Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows made a campaign stop in San Antonio on Thursday, rallying support for three local Republicans as the party braces for a tougher-than-expected fight to keep its grip on the chamber. The Lubbock Republican appeared at The Angry Elephant to stump for state Reps. Marc LaHood and Mark Dorazio, along with Republican House candidate Jorge Borrego, with just days to go before the Nov. 3 election.
Burrows rolled through town on Thursday to campaign for the local Republicans, according to the San Antonio Report. His various political action committees have poured significant money into Bexar County to back LaHood, Dorazio and Borrego, the outlet reports. Supporters who turned out picked up campaign signs for all three candidates. LaHood, Dorazio and Borrego signed their names on Burrows’ tour bus on Wednesday; it displayed the words “One Party, One Mission” alongside the names of the Texas House Republican Conference.
LaHood himself was absent from the event, though his wife, Erica LaHood, was on hand and praised Burrows for his help in the race against Democratic challenger Zack Dunn, per the San Antonio Report.
A Majority in Question, By Two Different Counts
Just how big a cushion Republicans currently hold depends on which count you use. The San Antonio Report reports Republicans currently hold an overwhelming 88-62 seat majority in the 150-member Texas House. Either way, the GOP has controlled the chamber since 2003 and has won at least 83 seats in every election since 2010, according to KSAT.
National Democrats are targeting 12 Texas House races this cycle, per KSAT’s reporting, though even sweeping all 12 would not be enough to flip the chamber — Democrats would need 14 seats to retake control. State Rep. Christina Morales told the station Democrats conservatively expect to pick up “anywhere from five to eight” seats, a far cry from the dozen seats Democrats flipped in 2018, their last big gain in the chamber.
Money Flows Into Supposedly Safe Seats
The scale of spending in races Republicans once considered safe tells its own story. Burrows has used a bus tour to campaign for Republican candidates in more than two dozen House districts and help turn out voters.
Nowhere has that spending been more visible than in LaHood’s District 121 race, a seat that has not elected a Democrat since 1981. Republicans have spent more than $1 million protecting the first-term lawmaker, according to the San Antonio Report, a figure Texas Public Radio also confirms in its own reporting on last-minute spending surges. LaHood pulled in a staggering $1.1 million between Sept. 25 and Oct. 24, per TPR, while Dunn, a 33-year-old prosecutor, brought in close to $400,000 in the same span, including $225,000 from the Blueprint Texas PAC.
Dorazio’s District 122 race has drawn its own flood of cash. Republicans spent more than half a million dollars on his behalf during the Sept. 25 to Oct. 24 campaign finance period, the San Antonio Report notes, while Democrat Shelly Nickels reported spending just $5,600 over that same stretch. The San Antonio Report listed District 122 among the state’s most flippable House seats this year, even though Dorazio won reelection after winning a primary against moderate Republican Lyle Larson four years earlier.
A Shifting Bexar County Battleground
Bexar County’s political drift helps explain why even long-held Republican turf feels shaky. The deep-blue county swung nine points toward Donald Trump between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, the San Antonio Report notes, even as Trump carried the state overall by 14 points in 2024. Republicans carried all three San Antonio-area GOP seats that year, but Bexar County Republican Vice Chair Kyle Sinclair told the outlet the county remains difficult territory for Republicans whose districts reach into it.
Borrego’s District 118 race, where he is seeking to replace outgoing Rep. John Lujan against Democrat Kristian Carranza, is expected to be among the most competitive Texas House contests again this November, the San Antonio Report reported separately. The current race pits Borrego against Carranza for the seat being vacated by Lujan. Internal polling and early-voting analysis cited by the San Antonio Report indicate close contests in some Bexar County districts.
Burrows Touts Voucher Law, Education Spending
On policy, Burrows used the stop to tout the school voucher program that every Republican in the chamber helped push through during the previous legislative session, the San Antonio Report reports, a $1 billion initiative to help fund families’ private-school tuition. Lawmakers also allocated about $7.7 billion to public schools during that same session, according to the outlet. Borrego helped craft the voucher program while working at an Austin-based think tank before entering the race, the San Antonio Report notes, and Burrows praised both LaHood and Dorazio for adding accountability measures to education spending.
Dorazio, for his part, credited Burrows with helping Republicans win reelection, raise funds and turn out voters, telling the outlet that Burrows helped pass more conservative legislation than under prior House speakers. Burrows, who is the chamber’s third speaker in four sessions and was elected with help from local Democrats who hoped he would support public education, said student test scores are rising statewide and vowed the Legislature would return next session to eliminate school property taxes.
The Texas House speaker is elected by the full chamber, meaning any shift in the partisan makeup from this election could shape whether lawmakers pursue more centrist policies next session. With early voting underway and the Nov. 3 election fast approaching, Bexar County’s results will offer an early signal of just how far that shift might go.
