Dade Phelan Survived Thanks To Democrat Voters, Will Republicans Let Him Do It Again?

On Super Tuesday, grassroots activists across Texas were celebrating major victories. Many conservative candidates won their elections against establishment incumbents outright, and even more were headed to runoffs. One of those runoff elections is in Southeast Texas, where conservative Republican David Covey seeks to unseat the incumbent Speaker of the Texas House, State Rep. Dade Phelan (R).

A six-term incumbent who won the speaker’s gavel with the help of Democrats, Phelan picked fights with conservatives by killing key conservative reforms, appointing Democrats to chair committees, and even impeaching Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX).

It’s for that final reason President Donald Trump endorsed Covey in his campaign and even went on the radio to make the case to voters. In an interview with Chris Salcedo on the Monday before the primary election, Trump said voters “have to get rid” of Phelan and other “pro-Democrat Republicans.”

“You have an attorney general who is very good, and he went out and impeached him,” said Trump. “And as a Republican I said, ‘don’t you have some Democrats you could worry about?’ Because you have a great attorney general, one of the best in the country. And they went all out to impeach him and really hurt him. And that was led by Phelan.” While Trump said he had not seen polling on the race, he added, “Hopefully, the people are going to be smart and vote him out.”

Over 57 percent of voters were “smart” by Trump’s standards and voted against Phelan in the primary—a point Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) used to urge him to drop out of the race. “57% of the District already voted against him. Dade should recognize the obvious and do the right thing by announcing he is terminating his campaign and stopping what is going to be an embarrassing defeat,” said Patrick. However, a third conservative candidate in the race and a wave of Democrat voters prevented Covey from winning the Republican primary election outright.

Out of the more than 34,000 voters who cast a ballot in the 2024 Republican primary election, 2,974 are Democrat voters with a history of voting in Democrat primaries, according to secretary of state voter data. It’s hard to conceive that those nearly 3,000 individuals voted for someone boldly and aggressively endorsed by President Donald Trump (David Covey) or another conservative candidate in the race (Alicia Davis).

They likely all voted for Phelan, an individual who got his start in Texas politics by working for Democrat lawmakers and who empowers incumbent Democrat lawmakers in the Texas House. By voting for Phelan, Democrats provided him the margin necessary to avoid losing outright on election night. Indeed, if you remove the Democrat voters from the mix altogether, Covey wins with more than 50 percent of the vote and avoids a runoff election altogether.

Runoff elections typically have lower turnout, a factor that usually favors conservative candidates. However, in House District 21, low turnout would only empower the Democratic primary voters who would come back out to vote for Phelan. If grassroots Republicans want to send a message to the Austin Swamp that empowering Democrats is not a Republican value, they’ll need to turn out in large enough numbers to stop Democrats from deciding the election again. Election Day is May 28.

Cary Cheshire is a conservative activist and commentator. He resides in Fort Worth, Texas, where he serves as the president and treasurer of Tarrant County Patriots PAC.