Texas Senate braces for one of its biggest shake-ups in years

The Texas Senate is in the midst of a major transition. There are currently two vacancies, and by the time the 2026 elections are complete, at least five of the 31 senators who served in this year's legislative session will have gone on to other roles or retirements. Five newcomers are expected to take their places by January 2027.

But wait, as they say in the infomercials, there's more. Two senators who aren’t up for election this cycle have announced plans to run for Texas attorney general. Another plans to run for Congress, and can do so without leaving the Senate. If one of the attorney general candidates and the congressional hopeful both win, that would mean seven freshmen senators next session — more if any of the incumbents on next year's ballot lose their bids for reelection.

And those freshmen would join a body that has welcomed seven new members since 2023. That would mean nearly half of the upper chamber would still be climbing the legislative learning curve.

For the past half-century, the Senate has been a fairly stable institution. Most sessions start with two or three freshmen, but rarely more than that.

Who better to offer perspective on how the Texas Senate evolves than Patsy Spaw, who since 2001 has been the secretary of the Senate, which means she's the top of the Senate staff hierarchy. For 20 years before that, she was a management-level employee, a status she reached after a decade as a rank-and-file staffer in the chamber.

Spaw, drawing on her half-century of institutional knowledge with help from researchers in the Texas Reference Library on the Capitol's second floor, was nice enough to compile a highlights reel of turnover trends in the Senate.

She found that the biggest freshman class in the modern era of Texas politics came in 1973, when 16 of the 31 members were new, driven by a voter 'throw the bums out' mood after what became known as the Sharpstown stock fraud scandal — a web of self-dealing and financial misconduct involving several lawmakers and other elected officials. Half of the House membership also consisted of freshmen.

Looking back to 1876, when Reconstruction was ending and the current Texas Constitution was ratified, voters sent 27 wet-behind-the-ears senators to Austin.

Both infusions of new blood pale in comparison with 1861, the year the Civil War began and Texas seceded from the Union. According to Spaw’s research, the Senate had 33 members that year, but 44 different individuals served in part because some supported the Confederacy and others the Union.

'Of those 44 senators who served in the 9th Legislature, 34 were new to the Senate — the most freshman senators in Texas history,' Spaw said in an email. Fun fact: Spaw also edited 'The Texas Senate,' Volumes 1 and 2, which trace the history of the chamber from 1836, when Texas was an independent republic, through most of the rest of the 19th century.

The value, or lack thereof, of turnover in the legislative body depends on one's view of representative government. In Texas, much of how both the House and Senate operate is rooted in tradition. That's where rules of decorum, such as prohibitions on name-calling and personal attacks during floor debates, carry over from one session to the next. Legislating is also often a multi-year process, so institutional knowledge amassed by members can provide both roadmaps to success and speed bumps to excess.

On the other hand, the 1876 Constitution established a citizen legislature. That's why Texas lawmakers meet infrequently and for a limited number of days. The career politician was meant to be the exception, not the rule.

Over the decades, the Texas model has evolved. To counterbalance the influx of newcomers, the Senate still includes veterans. Two of them, Laredo Democrat Judith Zaffirini and Dallas Democrat Royce West, began their careers in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively.

More than a generation ago, when Republicans were outnumbered in the Legislature and blamed the unwillingness of long-serving Democrats to stand aside, many candidates for the House and Senate made term limits a centerpiece of their campaigns.

By the mid-1990s, Republicans gained the majority in the Senate without the aid of term limits. By 2003, the House followed suit. And, as human nature would have it, many long-serving Republicans proved just as reluctant to end their political careers as their Democratic counterparts.

One of those Republicans, Sen. J.E. 'Buster' Brown of Lake Jackson, served 22 years before retiring in 2002. In the late 1990s, a reporter reminded him of his long-forgotten early-career pledge to enact term limits.

'I'm still for them,' Brown said with a grin. 'And I'll stay right here fighting until we get 'em.'