Republican Party of Texas

A majority of the 600 delegates to the 1867 convention were black, but white delegates controlled the important positions.[3]

The Republican Party developed dramatically in Texas during the Reconstruction era, after constitutional amendments freeing the slaves and giving suffrage to black males. Blacks joined the party that had ensured the end of slavery. African-American leaders, frequently men of mixed race who had been free and educated before the American Civil War, provided leadership in extending education and work opportunities to blacks after the war. They supported establishment of a public school system for the first time. Men such as William Madison McDonald in Fort Worth, Norris Wright Cuney in Galveston, and Henry Clay Ferguson worked for the black community and the state.

In 1870, Edmund J. Davis was elected Governor, but was soundly defeated in 1874. In the year 1876, Republicans had made gradual gains in Texas, earning nearly one-third of the statewide vote and electing a small number of candidates to the State Legislature (including several African Americans).

After the Reconstruction era, the Republican Party of Texas gradually lost power, and after the turn of the century, the "Lily Whites" pushed blacks out of power. The Democrats passed disfranchising laws near the turn of the century requiring poll taxes be paid prior to voter registration; together with the party establishing white primaries, black voting dropped dramatically, from more than 100,000 statewide in the 1890s, to 5,000 in 1906.[4] Mexican Americans and poor whites were also adversely affected by such measures. For more than 100 years, the Republicans were a minority party in the state. As a result, the biggest base of electoral support for the Republican Party in Texas during this time was the German Texan community in the Texas Hill Country, with the majority-German Gillespie, Guadalupe and Kendall counties constituting the most Republican counties in the state of Texas throughout the late 19th and into the 20th century.

Between the departing of Robert B. Hawley from his second U.S. House term in 1901 and the seating of Bruce Alger in 1954, the sole Republican to represent Texas in Congress was Harry M. Wurzbach, a politician from the German Texan community in the Hill Country who served in the U.S. House for most of the 1920s and left office in 1931.[5] The first Republican statewide primary was held in 1926, but drew only 15,239 voters. By contrast, the Democratic primary in the same year drew 821,234 voters, as disfranchisement was well established, and Texas was essentially a one-party, white-only voting state. Only two more Republican primaries were run in the next thirty-four years.[6]

Some 5,100 delegates and alternates attended the party's June 2022 convention in Houston, its first in three years. The Log Cabin Republicans, an organization that advocates for LGBT rights, was banned from attending the convention. Attendees approved resolutions including the false assertion that President Joe Biden "was not legitimately elected." The convention included three screenings of 2000 Mules, a recent film by conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza that falsely alleged an organized criminal "ballot harvesting" scheme by Democratic-aligned operatives to rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. The party adopted a platform change declaring homosexuality "an abnormal lifestyle choice" and further declared opposition to "all efforts to validate transgender identity". Attendees also approved a resolution calling for the full repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The new platform called for a ban on "teaching, exposure, and/or discussion of sexual matters (mechanics, feelings, orientation or 'gender identity' issues)" in schools, including the prohibition of teaching sex education, while calling on Texas schools to teach about the "dignity of the preborn human". The new platform also stated: "Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto." The party rebuked longtime Texas senator John Cornyn for participating in bipartisan negotiations regarding guns, after a recent series of mass shootings.[20] The platform also called for the creation of a state-level electoral college system inspired by the United States Electoral College, in which voters from each senate district would vote for electors who would then elect candidates to statewide offices.[21]

Former President Donald Trump praised the platform, saying that "they know that a Country cannot survive without Free and Fair Elections."[22] The resolutions were described by The Washington Post as embracing far-right rhetoric[23] and as a far-right platform by The New York Times.[24] Reason called the "LGBT component" of the platform "a weird throwback" that is "reminiscent of how conservatives used to talk about gay marriage back in the 1990s."[16] The decision to exclude the Log Cabin Republicans from the convention was criticized by Donald Trump Jr., who said in a statement to Breitbart News that it amounted to “canceling a group of gay conservatives who are standing in the breach with us”.[23] The American Conservative described the platform as showing a turn "toward a conservation of the spirit of Christendom, even if it means departing from the Union." that "gives the RNC much to ponder."[25] According to the Houston Chronicle, "Measures adopted to the party's platform at the convention are not set laws, rather they act as a 'mission statement' of sorts for the party over the next two years",[26] and according to the National Public Radio "It remains an open question as to how closely the priorities outlined in the 2022 platform reflect the views of regular Republicans in Texas".[15] Party platforms in Texas are non-binding, a frequent source of frustration for the most hardcore partisan activists.[13]

Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi

Texas Republicans currently control all elected statewide offices, a majority in the Texas Senate, and a majority in the Texas House of Representatives. Republicans also hold both of the state's U.S. Senate seats and 25 of the state's 38 U.S. House seats.

• John L. Haynes (1867–?)
• Edmund J. Davis (1875–1883)
• Norris Wright Cuney (1886–1896)
• William Madison McDonald (1897–1898)
• Henry Clay Ferguson (1898–1900)
• Cecil A. Lyon (1900–1916)
• Rentfro B. Creager (1920–50)
• Orville Bullington (1951–1952)
• Thad Hutcheson (1958)

State Party Chairmen since 1962

• Peter O'Donnell (1962–1969)
• William Steger (1969–1971)
• Missing (1971–1976)
• Ray Hutchison – (1976–1977)
• Ray Barnhart – (1977–1979)
• Chet Upham – (1979–1983)
• George Strake Jr. – (1983–1988)
• Fred Meyer – (1988–1994)
• Tom Pauken – (1994–1997)
• Susan Weddington – (1997–2003)
• Tina Benkiser – (2003–2009)
• Cathie Adams – (2009–2010)
• Steve Munisteri – (2010–2015)
• Tom Mechler – (2015–2017)
• James Dickey – (2017– 2020)
• Allen West – (2020–2021)
• Matt Rinaldi – (2021–present)

The party has a number of affiliates and auxiliary organizations, including the Texas Federation of College Republicans,[28] High School Republicans of Texas,[29] Texas Federation of Republican Women (TFRW),[30] Texas Republican County Chairmen's Association,[31] Texas Federation for Republican Outreach,[32] Texas Republican Assembly,[33] and Texas Federation of Hispanic Republicans.[34]

• Abbott, Richard (1986). The Republican Party and the South, 1855-1877: The First Southern Strategy. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807816809.
• Moreland, Laurence; Steed, Robert; Baker, Tod, eds. (1991). The 1988 Presidential Election in the South: Continuity Amidst Change in Southern Party Politics. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0275931455.

• The Republican Party of Texas website
• Texas House Republican Caucus
• Texas Federation of Republican women
• Texas Young Republican Federation
• 2016 Texas Republican Party Platform