State Rep Gary VanDeaver officially penalized at Republican Party of Texas censure meeting

TYLER, Texas (KETK) – The Republican Party of Texas met on Saturday to discuss potential penalties for several lawmakers, including two East Texas State Representatives.

At a special meeting of the State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) on Saturday, Texas GOP officials discussed whether or not they would concur with censure resolutions brought by county Republican Party officials.

Resolutions were brought against ten State Representatives who are accused of making votes and taking actions against State Republican Party platform policies like having no Democratic Committee Chairs in the State House.

East Texas State Representatives Cody Harris of Palestine and Gary VanDeaver of New Boston were two of those ten State Representatives who faced potential penalties on Saturday.

KETK News spoke with VanDeaver before Saturday’s meeting about the censure resolutions that the Red River County, Lamar County and Morris County Republican parties have passed against him.

“I think it’s unfortunate. I think it’s absolutely not good for the Republican Party and as I said when we should be focused on on solving real problems, we’re dealing with this kind of thing,” VanDeaver said. “It’s just unfortunate, but that’s where we are, and we’ll deal with it.”

Harris avoided a concurring vote and any penalties that the SREC could have levied against him but the SREC did concur with the resolution against VanDeaver.

The penalties the SREC can hand out include:

• The Republican Party of Texas spending up to 12% of it’s budget running campaign materials against the censured lawmakers in Republican primaries.
• Officially discouraging them from participating in any Republican primary elections.
• Directing the State Chairman and any county chairmen to not accept their applications to run in a Republican primary for 2 years.

VanDeaver ended up facing the first and second penalty but the SREC voted against giving him the third penalty which could have kept him off of Republican Party Primary tickets for 2 years.

VanDeaver was one of only five lawmakers who had penalties handed out to them by the SREC on Saturday. The SREC voted against the resolutions filed against the other five lawmakers, including the resolution against Harris. President Donald Trump endorsed Harris in his re-election bid on Friday.

The censure resolution for VanDeaver, that the SREC concurred with on Saturday, includes the following votes and actions in contention:

• “VanDeaver did not vote for the elected Republican Caucus nominee David Cook for Speaker of the Texas House, but instead voted for Representative Dustin Burrows.”
• “VanDeaver voted in favor of the Previous Question motion, enabling the so-called ‘nuclear option,’ wherein debate was cut off to exclude Republican perfecting amendments to the Rules of the 89th House Legislative Session.”
• “The last action on HB 1304 was a referral to the House Public Health Committee, through which Committee Chairman VanDeaver ended the bill’s progress.”
• “VanDeaver voted in favor of HB 805 (relating to a study by the Public Utility Commission of Texas on the interconnection of electric transmission service facilities with the United Mexican States.”
• “VanDeaver voted in favor of HB 366, a bill that ‘creates a criminal offense on certain political advertising that contains altered media’.”
• “VanDeaver voted in favor of HB 1359 (relating to the creation of a program to provide income-based assistance for certain retail electric customers).”

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