The Bandera County Republican Party has censured State Rep. Andrew Murr of Junction for opposing the core principles of the Republican Party of Texas, citing his role in impeaching Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as the latest in a list of violations.
Republican Party of Texas (RPT) Rule 44 allows the party to censure a Republican officeholder for violating the core principles of the RPT, including the party platform and legislative priorities, three or more times during a biennium.
Bandera County GOP laid out Murr’s voting violations in their censure resolution, including:
- Voting with Democrats to elect State Rep. Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) as Speaker of the Texas House knowing Phelan would appoint Democrats to committee chairmanships, which they said “violated the Republican Party Legislative Priority to ban the appointment of Democrats to committee chairmanships in a Republican House.”
- Voting in favor of House Bill 1 Amendment 45 by State Rep. Abel Herrero (D-Robstown) to prohibit the use of appropriated money for school choice programs. The censure says, “This vote violated the RPT’s seventh core principle and legislative priority of School Choice.”
- Voting in favor of House Bill 1635 by State Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) to allow the state to interfere with private political party processes. “This violated the third, fourth, fifth and ninth core principle, going against a free enterprise society unencumbered by government interference or subsidies,” according to the censure.
Additionally, according to the censure, “Murr, chair of the Committee on General Investigating (CGl) has demonstrated a pattern of action demonstrably opposed to the third, fourth, fifth and eighth Core Principles of the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) Platform.”
“The move to impeach Ken Paxton effectively seeks to overturn the will of the November 2022 voters (Third Principle),” reads the censure. Additionally, they highlighted that “none of the witnesses who provided information to that committee were place[d] under oath before giving their statements as required by Texas Government Code 5301.022 (Third, Fourth and Fifth Principles).”
Notably, “the Texas House has failed to follow its own precedents in previous impeachment hearings, which traditionally offered due process and defendant representation following the Texas Rules of Evidence (Eighth Principle),” continues the censure. “The CGI under the guidance of Chairman Murr hired a group of partisan investigators and accepted second-hand and third-hand testimony gathered by those investigators (Eighth Principle).”
They also pointed out that Paxton was not allowed to question witnesses or present evidence of his own during the committee investigation, which they said violates the eighth principle as well.
The Bandera County GOP censure requests that the State Republican Executive Committee concur with the resolution and impose the full penalties in Rule 44 upon Murr. These penalties would include disallowing Murr from running as a Republican in the Primary Election.
Murr did not respond to Texas Scorecard’s request for comment before publication.
