TLR Critical Review Sparks Visions of Battle
to Give Burrows Boot after Failed Paxton Shot
Capitol Inside
June 5, 2025
LUBBOCK - This college town in the heart of the nation's largest cotton-growing hub could be the scene of a battle that's the Appomattox in a nasty civil war in the Texas GOP if tort reform advocates try to oust state House Speaker Dustin Burrows at the polls as payback for bills they say he set up to die this year.
The Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC - a group of business and insurance interests that bankrolled the Republican takeover in the Lone Star State - triggered speculation on a potential bid to take the speaker out when it blamed him on Monday for the failure of several bills that they say he set up to die this year.
TLR appeared to be testing water for a possible challenge to Burrows on Monday when it called out the speaker and 15 GOP colleagues who it portrayed as accomplices in efforts to undermine its agenda with votes and other actions during the session this hear.
Houston home builder and activist Dick Weekley, who founded TLR and still leads the group today, appears to be the chief force behind a move to target Burrows in the GOP primary election in House District 83 next year. The group would get a second shot if he survived a primary challenge by trying to turn House Republicans against him when he runs for re-election in the leadership election at the start of the regular session in 2027.
But TLR could be blowing smoke to send a message that the price for the speaker's continued defiance could be steep. TLR targeted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for defeat in the GOP primary election in 2022. The group threw its massive muscle and money behind former state Supreme Court judge Eva Guzman - one of Republicans who were challenging Paxton in the first round of the voting that year.
In a state where most of the candidates it backed went on to win, TLR got its first real taste of losing when Guzman failed to make a runoff with a distant third-place finish in a field that featured a congressional member in Louie Gohmert close behind in fourth.
But TLR thought it had a realistic shot to beat the attorney general as a consequence of massive baggage he had as the target of an FBI investigation into bribery and other accusations that former assistants lodged in a move that prompted their firings. The whistleblowers' claims became the springboard for a House vote to impeach the AG at the end of the regular session in 2023.
Paxton's subsequent acquittal on corruption charges in the Senate elevated him to superstar status with Republicans from Austin to DC. He's cashing in on it now with a bid to unseat U.S. Senator John Cornyn in the primary election in March. Paxton has been leading the incumbent by double-digit margins in most of a limited number of polls on the Texas Senate race.
TLR could find Burrows even tougher to beat than Paxton on the speaker's home turf where he's been treated like a king for the past five months as the most famous politician from Lubbock since Preston Smith - a Democrat who served six years as the lieutenant governor before a promotion to governor in 1968.
While TLR had a growing scandal to use as a weapon against Paxton, its chief beef with Burrows is the killing of three bills that trial lawyers opposed and most voters didn't know or care about it. Taking on Burrows at home could be a suicide mission for a group that had never challenged incumbent Republicans before going after Paxton without success.
The tort reform group said the committee assignments that Burrows dished out after claiming the gavel in January proved to be a telling omen of its priority legislation's fate. TLR operative Lee Parsley contended that Burrows stacked the Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Committee in a fashion that made it possible a freshman Republican who advertises as a personal injury lawyer to seal the demise of two measures that it worked to pass with a disappearing act at a committee meeting.
The rookie lawmaker who TLR ripped in the post-mortem assessment - State Rep. Marc LaHood of San Antonio - fired back on Wednesday in an attempt to defend the speaker in the face of escalating criticism about the pivotal role he would play.
TLR said Burrows' picks for a conference committee on the group's top priority - Senate Bill 30 - sealed its demise with two Democrats and one Republican who'd opposed an amendment that gutted the measure on the floor.
more to come ...
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