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Greg Abbott Easy Choice for Sessions MVP
as Stars from Map Fight Head All-Star Cast
Capitol Inside
September 17, 2025
The most valuable player at the Texas Capitol this year didn't cast a vote on a single piece of legislation in either chamber before lawmakers approved it while in session for 187 days from January to September. But Governor Greg Abbott was the 89th Texas Legislature's MVP in 2025 as a result of starring roles he played in historic fights on school vouchers, congressional redistricting and a hemp industry that he saved single-handedly that almost all of the GOP lawmakers in Austin voted to enact.
Capitol Inside's Best of the Texas Legislature series features Abbott as the most valuable performer overall and undisputed king of a big 3 that includes Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows at a statehouse where the Senate president had been running the show for years.
The installment for 2025 also includes an all-star squad for legislators with 10 members on the first team, 10 more on second team and a handful of representatives in a special category for freshmen. The Texas lawmakers who are all stars all had significant impact in the face of challenge - the two prerequisites for selections as first-team all stars this year. The honors are based on the work of legislators during the regular session, two special gatherings during the summer and the interim leading up to 2025.
The first-team features the House members who led warring parties in the trenches in a war that erupted in July over a new U.S. House map that President Donald Trump order the Republicans here to craft to give the GOP five additional seats from Texas.
State Rep. Todd Hunter - a Corpus Christi Republican who chairs the powerful Calendars Committee - was arguably the most valuable legislator in the Capitol City this year as the sponsor of the redistricting bill and other important measures including a regulatory plan for delivery network services and a film incentives bill that was too hot for other GOP members to handle.
Democratic State Rep. Gene Wu of Houston joins Hunter as a first-team all-star as a product of the part he had as the minority party caucus leader who was instrumental in the Democrats' walkout that delayed a vote on the GOP congressional map and prompted GOP leaders to end a first special session in failure before passing it during a second summer session.
Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton made Wu the central target for retribution with separate attempts to have the Texas Supreme Court strip him of the seat in the House that he represents in the state's largest city. But the Texas House Democrats bought critical time for California Democrats to come up with a congressional map of their own to counter the Republican effort here. The California redistricting plan is contingent on voter approval in November but expected to pass.
Hunter is one of six Republicans who are first-team all stars in a group that includes State Senator Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham and State Reps. Cody Harris of Palestine, Ken King of Canadian and Drew Darby of San Angelo and Jeff Leach of Allen. The Democrats on the first team include State Reps. Nicole Collier of Fort Worth and Ann Johnson of Houston along with State Senator Judith Zaffirini of Laredo and Wu the House caucus chairman.
Eight House members landed first-team recognition compared to two senators among the 10 best performers in session this year. That's a function of the fact that there's no longer any challenge in passing major legislation that Patrick has designated as a priority. Top Patrick allies who sponsored milestone measures from education savings accounts to a record two-year state spending plan to landmark water legislation ended up on second team as a consequence of the lack of adversity they had to overcome with those bills.
Abbott deserves the lion share of credit for a vouchers proposal that the Republicans tried for 20 years to pass without success until he targeted Republicans who'd been allies and elected GOP challengers who'd be yes votes for the governor in their place. The governor turned lions who'd survived the primary payback blitz into sheep with the school choice plan that those who'd survived Abbott's wrath at the ballot box were too afraid not to support on the floor in 2025.
But Abbott's attempt to regulate the hemp industry without the blessings of legislators is his boldest move in nearly 11 years on the job as the state's top leader. Patrick championed an outright prohibition on cannabis that he ramrodded through the Senate and the House as well in the regular session with the threat of payback for Republicans who failed to support the ban. Patrick argued that it would be impossible to regulate the THC industry with laws that could not be enforced. A fragile deal that Abbott and Burrows thought they had with Patrick on the final night of the second special session fell apart as the victim of stubbornness in a stalemate between the state's two most powerful officials. With an executive order for state agencies to devise a regulatory system for the hemp industry, Abbott appeared to tentatively rule out an immediate special session for the sake of having legislators ratify it.
While that could change, the governor may decide to quit while he's ahead after seizing the opportunity to reclaim control at the statehouse with the maneuvering on hemp.
Harris landed a first-team spot on the 2025 all-star team as the House sponsor of a landmark water plan for a state that faced the prospect of shortages in the future without it. The water legislation's east wing author - GOP State Senator Charles Perry of Lubbock - missed out on a first-team selection as a result of a disastrous experience as the THC ban sponsor. Perry opened the gates to the cannabis retail explosion here inadvertently as the author of a bill that legalized hemp in 2019. While the Patrick-Perry prohibition was dark ages epitomized, the West Texas solon's work on water and youth camp safety after the killer flood in the Hill Country on July 4 made him worthy of a second team spot.
Kolkhorst was the only Senate Republican selected to the first team - thanks in part to the lead role she played on a measure that restricted land sales in Texas to individuals and interests from countries that the federal government has designated as national security threats. But Kolkhorst's food labeling bill proved to be one of the Legislature's biggest surprises in 2025 and already is having substantial impact in Texas and around the nation as well.
Darby took the lead on youth camp safety in the immediate aftermath of the holiday flooding that killed 27 young girls who were spending parts of their summers at Camp Mystic. King was a major player on disaster preparedness - and he made his most significant contribution in regular session as the sponsor of legislation inspired by wildfires in the Texas Panhandle where he's based. King was a filter that kept a lot of bad bills off the floor in his role as the State Affairs Committee chairman. Darby had a major part in a slew of bills dealing with the oil and gas industry as the Energy Resources Committee chairman.
King's only really bad moment came with the House Republicans' overnight abandonment of regulatory plan that he'd devised for the hemp industry with the leadership team's support. All but two of the Republicans in the lower chamber voted for the Patrick ban instead in a move that backfired big time when Abbott vetoed the bill. Darby and King both looked weak during the spring when they surrendered to Abbott on ESAs instead of holding their ground as staunch opponents of vouchers up to then. But their performances on other issues were stellar enough to keep them in the conversation for the all-star team.
Leach was a first-team pick largely as a result of an effort that he and Democratic State Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso spearheaded during the interim in a bid to keep the state from executing a convicted killer who they and others believed to be innocent. Leach got in trouble with Attorney General Ken Paxton for texting a Court of Criminal Appeals jurist with a pitch for the death row client. The CCA blew the whistle on the lawmaker's ex parte communication - but Leach said he didn't realize that pending matters in the case had been before the court at the time - and he admitted that he'd erred.
Leach carried a parents bill of rights across the finish line on the regular session's final weekend with DEI and LGBTQ students as the biggest expected losers. Leach seemed to be in the middle of everything in the closing days of regular session. That's a telling sign of import and effectiveness.
Collier is a first-team selection despite the fact that she didn't pass a bill as a lead sponsor all year. But Collier had substantial impact in the most unique way when she became the first Texas legislator in modern times to be jailed in the House chamber where she spent two nights for refusing to let a DPS officer bird dog her around-the-clock after she returned to the Capitol voluntarily from a walkout on redistricting. Republicans portrayed Collier's resistance as a publicity stunt. But it gave California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrats on the west coast all the more incentive to counter the Texas congressional map with one of their own to counter it.
Johnson could be a Republican bill sponsor's worst nightmare when she approach the front or back microphones. A former prosecutor in Harris County, Johnson is the least experienced member on paper in the group of 10 first-teamers who have 180 years of experience in the Legislature combined. But Johnson is arguably the smartest lawmaker on either side of the aisle in Austin - and she's given the Democrats another orator in a league with State Rep. James Talarico - who's a candidate for the U.S. Senate now. Johnson served as a member of the Calendars Committee and the vice-chair on the Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Committee that Leach chairs. She sent 11 bills to the governor's desk during the regular session including one that actually cracked down on guns in incidents involving road rage. While Johnson hasn't been around as long as her fellow first-team all stars, she speaks with authority from experience because she's lived it.
Zaffirini continued on a record-breaking pace with the passage of 135 bills that she sponsored in the regular session along with one that she guided to the governor's desk in the second special session that ended earlier this month. Zaffirini passed legislation on a wide range of issues from consumer protection, family safety and violence, workforce training, groundwater contamination and safeguards for the victims of sexual assault. But Zaffirini breaks her own records every time she votes on a bill and passes one. The South Texan who's been a Senate member since 1987 proved to be the most active dean ever in the Capitol's east wing in 2025. When it comes to making law in Austin, no one has ever done it better or as much.
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