Exclusive – Texas State House Candidate Dave Covey: Defeating ‘Compromised RINO’ Speaker Dade Phelan Will ‘Reset’ Legislature

Trump-backed Texas Republican Dave Covey, who is challenging Texas State House Speaker Dade Phelan for his seat, told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that ousting Phelan “will really reset the legislature in Texas and give us a conservative majority that’s not governed by a compromised RINO.”

Covey and Phelan both advanced from March’s primary election, but Covey performed better than the well-connected establishment speaker, scoring 46 percent to his 43 percent. Now, Covey looks to finish the job against Phelan in the May 28 runoff in House District 21, east of Houston.

Covey, the former Orange County Republican Party chair, slammed Phelan over his backing of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment, emphasizing that Phelan cut deals with Democrats who “put him in as speaker” and, in turn, used Phelan to attack MAGA Republicans.

“Once you make those alliances, then it just keeps pulling you deeper and deeper, and so what we saw was they kept using him to attack our MAGA Republicans who are fighting the Biden Administration, and one was Ken Paxton,” Covey told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle. “And he sued the Biden administration and won more than any other attorney general in the country.”

“And this is the guy [Paxton] that after he wins his reelection by millions of votes, a few months later, Dade Phelan and the Democrats team up and impeach him, of course, he’s exonerated,” he added. “It just shows that [Phelan] is out to fight against the Republicans who are trying to put America first.”

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This Paxton impeachment was the motivation for Covey to challenge the establishment Republican.

“So when I saw that I realized something has to be done. This guy can’t go unchallenged again,” Covey recalled. “And it’s been an uphill David and Goliath-type situation here, but what we saw was President Trump weighed in on this race. He endorsed me because I am the American First candidate. I’m gonna support his agenda to close the border to put America first again, whereas Dade Phelan never helped President Trump, never comes to his rallies, never offers to assist him, and ultimately, you said it earlier in the program, the most important thing we can do right now is reelect President Donald Trump.”

Phelan has also rejected several “critical border security measures” in the state legislature, as the group Texans for Strong Borders has documented. This includes Texas House Bill 20 in 2023, which the Texas Scorecard noted would have established a state-run Border Protection Unit in Texas that “would be responsible for the construction and maintenance of a physical barrier wall.”

“State Rep. Rafael Anchia (D–Dallas) raised a point of order, arguing that the measure addresses two subjects and that the bill caption was insufficient. House Speaker Dade Phelan (R–Beaumont) sustained Anchia’s motion, killing the bill,” the Scorecard’s Sydnie Henry reported.

Furthermore, the Declaration of an Invasion resolution passed the Senate in 2023 but died in the House State Affair Committee and was not brought for a hearing in the Phelan-led House, per the Scorecard. Another Senate-passed bill, SB 2424, sought to make illegal entry across the southern Texas border a state crime, but that was stymied by Phelan through a point of order “with a major assist from the State Affairs Committee, who sat on the bill for a month—which meant that if Dade Phelan ruled in Democrats’ favor, it automatically killed the bill,” the Scorecard’s Luke Macias reported.

Covey told Boyle that Phelan is actively working against law enforcement “to keep America less safe.”

“These pieces of legislation are things that Republicans said would help, and so we reached out to law enforcement and said, ‘What do you need to secure the border?’ And they said, ‘We can do it, but here’s the tools we need.’ And so when we go and try to give them the tools, then Dade Phelan actively works against them to keep America less safe and less prosperous because, ultimately, he’s not putting America first,” Covey explained.

“Why would you kill a bill to create a special unit that goes to the southern border and secures it and then works on this physical barrier? And then the answer is pretty clear: The uni-party and Democrats like Dade Phelan do not want… to secure the border because they like to have an issue to talk about and to run on in elections, but ultimately, they really don’t care whether you and I and our communities are safe,” Covey added.

Covey later underscored the significance of unseating the sitting House speaker and, particularly, what it could mean for a “reset” of the state legislature.

“This would be the first time in 50 years in Texas history that we take out a sitting speaker, and it just doesn’t happen,” Covey said. “He’s one of the most important people in the state, and the impact of taking him out – this will really reset the legislature in Texas and give us a conservative majority that’s not governed by a compromised RINO who isn’t working for conservative legislation.”

“But instead, this is going to give us a chance for the folks that really believe in America, that want to see us secure, that want to give our kids a chance, that to want to protect them from the wokeism that’s out there,” He added. “This gives us a chance to actually have a majority, to have a voice, and to have a say so because Dade Phelan, as the speaker, has been using his power to silence the conservative majority. And so this is a once-in-a-generation vote. We’ve beat him once. We didn’t quite make the 50% threshold, and so we’re gonna beat him again on May 28.”