House GOP members critical of House Speaker Dade Phelan have thrown their support behind a challenger. Mansfield Republican Rep. David Cook was selected by 48 representatives and nominees for House districts as their preferred candidate for the Speaker of the House.
Cook beat out several GOP lawmakers vying for the speakership. Phelan has faced criticism from some conservative members of his party for continuing the longstanding tradition of assigning Democrats to lead some House committees.
Cook is “relatively new in the Legislature, only a couple of sessions in,” said James Barragán, politics reporter for the Texas Tribune. “He was the consensus pick from this meeting of Republican lawmakers who are sort of the anti-Phelan faction. There were four people running, and it looked like David Cook was the winner.”
It remains to be seen if Cook’s bid will be a threat to Phelan, who has been speaker since 2021.
“It’s a little unclear because they have not, as is usual with speaker’s races, put the names out of the people who support him,” Barragán said. “These are called pledges. So it’s a little shaky as to how much support he actually has and what this means for Phelan in the future.”
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