Texas Trial Lawyers, Once a Democratic Force, Regain Clout in GOP

When Armin Mizani won the GOP primary for a north Texas House district in March, warning bells went off in certain Republican circles.

It’s not his political ideology. Mizani is a die-hard conservative who, as mayor of Keller, proudly partnered with federal immigration officials, denounced Sharia law and slashed property taxes.

It’s his profession: Mizani is a personal injury lawyer, a career path once so closely intertwined with Democratic politics that both were pushed to the sidelines when Republicans gained control in Texas in the early 2000s.

But now, a quarter century later, some trial lawyers are reclaiming their political relevance by aligning with Republicans. The Texas Trial Lawyers Association, once the de facto war chest of the Texas Democratic Party, sponsored the state GOP convention. Wealthy personal injury lawyers are throwing cash behind conservative candidates, including Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Senate bid.

And trial lawyers themselves are running as Republicans on their record representing “average Texans against powerful insurance companies,” as Mizani said at a candidate forum. “America First Republicans care more about how policy impacts everyday Texans than about corporate profits and special interests,” he added.

Hidden from view of the average Texas voter, this realignment is the result of a complete upheaval of the power base within the Texas GOP. The traditional, business-first Republicans who rose to power by sharply restricting personal injury suits have been supplanted by a MAGA wing that scorns “corporate welfare,” crusades against Big Tech, and is open to the idea that Texas’ legal system has gotten too friendly to big business over the little guy.

Last legislative session, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the longtime capitol kingmaker responsible for creating Texas’ business-friendly legal environment, saw its efforts to further restrict lawsuits fail for the first time in decades. And now they’re watching, aghast, as Republicans up and down the ballot rake in cash from trial lawyers.

“For decades, TLR would blame every problem on trial lawyers in Texas,” said Adam Loewy, a personal injury lawyer and social media political commentator who has recently begun donating heavily to GOP candidates. “The Republican grassroots, they don’t believe that shit anymore. And that’s very different from 25 years ago.”

“Own goals”

In the 1970s and 80s, Texas was the “Wild West of lawsuits,” where plaintiffs’ lawyers routinely won massive judgments on behalf of injured clients. The companies who were forced to pay up saw this as a runaway system of jackpot justice. And they loathed the wealthy, flamboyant trial lawyers who bankrolled the Democratic politicians running the state.

Things came to a head in 1987, after legendary Texas trial lawyer Joe Jamail won the largest civil verdict in U.S. history — $10.5 billion against Texaco. The “King of Torts,” as Jamail was known, then bragged in front of the 60 Minutes cameras about his donations to the Texas Supreme Court, in a segment that exposed Texas’ brand of civil justice to the masses.

“That was an own goal,” said Guy Choate, a San Angelo attorney who led the Texas Trial Lawyers Association in 2005. “The GOP really attached onto that and was able to win a bunch of Supreme Court seats out of it.”

Amid the public outrage, a new group entered the scene — Texans for Lawsuit Reform, promising to put guardrails on the state’s overrun civil justice system.

“They came in with a big bang, because they gave unprecedented amounts of money to Republican candidates, which previously hadn’t been done,” said Bill Miller, a lobbyist and political consultant who worked with TLR in the early days. “They played big, and they found a lot of success.”

After TLR’s millions helped Republicans capture the Texas House in 2003, legislators returned the favor. They enacted the nation’s most sweeping tort reform policy, sharply limiting medical malpractice payouts and reining in what they saw as frivolous lawsuits against corporations. GOP lawmakers cut taxes and regulations and passed more laws reinforcing Texas’ business-friendly legal environment, helping usher in the boundless economic growth the party promoted as the “Texas Miracle.” TLR became the clearinghouse for tens of millions of dollars in political donations from business leaders eager to support aligned candidates.

Trial lawyers, meanwhile, were in the political wilderness, painted as craven scammers who exploited the legal system to line their own pockets. When now-Gov. Greg Abbott ran for attorney general in 2002, he hammered his Democratic opponent, Kirk Watson, for being a “plaintiff personal injury trial lawyer.”

Even as TLR made embracing tort reform a prerequisite to be considered a Republican, there were then, as there are now, Republican trial lawyers. Some of them even supported tort reform and condemned their colleagues who they felt had abused the system.

“These are people that don’t make any bones about it, that they feel more politically aligned with [Republicans],” Choate said. “But TLR had been so effective that they made trial lawyer money just toxic. You’d get primaried by TLR just for talking to a trial lawyer.”

Over the years, the party TLR helped build began to shift — grassroots conservatives gained ground, other donors came on the scene and lawsuit reform faded from the headlines as the tort reformers quashed the trial lawyers. But TLR’s deep pockets and political instincts kept it relevant. In 2014, when right-wing state Sen. Dan Patrick edged out incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the primary, forcing a runoff, TLR abandoned its endorsement of Dewhurst to back the winning horse. Patrick, the group said, was “a tort reform stalwart who has consistently refused to accept political contributions from personal injury trial lawyers.”

For a time, it seemed old-school business interests could work alongside the party’s growing MAGA influence. But the schism was widening, especially as TLR grew more vocal in its opposition to Paxton and the cloud of legal and ethical allegations that had long hung over him. In 2022, TLR gave Eva Guzman, a former Texas Supreme Court justice, $3 million to take on Paxton in the primary, hoping the pro-business faction that had found favor before the high court would follow suit.

She lost, and Paxton returned for a third term with his supporters wary of anyone who had opposed him. The next year, when a majority of House Republicans impeached Paxton, TLR was blamed as the architect of the whole scheme. TLR’s founders denied any involvement, but the damage was done.

“I call that the COVID moment,” said James Wesolek, the founder of Republicans Against Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a new advocacy group that goes by its acronym, RATLR. “That was the moment where everyone realized that TLR wasn’t their friend anymore.”

“A different kind of Republican”

At the Texas Republican Convention earlier this year, Wesolek spoke to a packed room for his talk on “exposing TLR’s liberal agenda.” He brought stacks of four-inch binders detailing every time he believed TLR had betrayed Republican values — by donating to Democrats, supporting GOP incumbents over the hell-raisers primarying them, and pushing corporate-friendly policies.

“TLR is protecting big business, big insurance and criminals, which actively hurts Texans,” Wesolek said. “TLR is fighting against our values. TLR is fighting against what defines us as Texans.”

If the last few years wasn’t proof enough, the cheers from the crowd made clear that the Republican Party TLR helped build is no more. In its place stands an angrier, edgier insurgency less interested in propping up big business than destroying the systems they believe are keeping Texans poor, unhealthy and under the thumb of a government hell bent on taking their freedoms.

Party leaders are catering to this brand of MAGA populism. On the campaign trail, Paxton and Abbott are matching the Democrats’ talk about affordability, health insurance and housing prices. Abbott has vowed that data centers must pay their own way if they’re coming to Texas, and Paxton is touting his lawsuits against Tylenol, Lululemon, Meta and Dow Chemicals.

In this environment, trial lawyers are finding an opening.

“Republican voters are saying, people should be able to be compensated when someone injures them,” Choate said. “This is a really different kind of Republican, more populist, more MAGA, whatever you want to call it, but they’re talking about this issue.”

The cause has found purchase among a new class of GOP lawmakers, many of whom swept into office after Paxton embarked on a revenge tour to help unseat lawmakers who voted to impeach him. Some of these new firebrands are themselves lawyers who work on the plaintiff side.

Marc LaHood, best known for the billboards bearing his face and law practice across San Antonio, ousted TLR-backed Rep. Steve Allison. Mitch Little, Paxton’s attorney, won a North Texas seat by defeating a conservative Republican whose main blemish was voting to impeach Little’s client.

Little rejects the term “trial lawyer” as overly broad and notes that he doesn’t handle personal injury cases. He says he came into office opposed to the idea that he owed anyone a vote based on his profession or party affiliation.

“You’re with the plaintiff’s personal injury bar, or you’re with a Republican PAC that supports capitalism and the American way of life and the Texas way of business,” was the sentiment Little says he encountered. “In my view, like most things in life, it’s just not that binary.”

In their first session, Little and LaHood helped shut down one of TLR’s main priorities, a bill that would have further capped lawsuit payouts. TLR also accused LaHood of blocking another priority bill, which would have made it harder to sue trucking companies, in a blistering letter to its members in which they accused him of being “not philosophically aligned with the business community.”

LaHood replied in kind: “For too long, the powerful have exploited and abused the powerless. I am proud of my record, and I stand by it. I’m not here to help run over regular people.”

As TLR smarted, the trial lawyers pounced. Arnold & Itkin, a Houston personal injury firm, kicked in $10 million to start a PAC aimed at funding candidates who defied TLR. The Texas Trial Lawyers Association gave LaHood half a million dollars to successfully fend off a TLR-funded primary challenger. Loewy and other individual trial lawyers also opened their wallets to Republican candidates, supporting candidates all the way up to the top of the ticket with Paxton.

“It’s very much a one-issue thing. If someone’s with us, like Mitch Little, even if I disagree with some of his other positions, I’m happy to support them,” Loewy said. “You now have serious, serious funding from trial lawyers funding people on the right who are with us on this issue.”

The GOP convention was proof of the new world order. TLR sponsored the event, as always, but so did Wesolek’s group, RATLR. And, this year, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association was right there with them.

In a statement, TTLA President Craig Eiland said the group is not affiliated with either party and supports any candidate who shares its mission of “keeping the courthouse doors open with laws that are fair for all Texans … These are non-partisan issues that reflect the fundamental values of most Texans.”

While Wesolek spoke on stage, Ryan Patrick, the new president of TLR, stood in the back of the convention hall, listening in. The son of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, he was brought on after last session to chart a new path forward for TLR, one that’s adapting to the new era of GOP politics where his group is increasingly seen as a bastion for “Republicans in name only.”

“TLR has sins, real and imagined, that we need to atone for,” Patrick said. “We know not everybody is always going to agree with us, and it’s going to create political realities that not everyone understands and likes. But if I was some sort of in-disguise RINO, I’d be cut out of the family will.”

Patrick believes he can win back the conservative grassroots and find common ground with groups like RATLR.

But the trial lawyers? That’s a different situation.

“The whole argument that there was a time and place for TLR, and we should move on, a lot of that is funded by trial attorneys, some of them Republican trial attorneys,” Patrick said in a recent interview. “Our issue set impacts their wallet, it just does.”

Trial lawyers are a Trojan horse, TLR’s leaders believe, taking advantage of infighting to infiltrate Republican politics, undo lawsuit reform and usher in liberal candidates. Patrick points out that TTLA, and many individual trial lawyers, are still giving heavily to Democrats and their causes.

TLR is trying to fight back by emphasizing tort reform as an affordability issue that helps everyday Texans, not just those that have dealt with the legal system.

Families, Patrick said, are “making a decision between, are we buying groceries, are we paying rent [or] are we getting car insurance?” Insurance companies drive insurance rates, he said, “and when they see the increases in litigation, when they see the increases in verdicts, they’re going to price that in.”

But it’s been a hard message for TLR to sell after decades of positioning themselves at the forefront of Texas’ business boom, and as their foes cast them as a deep state-type actor lined up against the Paxton wing.

If the Republican primaries are any guide, TLR might face another difficult year at the Legislature. LaHood defeated a TLR-backed primary challenger, as did two other Republicans targeted by the group for opposing its priority bills. And Mizani took down his opponent, who TLR spent over $300,000 to boost.

Already, Mizani has positioned himself as a potential dissident against TLR’s push for further tort reform. On X, he recently said that Texas already has strong laws to prevent frivolous lawsuits, and the focus should be on ensuring those safeguards don’t harm injured Texans.

“We can protect businesses from abusive litigation while also protecting the constitutional right of injured Texans to have their day in court,” he said. “Those objectives aren’t mutually exclusive.”

For trial lawyers, used to nothing but further restrictions from the Legislature, this nod toward moderation feels like a victory.

“They’re certainly not just falling down for trial lawyers or victims,” Choate, the San Angelo trial lawyer, said of the new crop of Republican legislators. “They do have an ear, and they will listen, and that is different.”

Disclosure: Meta, Texans for Lawsuit Reform and Texas Trial Lawyers Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in The Texas Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Photo: Delegates and attendees at the 2026 Texas State Republican Convention visit the convention exhibition hall at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston on June 11, 2026. Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune