The Battle for Control
RPT v Rinos; Burrows (Phelan) v Cook; Gerdes v Constituents
On so many levels, there is a major battle looming here in Texas. Grassroots Republicans worked extremely hard to win the White House, to keep the #TXLege in Republican hands, and keep their districts in Republican hands. Many paid a lot of money to go to the GOP Convention to elect strong leadership, to vote for the Platform, and to choose Legislative Priorities for the 2025 session.
We didn’t do all that so our Republican representatives could put Democrats in charge, so that our Republican representatives could represent lobbyists and developers instead of their constituents.
Here in Bastrop County, our HD17 Representative Stan Gerdes raised a lot of money from PACs to defeat a solid conservative primary challenger. In some circles, that’s called buying a seat at the table. And, Gerdes’ consistent refusal to openly support the choice of the Republican Caucus for TX House Speaker has Bastrop County Republicans very unhappy.
Gerdes and his mentor Rick Perry supported former Speaker Dade Phelan until Phelan dropped out of the race. Gerdes, then, along with 25 other Republicans, walked out of the Caucus on the third vote once it was clear their candidate for House speaker, Burrows, would not win the Caucus vote. Since then, he has refused to agree to support the GOP Caucus choice for Speaker, David Cook.
Gerdes isn’t listening to his constituents or he just doesn’t care what they think.
Earlier this week, the TexasGOP sent a post card to Bastrop County Republicans letting them know that. 
And, the elected Bastrop County precinct chairs (the CEC) passed a resolution and issued a press release on December 30, 2024 putting Gerdes on notice about his votes in the upcoming session.
By way of history, Gerdes would not take a position against Democrat chairs of committees in 2023. In fact, he openly refused to do so at the Lost Pines Republican Women candidate forum and Texas Scorecard wrote an article about it. Gerdes voted for Dade Phelan as Speaker in 2023 along with every Democrat that voted. Dade Phelan appointed Democrat chairs, some of whom killed GOP priority bills.
Again this year, Gerdes has refused to take a position against Democrat chairs. He has refused to commit to voting for the GOP Caucus nominee as the rules require. All Democrats have been “released” and told they can vote for any GOP candidate except Cook. That means all Dems will likely vote for Burrows (who has also not ruled out Dem committee chairs. If Gerdes joins them in that choice, he’ll have chosen Democrats over his constituents.