PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE THE WHEELS NEVER STOP TURNING By Darren Whitehurst, President, TADA TADA endeavors are similar to that of a three-legged stool. The association works on the legislative, legal and regulatory fronts on behalf of new car and heavy-duty truck dealers across the state. As the legal and regulatory areas are a direct result of activities in the legislative arena, we will start with the legislative process and the elections. Texas is one of only four states that have a biennial session. The next regular session will start in January 2025. Our regular sessions run in odd-numbered years for 140 calendar days. They start on the second Tuesday in January and run until around Memorial Day in the late spring. Much of this campaign season has focused on presidential politics and it is shaping up to be as divisive as it was four years ago, with four or five states positioned to determine the outcome. Texas is solidly Republican, and polling suggests that will not be changing anytime soon. All the major statewide offices are currently held by Republicans (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, etc.) and none of these are up for election until 2026. On the 30-year noteworthy front, Texas Democrats haven’t won a statewide election since 1994. Texas just finished its primary election runoffs last month, so there is a pretty good idea of the makeup for both the Texas Senate and Texas House. The Texas Senate is expected to operate in a similar fashion to how it has operated over the last several sessions with Gov. Patrick at the helm and a makeup of 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats with the one caveat below. There will be at least two new members in the chamber from open races — Molly Cook (D-Houston) and Brent Hagenbuch (R-Denton) each won their respective races. There is expected to be one competitive Senate race this fall in a district that runs from north of Corpus all the way to Brownsville. In the 150-member Texas House, the picture is murkier. While there are only a handful of General election races in November that could slightly modify the 86 Republican and 64 Democrats breakdown from last session, the primaries resulted in significant changes. The Republican primaries, in particular, were filled with lots of action and there were significant changes to the representation for a number of these districts. Nine incumbent House Republican members were defeated in March and another six lost in the May run-offs. These 15 losses, along with one on the Democratic side, set the record for the most House incumbents to lose re-election, ever. Coupled with the 16 other members who chose not to run for re-election, it signals what could be a very different Texas House next session with lots of fresh faces and new ideas. Although current House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) narrowly won his re-election in a Primary run-off, he now faces challenges from at least two Republican members of the House to serve as Speaker next session. All the turnover and Speaker-race contention will likely make the next Legislative session a challenging one for the business community, but your TADA team is already at work meeting the newly-elected members and briefing them on the issues most important to your business. Continued on page 8 DEALERS’ CHOICE 6
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