Incoming Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan Signaled Support For TEXIT Vote in 2016

Video footage has surfaced of incoming Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan indicating his support for a vote on TEXIT. His support, however, is conditional.

In a recent story by KFDM News in Beaumont on the rise in support for TEXIT, a staffer for soon-to-be Speaker of the House, Representative Dade Phelan, was quoted as saying that Phelan doesn’t support TEXIT. However, in 2016, it appears that Phelan publicly expressed his sentiment that the people should at least have a vote on the issue.

Taken at a meeting of the Southeast Texas Tea Party in 2016, Phelan was asked about the Texas Nationalist Movement’s efforts to get a TEXIT plank on the Republican Party of Texas platform at the convention just weeks earlier.

While Phelan indicated that he would not vote for TEXIT, he did say that he would be on board for a vote on the issue if his constituents told him they wanted it.

In his new role of Speaker, Phelan will have an outsized role in determining if the Texas Independence Referendum Act makes it across the finish line and whether the people of Texas will get an independence vote. Whether or not Phelan ultimately supports TEXIT, he must make good on his word that the people of Texas should ultimately decide the issue in a vote.

Phelan needs to hear from you. Let him know that you appreciate his willingness to let the people vote on the issue in 2016 and ask that he make good on his word in 2021. You can reach his district office in Orange at 409-745-2777.

The questioner reminded Phelan that delegates at the state Republican convention had stood up for Texas independence if the federal government didn’t behave, and asked whether he would file a TEXIT bill.

Phelan said he would not. He commended the questioner’s efforts and said people were talking about the issue, adding that the question for many wasn’t whether TEXIT was a good idea but whether Texas could actually do it. It wasn’t how he would handle the issue, he said, but he didn’t disparage anyone taking that route.

Phelan said that if his voters in Southeast Texas wanted their voice heard, he would support it. He put TEXIT in the same category as gambling and other major questions, and said he shouldn’t stand in the way of the people having a voice on them.