After months of attack mailers, threats and accusations of misconduct, the Texas House was set to pick its next speaker on Tuesday in a vote that could elevate the state’s hard right to new levels of power in the nation’s most populous Republican state.
On its face, the election by members of the Republican-dominated chamber might not appear consequential: the front-runners include a conservative Republican and another conservative Republican.
But the fight for speaker has been unusually bitter, even if its antagonists are ideologically aligned and have become familiar sparring partners in the battle for control of Texas politics.
On the one side are the old-guard Texas Republicans, in the mold of former governors such as George W. Bush and Rick Perry, who want to keep the Texas House and its members as a third power center in Austin. On the other is a more radical faction backed by religiously conservative West Texas billionaires who want to bring the Texas House in line with the more aggressively partisan Texas Senate, where they already hold sway.
Legislators said the selection contest was the most contentious in years.
“This is something that has never happened in the history of Texas politics — to have this much chaos as the result of a speaker’s race,” said Representative Harold V. Dutton Jr., a Houston Democrat first elected to the Texas House in 1984.
The race is the culmination of more than a year of all-out political warfare between the Republican factions, which erupted in 2023 after a bipartisan supermajority of the Texas House voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton over allegations of corruption and abuse of office, only to see him acquitted in the Texas Senate later that year.
The impeachment infuriated many Republican activists and lawmakers, particularly those strongly aligned with President-elect Donald J. Trump.
After Mr. Paxton’s acquittal, the hard right appeared to have the upper hand. Mr. Paxton and his supporters sought revenge during last year’s Republican primaries, hastening the retirement of some Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment, and aggressively campaigning to oust others.
The goal had been to finally wrest control of the Texas House away from Republicans who would cut deals with Democrats and to end the chamber’s longstanding practice of allowing members of the minority party to bring up bills and hold committee chairmanships. Hard-liners hoped those changes would deepen Republican control of the state.
And they appeared on their way to doing that, nearly defeating the incumbent speaker, Dade Phelan, in a primary in his own district and successfully pressuring him to step aside as speaker. In a vote of the Republican caucus, a majority backed Representative David Cook, the hard right’s candidate who had challenged Mr. Phelan for the House gavel last year.
But Representative Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, Texas, put himself forth as the traditionalist candidate. An ally of Mr. Phelan’s who helped enact the state’s abortion ban and has sought to limit the power of the state’s Democratic cities, Mr. Burrows argued that he was the more conservative choice.
Without a majority of Republicans, Mr. Burrows could only win by cobbling together a coalition of old-guard Republicans — a minority of the party — and nearly every Democratic lawmaker.
The Texas House has 150 members, 88 Republicans and 62 Democrats. A simple majority of 76 is needed to become speaker. Most Democrats appeared ready to side with Mr. Burrows.
“American government works best when people talk, they negotiate,” said Representative Gene Wu of Houston, the chairman of the Democratic caucus in the Texas House. “This idea that we have to shut out the other side completely is dangerous, it’s very dangerous.”
Mr. Burrows’s backers worry that under a hard-right speaker, the Texas House would lose its independence and become little more than an arm of the hard right and the Texas Senate, which is led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, an arch conservative former talk radio host.
But in opposing the Republican caucus choice and relying on Democrats, Mr. Burrows and his Republican supporters have come under furious attack.
“I’m glad they weren’t with Travis at the Alamo when he drew the line in the sand,” Mr. Patrick said in a social media post, referring to William B. Travis, the leader of Texas’ forces during the 1836 battle. “They would have crossed the line and walked out of the gate, leaving their fellow fighters behind.”
Gov. Greg Abbott, who has largely stayed out of his party’s internecine fights, has said the candidate with majority Republican support should be speaker, aligning himself with Mr. Patrick and Mr. Paxton.
The attorney general, for his part, held several campaign-style events around Texas last week in support of Mr. Cook. A wealthy Amarillo, Texas, businessman, Alex Fairly, pledged $20 million for future Republican primaries to bolster a “true Republican majority” — a substantial amount even for Texas, where there are few campaign spending limits.
Busloads of activists supporting Mr. Cook were expected at the State Capitol on Tuesday, part of a morning of furious lobbying that was expected to include a concert by Ted Nugent, the conservative rocker, nearby on Congress Avenue.
And the official state party, which was also lined up in favor of Mr. Cook and against Mr. Burrows, has said that, under new rules, Republican lawmakers who do not support the majority Republican choice could be kept off the primary ballot by the party in a future election.
“This time around we said we’re going to have sanctions,” Abraham George, the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, said in an interview. “If you want to be a Democrat, go be a Democrat. You’re not going to be on our ballot next time.”
That led Representative Cody Harris, an East Texas Republican who supports Mr. Burrows, to lodge a formal complaint with the state ethics commission accusing Mr. George of making improper threats.
“Before the Republican Party of Texas sends any direct mail in your district, I wanted an opportunity to personally connect about our public position on the speakers’ race,” Mr. George wrote in a text to Mr. Harris included in the complaint.
“Abraham, it would be great if you spent even half as much of the effort and money trying to beat Democrats as you are engaging in the Republican Speaker’s race,” Mr. Harris responded.
“See you on the other side :),” Mr. George said.
Representative Carl Tepper, a Republican from Lubbock who is backing Mr. Burrows, said in an interview that while “the messaging has been these guys are the real Republicans,” it was Mr. Burrows who had the better conservative record.
Mr. Tepper was bracing for a tough public debate at the Capitol on Tuesday, the first day of the legislative session when many members bring their loved ones.
“I told my family, I’m not sure you want to be there for this,” Mr. Tepper said. “It’s going to be real ugly.”