutions has been that the pro-Burrows walkout from the December Texas House Republican Caucus meeting took place before the term technically began on Jan. 14.

“If that is not censurable, it shows a major flaw in our rules that we need to fix at the convention, because this is the most damaging thing that those thugs did to our party right out of the gate,” SREC member Paul Hale said.

County parties have also struggled to meet the notification requirements under Rule 44. They must notify lawmakers at least seven days before adopting a censure resolution against them and give them a chance to speak at the meeting.

For example, Taylor County GOP Chair Ryan Goodwin served Lambert via certified mail. He sent the letter to Lambert’s home on May 30, but Lambert didn’t sign for it till June 3. That was only six days before the party executive committee voted to censure Lambert on June 9. Some party officials think incumbents may be intentionally evading mail carriers so they don’t receive notice on time.

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[1] Url: https://thetexastribune.beehiiv.com/p/the-blast-june-30-2025-92b1781c44158196

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