texas' former republican house speaker says $100 million in anti-trans ads moved nothing. we could have told them for free.

Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center / Robert Markowitz, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

via Texas Monthly, as quoted by the Houston Chronicle and AlterNet

"We're still running transgender ads. It's just not resonating."

That is not a Democratic strategist. That is Dade Phelan, the Beaumont Republican who was speaker of the Texas House from 2021 to 2025, talking to Texas Monthly's Eric Benson in an interview published Wednesday. Texas Monthly's own page would not load for us, so the quotes here are as both the Houston Chronicle and AlterNet printed them, word for word.

"$100 million in ads, $125 million in ads, and nothing's moved the needle here in Texas in a month in the Senate race," Phelan said. Those are his figures. The race is Ken Paxton against James Talarico, and the Chronicle notes Talarico has been leading in the polls.

why the ads aren't working

Phelan's read on the swing voter is the line we will be quoting for a while. "The 8 to 10 percent of voters in the middle who are going to decide this election, when they hear stuff about boys in girls' sports, they don't even know what you're talking about," he said, per AlterNet's fuller transcript. "This never happened in their communities, and they've been hearing about it for so many years, and so many other people have been accused of it."

"What Republicans are talking about is just not what the swing voter is really interested in," he added.

Read that middle sentence again. A former Republican speaker of the Texas House said, on the record, that the thing his party has been running ads about for years mostly did not happen where voters live. We have been saying that for about as long, at a significantly smaller budget.

"people are freaking out"

He did not stop at the ads. "They were with us last cycle, and they're not with us this cycle," Phelan said, according to both outlets. "We're just not paying attention to the issues that matter." AlterNet's account has him describing the mood among Republicans this way: "It's real. People are freaking out."

A caveat, because he is not our friend. The Chronicle points out that Phelan's record on LGBTQ issues is complicated. He is diagnosing a messaging failure, not apologizing for anything.

Still. This race has given us a viewer warning slapped on a drag queen and Kacey Musgraves bringing up Kristi Noem's dog. A Republican former speaker admitting the trans panic is not landing is, somehow, the least chaotic development yet.