Brian and Joy Roberts are not public school advocates. The co-founders of the Grayson County Conservatives, based in the deep-red county on the state border with Oklahoma, do not liken themselves to other conservatives in Texas who have long fought school voucher proposals to protect rural public schools. They are organizing against Governor Greg Abbott’s school voucher plan because they see themselves as the true champions of school choice. 

“True school choice already exists without government intrusion,” they wrote in a March 13 letter to state representatives on behalf of the Grayson County Conservatives, a largely online activist group, urging them to vote against the voucher legislation. The current voucher proposal “introduces government control over private education,” “erodes educational autonomy,” and promotes the “expansion of bureaucracy,” the letter added. Since the letter was published in mid-March, a motley crew of more than 40 conservative groups, 100 activists, and eight homeschool co-ops have signed on. Two-thousand more Texans also added their names, according to Joy Roberts.

The letter also quotes Allen West, the Dallas County GOP chair and former Abbott gubernatorial challenger, who has publicly come out against the voucher proposal: “Let’s not do the same old political thing, rushing to get something passed and then watching politicians pat themselves on the back. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and if we do not clearly define what the measures of effectiveness are, we will just continue sinking the ship of education.”

The group leaders say the support for the letter symbolizes the groundswell of opposition from grassroots conservatives against Abbott’s no-holds-barred push to enact a voucher-style “education savings account” program in Texas. “Abbott’s kind of getting flanked for taking a position that the Democrats don’t like for one reason, and then the conservatives don’t like for a completely different reason,” Brian Roberts told the Texas Observer. “He’s stuck right there in the middle with a limited base who want to put that program in.” 

Over the past 30 years, a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans in the Texas House have successfully fended off various attempts to bring school vouchers to the state—most recently withstanding an onslaught of special sessions in 2023 in which Abbott tried to ram his priority legislation through the lower chamber. 

The governor then proceeded to break the back of that anti-voucher coalition by launching a targeted primary offensive in 2024 that ultimately ousted 15 Republican House incumbents who’d held their ground, replacing them with more hard-right candidates. Abbott’s political firebombing was financed by a billionaire hedge-fund investor from Pennsylvania named Jeff Yass, who gave the governor $12 million—including an initial $6 million check that was the largest campaign contribution in Texas history. 

Having purchased himself what he’s claimed to be a solid pro-voucher majority in the Texas House, Abbott has insisted for the past several months that his top political priority is as good as passed. He’s tried to cast Democrats as the only ones standing in the way of vouchers and has largely ignored, or worked to quash, any signs of dissent from within his own party. But as voucher legislation has advanced further than ever this session, many conservatives are urging their state representatives (including the first-term hardliners who owe their seats to Abbott) to vote against voucher legislation. 

So far, the 76 Republican House members who’ve signed on to vouchers have shown no signs of fracturing. But the strength of those numbers will be put to the test on Wednesday as the House is set to take up the bill, Senate Bill 2, on the floor. 

Last week, Abbott touted on social media, “We have the votes. We’ll make it happen as early as next week.” But in the face of growing conservative opposition, Abbott appears to be again leaning hard on GOP members. On Monday, the Texas House Republican Caucus reportedly sent out an email to members informing them the governor is meeting with them before the floor debate Wednesday. According to the Quorum Report, several Republicans said that “Abbott had already been calling some lawmakers into his office to threaten vetoes of their unrelated bills if any of them offer amendments or vote for changes to the bill on the floor.” The outlet reported that as many as 85 GOP and Democratic representatives support adding an amendment that would put vouchers on the ballot for a statewide referendum this fall. Democrats are also reportedly threatening to block passage of any constitutional amendments—which require a two-thirds majority vote—unless the House votes to put vouchers on the ballot. 

The list of conservatives who have signed onto the Grayson County Conservatives’ letter is long. Signers include more than 40 precinct chairs from several county GOP parties, including Tarrant, Rusk, Denton, Parker, and Collin counties, as well as  members of Moms for Liberty; Leigh Wambsganss, the chief communications officer for Patriot Mobile; and Julie McCarty, CEO of the True Texas Project. Both Moms for Liberty and Patriot Mobile have been key drivers of the right’s takeover of local school boards. The True Texas Project, formerly known as the NE Tarrant Tea Party, represents an extremist reactionary faction of the conservative movement in Texas and is part of the oil billionaire Tim Dunn’s political network. McCarty’s endorsement (even though she believes the bill will pass no matter what) is an apparent break from her group’s donors, who have long bankrolled efforts, including through the Texas Public Policy Foundation where Dunn is a board member, to pass school vouchers and dismantle public education in Texas. 

Hollie Plemmons, a conservative activist and Tarrant County GOP precinct chair, is also one of the signers. She’s been at the Capitol advocating against school vouchers every week since the Senate first took public testimony on its voucher bill back in January. She said she also regularly meets lobbyists from influential pro-voucher conservative groups, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation, American Federation for Children, and Americans for Prosperity. “They’re always here,” Plemmons told the Observer, saying the groups frequently check in with Republican House members who’ve signed on to the voucher bill to make sure they’re all still on board.

As a mom of three, Plemmons said she’s used all of the available options of “school choice” that currently exist in Texas: public schools, homeschool, and a Christian private school. But the moneyed voucher interests, largely coming in from outside the state, don’t represent what her family needs. “I don’t want the government strings,” she said referring to the voucher bills’ provisions that would require participating private schools to submit students’ demographic and test results data to the state. 

Suzanne Bellsnyder, a political consultant and owner of two small newspapers from the rural Panhandle town of Spearman, is another leading voice in the anti-voucher campaign. Conservatives who oppose school vouchers are “principled conservatives,” she said, not “transactional conservatives” who are “dependent on the Wilks-Dunn money.” Bellsnyder is worried that the costs for the voucher program, billed at $1 billion the first biennium and projected to grow to over $4 billion by 2030, aren’t sustainable.

“Rural Texas will be the first place that gets sacrificed when the state doesn’t have funds,” she warned. 

If Abbott succeeds in passing vouchers, activists like Bellsnyder and Plemmons have vowed to take a page out the governor’s playbook and target pro-voucher legislators in the 2026 GOP primaries. “We need to be replacing these elected officials that are going to vote for something because of their donors, because Abbott told them to, because they want Abbott’s support in the next primary,” Plemmons said.

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