What does it mean to be a Texas Republican in 2026? It depends who you ask

From The Texas Newsroom:

At the Texas Republican Party convention in Houston this summer, Gov. Greg Abbott gave thousands of party faithful a simple assignment.

“Our job is to keep Texas, Texas this election,” said Abbott.

The crowd roared, and the implication was clear: Keeping Texas what it is today meant keeping the state Republican.

Texas has been a Republican stronghold for decades and hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. That GOP dominance is likely part of the reason the Republican National Committee chose the state to host its first ever midterm convention, a national event designed to showcase Trump and rally the party ahead of November.

As Republicans from across the country prepare to gather in Dallas on Sept. 9 and 10, The Texas Newsroom asked a wide variety of party loyalists and political experts what exactly it means to be a Texas Republican in 2026.

“Honestly, it depends on which Republicans you ask,” said Shelby Williams, the immediate past chairman of the Collin County Republican Party. “I’d say there are different pockets of Republicans.”

Williams, who’s currently running for a seat on the Collin County Commissioners Court, counts himself as “a Reagan Republican.”

Others, he said, might identify more with former President George W. Bush or President Donald Trump. Still others may vote Republican without thinking much about which faction they belong to.

That ideological diversity is not necessarily new in Texas — or nationally. What has changed is which parts of the state’s Republican coalition have the most influence.

University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus put the transformation this way: “Being a John Tower Republican … is not the same as being a Ken Paxton Republican these days.”

“That change has been significant in a very short period of time,” he said.

A changing Republican coalition

If you’re wondering who John Tower is, let’s back up a bit.

Texas Republicans were once a small minority in a state dominated by Democrats. In 1961, Tower became the first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since Reconstruction. His politics emphasized a strong national defense, fiscal conservatism and opposition to an expanding federal government.

Republicans continued gaining ground in Texas over the following decades, including Bill Clements’ election as governor in 1978. Steadily, Texas Republicans built a coalition that eventually came to dominate state government.

Rottinghaus described the Texas GOP of 2000 as a mix of conservative business leaders, evangelical Christians, suburban voters and Republicans who were more focused on governing than ideological fights.

Today, he said, the party is more populist and nationalist, with cultural issues occupying a larger part of its agenda.

“In a short 20 years, we’ve gone from the Bush coalition to the Trump coalition,” Rottinghaus said.

But that doesn’t mean the older conservative priorities have disappeared.

Texas Republicans remain “aligned very much with the core conservative values,” said Sarah Gardner, a 31-year-old board member with the Dallas Young Republicans.

To her, that means personal liberty, property rights, gun rights and border security. Gardner also believes Texas Republicans tend to sit further to the right than Republicans elsewhere in the country.

Affordability has also become a major concern for younger Republicans, Gardner said, particularly the cost of buying a home and starting a family.

But alongside those issues has come a stronger emphasis on cultural and social politics.

UT-San Antonio political scientist Jon Taylor said that shift began taking shape in the 1980s, when social conservatives started gaining influence inside a Texas GOP that had long been dominated by business interests. Taylor said those business-oriented Republicans emphasized low taxes, trade and a strong national defense while paying less attention to cultural issues.

The shift accelerated with the rise of the Tea Party after Barack Obama’s election, Taylor said. By then, many of the ideas and groups that now shape the Texas GOP were already gaining influence.

“Populism combined with social conservatism becomes the rule of thumb for Texas Republicans,” Taylor told The Texas Newsroom. When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Taylor said he “was aligned with what they [the Republicans] were already doing.”

In other words, Trump did not single-handedly remake the Texas Republican Party. He arrived as many of the forces that would define his movement were already gaining strength in the state.

Who holds the power today

The person or exact issue that defines the Texas GOP isn’t constant — it can change depending on the year, said Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser.

“During the legislative cycle, it’s the legislators and the governor that are driving the ship,” Steinhauser said. “But … leading into election season and into primary season … it is more of the activist base.”

That distinction matters in Texas, where Republican primaries often determine who will ultimately hold office, given how many heavily Republican districts are on the state’s voting maps.

In recent years, Republican primary contests have increasingly favored the party’s conservative wing.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said Texas Republicans historically had both a conservative wing and a more pragmatic, center-right wing. The latter now has few elected officials left.

“The ability of sort of the moderate wing to drive policy is pretty much evaporated,” Jones said.

One of the most visible examples came this year, when four-term U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, long associated with the Republican establishment, lost the GOP nomination to Trump-backed Attorney General Ken Paxton.

In his victory speech, Paxton made clear who he saw as the party’s national leader.

“President Trump is the leader of our party, and his endorsement is the most powerful force in politics,” Paxton said.

Trump’s influence and Gov. Abbott’s role

Trump’s influence is difficult to separate from Republican identity in 2026, even among Republicans who argue that the party should be bigger than any one politician.

Gardner said Republicans have to distinguish between individual candidates and the party itself. If Republican identity becomes synonymous with supporting Trump, she said, that identity will inevitably have to change once he is no longer at the center of national politics.

At the same time, she acknowledged the political reality facing candidates now: Trump is “the face of the party,” and securing his endorsement often means aligning with his agenda.

But the influence of Trump does not necessarily mean he dictates Republican politics inside the Texas Capitol.

Jones said the most recognizable Republican figures in Texas today include Abbott and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Paxton also occupying prominent positions.

But when it comes to state politics, Jones puts Abbott at the center.

“Greg Abbott is still in the driver’s seat of the Texas Republican Party,” Jones said. “Now, he has to share … with different people who are riding shotgun and shouting directions from the back seat. But … he is the main driver of the Republican Party today.”

Steinhauser offered a similar assessment. He described Abbott as positioned between different factions of the GOP, deeply conservative and in touch with the grassroots, but also capable of maintaining a broader coalition.

How that power shows up in policy

Who holds power inside the party also helps determine how Republicans use the power of state government.

James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin, said social conservatives have gained more power over which issues Republican lawmakers prioritize.

That has shown up in legislation targeting transgender rights, restricting diversity, equity and inclusion programs in education and reshaping how public schools and universities approach subjects involving religion, discrimination and race.

“All of those things are examples of … a culturally conservative agenda that has had great success in the Legislature,” Henson said.

Henson said that does not mean business interests have disappeared from Republican governance. Texas lawmakers remain attentive to economic development, the oil and gas industry and other traditional business priorities. But social conservatives have succeeded in putting more of their priorities on the agenda and turning them into law.

Rottinghaus said outsiders often make the mistake of imagining one unified Republican Party.

“There’s no one Republican party,” he said. “There are multiple Republican parties.”

Those factions coexist under the same GOP umbrella, he said, sometimes working together and sometimes competing against each other.

Shelby Williams sees the same tension from inside the party.

He said political labels once conveyed more about a person’s policy positions. Today, he believes, they increasingly communicate something else: rhetoric and personal allegiance.

“It used to be that when we used terms such as Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, right, left, we used to talk about policy,” Williams said. “These days … they’re often referring not to policy, but to rhetoric and personal allegiances.”

Still, Williams believes there is a value connecting the various Republican factions: liberty.

“That’s the central thing that underpins all Republicans — whatever kind of Republican they think they are, no matter our identity crisis — the concept of liberty,” he said.

So, a Texas Republican in 2026 might be a business conservative, an evangelical, a populist, a Reagan Republican or a Trump loyalist, and could fit several of those descriptions at once.

The more consequential question may be which of those Republicans currently has enough influence to define what the party does next.

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