GOP in Rookie Rep's Largest County Puts
Her in No-Win Position with Vouchers Slam
Capitol Inside
April 7, 2025
Governor Greg Abbott has to decide whether he will ride to the rescue of a rookie Republican representative who he bankrolled as a candidate in the wake of the local GOP vote to condemn his school choice plan and urged her to abandon a promise to support it.
The Liberty County Republican Party's executive committee issued a scathing denunciation of the Texas House and Senate vouchers proposals in a resolution that portrayed the effort as an attempt to hijack private education in the Lone Star State. The resolution criticized Abbott specifically and admonished State Rep. Janis Holt of Silsbee to vote against the proposed subsidies for private schools in the regular session this year.
The elected party leaders in the county near Houston condemned Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 3 in the two-page position statement as the springboard for a "quasi-governmental education system" that would violate the Texas Republican platform, undermine parental authority and set the stage for a private school takeover by the state. Liberty County GOP Vice-Chair Tommy Brents contended that the school choice bills would have a devastating effect on private education here.
“What’s being marketed as ‘school choice’ actually represents an unprecedented expansion of government control over private education in Texas,” Brents said. “These bills violate core Republican principles by creating a new taxpayer-funded education system that would cost billions, expand bureaucracy, and impose government regulations on private and religious schools.”
The resolution implores Holt to cancel her support for the legislation as a freshman House member who represents Liberty County in the Legislature's lower chamber. The document also urges Holt's constituents in House District 18 to contact her at her Capitol office in office to voice their disdain for the vouchers plans that have been working their way through the statehouse.
The Public Education Committee voted exclusively along party lines on Thursday to forward a modified version of SB 2 to the floor for debate. While the House has been a perennial burial ground for education savings accounts, advocates think that 2025 will be the year they end the losing streak thanks to Abbott's retaliation scheme that targeted Republicans who defied him on vouchers for defeat in the 2024 primary elections.
Holt was one of seven challengers who knocked off incumbents in the GOP primary and runoff elections with massive sums of campaign cash that came courtesy of the governor. Abbott contributed more than $700,000 for a bid for the seat that Ernest Bailes was seeking again in House District 18 in southeast Texas near Houston. Holt beat Bailes by 14 points in the GOP primary election a year ago with 53 percent of the vote.
But Bailes and Abbott were allies when he crushed Holt by 30 points in a primary clash two years earlier. Holt could find it difficult to successfully defend the HB 18 seat at the polls in 2026 without Abbott's largess and the support of the Republican Party organization in the largest county that's contained exclusively in her district.
Liberty is one of the most conservative fastest growing counties in Texas with a population that mushroomed from 91,000 in 2020 to 115,000 according to U.S. Census estimates for 2024. Liberty is one of 33 Texas counties with six-digit populations. As a Silsbee resident, Holt is based in Hardin County, which is about half the size of Liberty County.
President Donald Trump carries Liberty County in November with nearly 81 percent of the vote.
Holt appears to be in a lose-lose situation now as she faces a decision now on whether she will honor a vow to the governor on vouchers or bow to the Liberty County GOP whose support could be a must without the governor's help. But Abbott hadn't acknowledged the Liberty County anti-school choice vote by Monday afternoon.
more to come ...
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