Patrick Claims Trump Turned Texas House
on Vouchers Without Hint of Abbott's Role
Capitol Inside
June 2, 2025
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick ran the risk of offending Governor Greg Abbott when he gave President Donald Trump the credit this week for votes in Austin that snapped a long losing streak on private school vouchers without a word about the critical part the state's top leader played in the fight.
Patrick showered Trump with breathless superlatives, admiration and awe in a social media post that read like a love letter from a fan club member on the eve of the Texas regular session's adjournment on Tuesday.
After failing repeatedly in a bid to have the state subsidize private education for the first time in its long and illustrious history, Patrick gave the impression that the perennial school choice bill would have bombed again if the American president hadn't interjected himself into the fray at the last minute. Patrick admitted to Trump in the gushing tribute on Monday on X that he'd passed school choice bills five times in the Texas Senate but failed each time to close the deal by crafting proposals that the House refused to accept.
"Only YOU got it across the finish line," Patrick told the president.
"Our school choice program for 100,000 students and $1 billion is the largest launch in world history," the lieutenant governor beamed. "You made it happen. One of your MANY crowning achievements will be that you are the President who changed education in America."
The state Senate president wrote in the sugary communique to the nation's chief executive that a conference call with Texas House Republicans before the vote on school choice proved to be the turning point for an issue that had been one of the GOP's leading priorities since it claimed control of the lower chamber in 2003.
"Your commitment and passion on this issue, and your phone call to Republican House members the morning of the vote, made all the difference," Patrick explained. "Your call increased our winning vote total to 86 out of 88 Republicans who voted in favor. That’s extraordinary."
But Patrick's review of the school choice clash this year had a glaring omission that the Republican governor might find highly offensive in light of the fact that Abbott arguably deserves the lion's share of credit and accolades for the first successful vouchers legislation in the Lone Star State.
Abbott had learning the hard way that it would take more than spin and photo ops to pass a school choice measure in a state House where it had faced insurmountable resistance from rural Republicans who believed in representing their districts and didn't take orders from anyone but their constituents as a result.
After failing to pry a vouchers bill from the House in regular and special sessions in 2023, Abbott went on the warpath before the GOP primary election in 2024 when he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in an unprecedented quest to exact revenge by eliminating the opposition on school choice at the polls.
Abbott poured several million dollars that he'd taken from donors into House bids for challengers who he expected to own in districts that had been represented by Republicans who'd been strong allies until they defied him on educational savings accounts. ESAs - for anyone who's been stuck under a rock for the past several years - is the powder puff term the GOP hatched for school choice after deciding the word carried negative connotations
Trump's pep talk on the ESA plan in Senate Bill 2 might have turned a vote or two at most in the House - contrary to the lieutenant governor's characterization of it the tide turner. By the time Trump picked up the phone the fix was already in.
Patrick has been trying to get the governor to sign a THC ban that Abbott is facing unprecedented pressure as a proposal that would make Texas Republicans the first group in history to ever shut down a highly successful industry they'd created just six years ago. More than 10,000 small businesses would be forced to close with the Patrick THC prohibition that would put 53,000 of his constituents out of work.
The insulting omission in the post about Trump and the Texas vouchers bill may not help Patrick's cause for Abbott's signature on the cannabis industry elimination plan that he seems to have more reasons to kill with his red pen in Senate Bill 3 with each passing day that it gathers dust on his desk.
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