GOP Lawmaker Rips Hometown Crowd
for Fiasco that Vouchers Pitch Becomes
Capitol Inside
March 1, 2025
A powerful Texas House Republican lawmaker lashed out on Saturday at a crowd that blew up a school choice sales presentation at a town hall that he hosted in his hometown last night with the legislation's chief sponsor as the featured guest.
State Reps. Cody Harris of Palestine and Brad Buckley of Salado received a reception that a snake oil salesman who's been exposed might expect when they were booed off the stage in the East Texas city of Palestine at the event that the local lawmaker shut down an hour before it was scheduled to end.
Buckley - the author of a school vouchers plan in House Bill 3 - was repeatedly interrupted on Thursday night at a school choice rally in his home base in Central Texas. But the Killeen Daily Herald reported that Buckley encountered no booing at the sales pitch in Salado.
That wasn't the case in Palestine where Governor Greg Abbott's historic crusade for education savings accounts showed the first significant sign of unraveling despite his claims to have a sufficient number of votes locked down in the House to pass the measure. The Republican governor was in California for his daughter's wedding during the weekend when the audience effectively hijacked the Harris rally with Buckley in a development that could give rural Republicans cold feet despite vows to back ESAs.
Harris decided to fight fire by pouring fuel into it with a social media post that likened the people who derailed the Palestine town hall to those who've demonstrated against Israel and the Gaza war.
"Unfortunately, some in the crowd chose to disrupt the conversation, turning it into a Palestinian-style protest that drowned out voices meant to inform, engage, and debate in good faith," Harris said today on Facebook. "Those who came to listen, learn, and respectfully express their positions were met with yelling, name-calling, and chaos."
Harris and Buckley are two of Speaker Dustin Burrows' top lieutenants in the west wing in Austin. Buckley is in the midst of his second regular session as the House school choice sponsor in his role as the Public Education Committee chairman. Buckley filed a package last week that includes funding for public schools and the state's first-ever school vouchers program with an initial investment of $1 billion.
Burrows appointed Harris to chair the Natural Resources Committee last month after a stint as the Local & Consent Calendars Committee leader in 2023. Harris was one of Burrows' most aggressive defenders during a monumentally bitter battle for speaker that the Lubbock lawmaker won when he defeated the GOP caucus nominee by 30 votes in January.
Abbott has suggested that a victory was nigh in the school choice fight based on 76 votes that he has in the House for the measure that the lower chamber rejected in the fall of 2023. But that's the minimum that it would take for the Buckley bill to clear the House.
The brutal treatment that Harris and Buckley reaped in an area that's solid red could send tremors through the ranks of House Republicans who've ever wavered on vouchers as representatives for districts that are largely rural. Some of the GOP members who've pledged to support the proposal could get cold feet in districts that are largely rural.
The most imposing challenge that school choice supporters in the House have been facing is the perception that vouchers would take money from the public schools. Abbott has adamantly denied that school vouchers would come at the expense of public education in Texas. But the spin has snagged on the fact that Texas would be spending $1 billion on private schools that could have been used to improve public education.
A school choice could be ripe for a conference committee meltdown regardless of the number of votes that it scores in the House and Senate. The odds of it reaching that point may have taken a significant hit - however - as a result of the nightmare that the town hall in East Texas turned out to be.
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