GOP state senators could emerge as last protectors of party power in Texas

By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune
November 5, 2026

When Vikki Goodwin was elected the first Democratic lieutenant governor of Texas since 1999 on Tuesday night, she appeared poised to inherit one of the most powerful positions in state government.

But come January when the Austin state representative is sworn in, most of the position’s power may come immediately under threat.

That’s because most of the lieutenant governor’s massive influence in recent history has largely derived from the chamber rules approved by state senators at the start of each legislative session.

The Capitol’s upper chamber will still have a Republican majority when the Legislature convenes in two months — the last remaining thread of power the party can grip after voters this week terminated their domination of state government. The Republican majority in the Texas Senate now emerges as the last great hope for the party’s ability to exert influence in the Capitol — or block parts of a Democratic agenda that it finds objectionable. T

“Texas stands as long as the Texas Senate Republican caucus holds the line,” Sen. Charles Schwertner of Georgetown said in a Tuesday night social media post, before his own tight race had been called. “We will.”

The Texas Senate is made up of 31 members. Fifteen of them were up for reelection this year, as the terms are staggered. Republicans will have 19 seats when the following session begins and Democrats 12, and they only need a simple majority to change to the rules and the authorities they give Goodwin.

The Tribune requested an interview with 14 current Republican senators: Joan Huffman, Paul Bettencourt, Bryan Hughes, Donna Campbell, Pete Flores, Brent Hagenbuch, Bob Hall, Phil King, Mayes Middleton, Tan Parker, Angela Paxton, Charles Perry, Kevin Sparks and Schwertner.

None responded to text messages by early Wednesday evening.

The state constitution grants the lieutenant governor few but notable authorities. Among them, the state’s founding document declares the position presides over the Senate and steps in as governor, when the elected governor is away, disqualified from office or vacates the office.

But the rest of the powers that made Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick perhaps the most powerful politician since Democratic Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock were prescribed by chamber rules.

Under those rules, Patrick had complete control of the Senate. He assigned the committee chairs. He picked which bills reached the floor and when. He decided who joined conference committees that negotiated the disagreements on bills with the House. He was empowered to create special panels, and refer bills to the committees of his choice. All that could change under a Lt. Gov. Goodwin.

To be sure, Goodwin will still have a platform germane to the position. She can call press conferences and coordinate with the Texas House, whose Democratic majority can ignore Republican-led proposals from across the Capitol.

“There’s a lot of things besides just running the Senate, and there may be some attempts to change the rules, but I don’t know,” Goodwin said in an interview a few weeks ago. “I think of myself as being fairly intelligent. I’ll figure out ways to get things done.”

Out of the possible scenarios, the GOP senators can reduce Goodwin’s role to be the president in name only and move to give the most important authorities to a party leader they elect among themselves, akin to how the U.S. Senate has a majority leader that can complicate the flow of legislation.

“The senate organizes itself and they set the rules for how they are gonna debate and do all these things,” said Garrett W. Fulce, who runs a public relations firm in the Houston area after years of being a GOP operative. He also studied at the University of Texas at Austin alongside Democratic Senator-elect James Talarico.

He added: “I can almost guarantee you they’ll change the rules because one of the things that that power does is it prevents the Democratic lieutenant governor from putting things on the floor and forcing Republicans to take votes they don’t want to have to take. And it will force Democrats on the senate to take votes that they don’t want to take.”

There appears to be little historical analog from modern Texas politics for the situation.

University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus said any retraction of power would be one of the chamber’s biggest institutional changes in recent memory. And Republicans, largely locked out of power except in this corner of the state, have plenty of incentive.

Plus, they’ve changed tradition before. For years, any bill needed the consent of two-thirds of the Senate before it was brought up for a floor vote. In 2015, when the GOP caucus fell one senator short of that threshold, they lowered the requirement to three-fifths.

“Republicans want to minimize damage that came from the election,” Rottinghaus said. “Republicans don’t know how to be in the minority. They are going to have to learn on the fly. But the simplest thing to do for them is to exercise the majority powers in the senate and to do the best they can to leverage the numbers that they have.”

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This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.