In the state Capitol’s west wing, House Democrats brokered a tacit alliance with the GOP’s moderate/centrist conservative bloc, led by Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio. Liberal-Conservative Scores were calculated for legislators using their regular session roll call vote behavior (final 2013 House and Senate ideological scores and rankings will be published following the end of this summer’s special session or sessions). These scores indicate that virtually all of the most prominent Republicans on the speaker’s leadership team either were located in the GOP’s moderate conservative wing (i.e., representatives with Lib-Con Scores significantly less conservative than those of more than one-half of their Republican colleagues) or, and less commonly, in its centrist conservative wing (i.e., representatives with Lib-Con Scores neither significantly more conservative or less conservative than over one-half of their fellow Republicans).
This alliance allowed a relatively cohesive and disciplined Democratic delegation to block the passage of most legislation opposed by its members. In a similar vein, the moderate conservative Republicans prevented the passage of almost all legislation they objected to either on pure policy grounds and/or because they believed it would damage the Texas GOP brand and in doing so undermine their long-term goal of maintaining the party’s grip on power in the state. Finally, this informal alliance pushed through bills that addressed several, though certainly not all, of these legislators’ most pressing policy concerns in areas ranging from public education to water infrastructure.
There were enough moderate Republicans that had more in common with Democrats then their more conservative party members to win votes. This graph shows the "win rate" for members of the House. Democrats doid better than conservative winds of the Republican Party.
The figures reveal the informal alliance that existed during the regular session between Democrats and the moderate conservative and, to a somewhat lesser extent, centrist conservative wings of the Republican Party. This alliance produced predominantly purple legislation that was frequently opposed by the House and Senate’s more conservative Republicans. The end result was legislation that on average was closer to the policy preferences of the median Texas voter than to those of the median Texas Republican Party primary voter, an outcome viewed as positive by a majority of the 181 legislators, the editorial boards of the state’s leading newspapers and the Austin lobby, but perhaps not by a majority of the 1 to 1.5 million Texans who regularly participate in the GOP primaries.
