Republican State Rep. David Spiller of Jacksboro bailed from GOP Speaker Dade Phelan's team on Monday in a social media post that read more like an endorsement for the Texas House leader than the pitch for the conservative challenger it was designed to be.
A second-term lawmaker who played a major supporting role in the House's impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton last year, Spiller said in a statement that he'd switched his allegiance to GOP State Rep. David Cook of Mansfield in the 2025 speaker contest as a direct result of the incumbent's plan to keep Democrats as committee chairs.
Spiller gave Cook his first new pledge since late September when he claimed to have promises of support from four dozen House Republicans and incoming GOP members including two he declined to identify. But Spiller poked a hole effectively in claims from the right that Phelan hadn't been a truly conservative leader in two terms with the gavel.
"While I appreciate and respect the leadership of Speaker Dade Phelan these past two legislative sessions, it is time for a change," Spiller said. "I acknowledge the conservative victories we have achieved under Speaker Phelan's leadership - border security, banning elective abortion, constitutional carry, religious freedom and election integrity - to name just a few. However, it is time for new leadership and a unified conservative voice in the Texas House.
"It is time to use our conservative majority to efficiently pass conservative legislation for the benefit of our constituents and the State of Texas." Spiller added after ticking off landmark conservative accomplishments that House has passed on Phelan's watch.
Spiller's belated plug left Cook 27 votes short of 76 that he would need to oust the incumbent in the speaker's election on opening day of the regular session in January. Phelan says he has a sufficient number of pledges to win another term in the dais. But Cook's supporters have questioned the veracity of the speaker's claims by pointing to the fact that Phelan has refused to list the members who've pledged to him by name.
Spiller - thanks to Phelan - wielded more clout as a sophomore legislator than other Republicans in second House terms. Phelan appointed Spiller to the budget-writing Appropriations Committee and the State Affairs Committee. The speaker served up another plum for Spiller when he named as the co-chair of a Texas Energy Fund Advisory panel that Phelan and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick appointed in April this year.
But Spiller had his most important assignment in hindsight as a Phelan appointee on the General Investigating Committee that conducted a secret probe into Paxton and recommended that he get the boot as AG as a product of corruption charges that the House approved on the final weekend of the regular session in 2023. Spiller won a spot from the speaker to the Board of Managers that Phelan selected to prosecute the case against Paxton.
Sixty House Republicans including Cook voted to impeach the three-time elected attorney general after Spiller, who's an attorney, assured his colleagues that the effort would be successful in the Senate. But the Senate that Republicans also control voted to acquit the state lawyer in a development that appeared to be a foregone conclusion from the outset of a trial that the House forced in the east wing.
