Rural Texas legislators who opposed governor's push for school vouchers fall to big-spending campaign against them

Texas House roll call board (Texas Tribune/Eddie Gasper)

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his Republican allies succeeded in purging at least seven members from the state House in Tuesday's primary elections. Their main targets were rural Republicans who helped defeat Abbott's legislation that would have provided taxpayer support for private education. Now the House will "become more receptive to school vouchers," report Zach Despart and Renzo Downey of the Texas Tribune. But "It was not clear on Tuesday if that effort had paid off," writes David Goodman, Texas bureau chief of The New York Times. Some race are in runoffs.

Abbott's campaign was funded by huge contributions from right-wing interests inside Texas and out of it. Former president Donald Trump and Lt. Gov, Dan Patrick "endorsed challengers in dozens of races citing the incumbents’ disloyalty to the party," the Tribune reports.

The anti-voucher incumbents were targets of heavy advertising that put them in "Wanted" posters and called them "liberals" but rarely if ever mentioned the school issue. One of them, Rep. Glenn Rogers, said in a column in The Community News of Aledo that "Abbott has defiled the Office of Governor by creating and repeating blatant lies about me and my House colleagues, those who took a stand for our public schools. I stood by the governor on all his legislative priorities but just one, school vouchers. For just one disagreement, and for a $6 million check from Jeff Yass, a Pennsylvanian TikTok investor, and voucher vendor, Abbott went scorched earth against rural Texas and the representatives who did their jobs -- representing their districts."

Before the election, The Community News published an interview with Rogers, and said it had twice given opponent Michael Olcott the same opportunity but received no response. The weekly didn't endorse in the race, but in a Feb. 21 column, Editor-Publisher Randy Keck said anti-Rogers mailers lied about his voting record. "You may be reading this thinking I am advocating to vote for Rogers, but I’m not," he wrote. "You should vote based on who you think would best represent you in the Texas House of Representatives. But you should not vote based on the character assassination of a good man."