How Did the New Members Change the Texas House in 2019

In 2018, there were 32 individuals who had never served in the Texas House of Representatives elected. Trey Martinez-Fischer had served previously and won back his old House seat after his unsuccessful run for the Texas Senate. Ideologically, how were these members different from their predecessors?


After every recent session of the legislature, Professor Mark P. Jones of Rice University releases his calculation of the ideology of each House and Senate member. The calculation is based on each member’s roll-call votes that are contested votes. His calculation “. . . uses a Bayesian estimation procedure belonging to the family of methodological approaches that represent the political science discipline’s gold standard for roll-call vote analysis.” A negative number (e.g., -.04) indicates that the votes cast were left of center, or liberal. A positive number (e.g., 0.79) indicates that the member’s votes were right of center, or conservative. 


Republicans Replaced by Republicans


The Republicans who replaced Republicans in a House district were more conservative than their predecessors. The table demonstrates the difference for the eleven Republicans who replaced fellow Republicans in the Texas House:

Republican to Republican
District	Rep 85th	Lib-Con Score	Rep 86th	Lib-Con Score	Change	Direction
4	Gooden	-0.46	Bell, K.	0.17	0.63	more conservative
8	Cook	-0.29	Harris	0.31	0.60	more conservative
13	Schubert	-0.10	Leman	0.22	0.32	more conservative
15	Keough	0.20	Toth	0.35	0.15	more conservative
23	Faircloth	0.00	Middleton	0.64	0.64	more conservative
54	Cosper	-0.21	Buckley	0.04	0.25	more conservative
62	Phillps	0.02	Smith	0.15	0.13	more conservative
89	Laubenberg	-0.04	Noble	0.34	0.38	more conservative
106	Fallon	0.27	Patterson	0.46	0.19	more conservative
121	Straus*		Allison	0.06
126	Roberts	-0.25	Harless	0.04	0.29	more conservative
* As speaker, Straus did not vote; so no score could be calculated AVERAGE					0.36

The change column represents the absolute value of the change from the previous Republican’s Lib-Con score to the current Republican’s Lib-Con score. The average change is 0.36 more conservative than the previous House member. Of the replaced Republicans, a majority (60 percent) were left of center; and none of the representatives that won in 2018 were left of center. The most conservative was Representative Middleton, who replaced Wayne Faircloth. In other words, the Republicans in the 86^th Legislature were more conservative than the Republicans they replaced, who had served in the 85^th Legislature.


Democrats Replaced by Democrats


The Democrats who replaced Democrats in a House district were less liberal than their predecessors.  The table illustrates the difference for the eight Democrats who replaced fellow Democrats in the Texas House.

Democrat to Democrat
District	Rep 85th	Lib-Con Score	Rep 86th	Lib-Con Score	Change	Direction
37	Oliviera, Rene	-1.36	Dominguez, Alex	-0.92	0.44	less liberal
46	Dukes, Dawna	-1.81	Cole, Sheryl	-0.98	0.83	less liberal
79	Pickett, Joe	-1.07	Fierro, Art	-0.91	0.16	less liberal
104	Alanzo, Roberto	-1.41	Gonzalez, Mary E.	-1.09	0.32	less liberal
109	Giddings, Helen	-1.43	Sherman, Carl Sr.	-1.08	0.35	less liberal
116	Arevalo, Diana	-1.80	Fischer, Trey Martinez	-0.94	0.86	less liberal
125	Rodriguez, Justin	-1.75	Lopez, Ray	-0.99	0.76	less liberal
145	Alvarado, Carol	-1.53	Morales, Christina	-1.07	0.46	less liberal
AVERAGE					0.46

The absolute change for Democrats who replaced Democrats moved an average of 0.46 more conservative than the previous Democrat’s Lib-Con score. For example, Trey Martinez Fischer, who replaced Diana Arevalo, was still liberal, but he was less liberal than she was.


Republicans Replaced by Democrats


Twelve Democrats defeated Republicans in 2018. As one would expect, the greatest change in Lib-Con score occurred in these districts. The table shows the differences:

Republican to Democrat
District	Rep 85th	Lib-Con Score	Rep 86th	Lib-Con Score	Change	Direction
45	Issac, Jason	0.08	Zwiener, Erin	-1.18	1.16	more liberal
47	Workman, Paul	-0.28	Goodwin, Vikki	-1.17	0.93	more liberal
52	Gonzales, Larry	-0.31	Talarico, James	-1.05	0.74	more liberal
65	Simmons, Ron	0.27	Beckley, Michelle	-1.14	1.41	more liberal
102	Koop, Linda	-0.34	Ramos, Ana-Maria	-1.31	0.97	more liberal
105	Anderson, Rodney	0.01	Meza, Terry	-1.06	1.07	more liberal
113	Burkett, Cindy	-0.28	Bowers, Rhetta	-1.02	0.74	more liberal
114	Villalba, Jason	-0.40	Turner, John	-1.08	0.68	more liberal
115	Rinaldi, Matt	0.75	Johnson, Julie	-1.04	1.79	more liberal
132	Schofield, Mike	0.05	Calanni, Gina	-1.01	1.06	more liberal
135	Elkins, Gary	-0.14	Rosenthal, Jon	-1.18	1.14	more liberal
136	Dale, Tony	-0.01	Bucy III, John	-1.07	1.06	more liberal
AVERAGE					1.06

The change produced a representative that was much more liberal than the representative that was replaced. In District 115, Matt Rinaldi was replaced by Julie Johnson, a change of 1.79 on the Lib-Con score. But that was the extreme. The average change on the Lib-Con score was 1.06, which is quite large.


Overall, when Republican representatives replaced Republicans, the shift was in a more conservative direction. When a Democratic representative replaced a Democrat, the shift was in a less liberal direction, indicating that some Democratic representatives had become too liberal for their district. When a Democratic representative replaced a Republican, the shift is to a much more liberal representative. What all of this suggests is that Texas, though not liberal, is becoming less conservative. The 2020 elections may provide a better test of where Texas is moving ideologically.