Houston-area freshman legislators aim to make their voices heard as session gets underway

The months since Election Day have been hectic for state Rep. Jeff Barry as he geared up for his first session of the Texas Legislature. 

The Pearland freshman lawmaker attended legislative work groups, Republican caucus meetings, called current and former legislators for advice and spent hours crafting his own legislation, all in preparation for last Tuesday when he took the oath of office on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives with his family beside him. Barry said he felt “honored, flattered, thankful” as he recited the words. 

Then he was thrown into the fire. 

Barry’s first vote was to elect Dustin Burrows as Speaker of the House after a contentious speaker’s race that divided the Republican caucus between more traditional members and hardline conservatives, who have grown dissatisfied with previous GOP leadership. 

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was under a lot of pressure to vote one way or the other,” Barry said. 

Barry said he leaned on his experience running his own insurance brokerage firm in Pearland, serving on the Pearland City Council and serving as a member of the Pearland ISD Board of Trustees when deciding what leadership qualities would best serve the House. His predecessor, Ed Thompson, also has been a mentor and provided guidance on how the election would play out amid the pageantry of the first day of the session: “He said, this is what’s going to happen, and, lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened.” 

Around the same time, on the other side of the Capitol, state Sen. Molly Cook, D-Houston, took the oath of office ahead of her first full session since being elected last May to fill the remainder of John Whitmire’s term after he resigned his seat to become Houston’s mayor. 

Despite already having been sworn in once in Senate District 15 in May, Cook said she grew emotional reciting the words on the floor of the Senate with her family next to her. 

“The Senate, there’s just something very material about it,” Cook said. “The green carpet, the dais, and you’re sitting in your chair at this desk someone has sat at for 150-plus years.” 

Freshman class

Barry and Cook, along with state Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons, D-Houston, Rep. Matt Morgan, R-Richmod, and Rep. Charlene Ward Johnson, D-Houston, are the area’s five legislators beginning their first sessions. They are among 31 new House members and three new senators who took their seats last week. 

Ward Johnson did not respond to requests to comment for this article. 

Freshmen members generally do not take on significant roles during their first sessions, but Barry, Cook and Simmons said they believe they can add value to upcoming debates over water, the rising cost of insurance, high property taxes, fortifying the state’s power grid and private school vouchers. 

“I joke about being the regular person in the body of 150,” Simmons said. “I’m not a business owner, I’m not an attorney, I came from the grass-roots world. Not to say I’m the only one there, but I like to remind (the members) that I can give them a regular person’s perspective.”

The labor organizer entered the political sphere after years of organizing against the state takeover of Houston ISD. While the jump into the legislature has been intense – “like drinking from a fire hydrant” – Simmons said the Harris County Democratic delegation, particularly Dean of the House Senfronia Thompson, has offered plenty of advice while she finds her feet. 

“It’s been really reassuring to hear the senior members say, ‘this is my fourth session, my eighth session, my 10th session, and I learn something new every time,’” Simmons said. 

Because the Texas Legislature only meets once every two years, the 140-day session often can be frenetic as legislators push to approve the state budget, as well as debate thousands of bills. 

The city of Houston is closely watching the session and Whitmire aims to use his 50 years of experience as a legislator to right a previously rocky relationship between the city and state leaders.

Legislative priorities

City Council on Wednesday approved Houston’s “legislative principals,” the guiding document for Houston’s lobbying team in Austin. The broadly-worded document says the city will prioritize funding for a host of services and public safety initiatives. The city faces a budget crisis if it is unable to cover a $160 million deficit by the end of the fiscal year in June. Whitmire previously has indicated he would look to the state for assistance. 

“I can assure you that Houston is going to have better coverage and representation in Austin, not just from its legislative delegation between Senate and House, but certainly voices from the city,” Whitmire told council last Wednesday. 

Over the course of the session, the GOP-led House and Senate are expected to pass an array of conservative priorities while Democrats play defense. Private school vouchers are at the top of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s priority list after the legislature failed to pass such a program in 2023, despite Abbott calling two additional special sessions aimed at getting a bill to his desk to sign. 

Abbott funded Republican primary challenges to 15 members who voted against the voucher bills, unseating 11 of them with pro-voucher candidates. 

Bills also have been filed to further police the lives of transgender Texans, including measures regarding bathroom use and gender identity on government documents. The border will be a priority for Republicans as President-elect Donald Trump takes office and begins to execute on his campaign promises for the mass deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally. Efforts to further restrict abortion in the state by reducing access to abortion pills also have been proposed. 

Barry said his top priorities remain kitchen table items, such as lowering property taxes, lowering the cost of insurance and ensuring drought-prone areas of Texas have enough water for the future. He so far has authored two bills, including a requirement for assisted living facilities to have backup generators and an effort to cap increases on appraisal values for homeowners. 

“Hopefully, I learn a lot this session and can come back next session and be even more effective,” Barry said. “My goal, session in and session out, is to become more and more effective as I go along and build the trust in my district.” 

In the Senate, Cook said she plans to lean on her experience as an emergency room nurse to push her “nurse-first agenda” aimed at “preventing an emergency before it happens.” Three of her bills seek to address problems exposed by the mass power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl in July, and another would ban the sale of certain weight loss drugs to minors. 

Simmons also looked to her work experience when drafting her first bills, including one that would allow state employees to collectively bargain and strike. 

Simmons and Cook were grass-roots organizers before entering politics and said they would deem the session successful if they can increase community engagement in the legislative process within their own districts. 

Simmons said she knew she could be a “pain in the ass” to many lawmakers prior to entering office, but time spent organizing will be front of mind as she learns the job and seeks to engage her constituents. 

“There’s a reason we’re being a pain in the ass, and it’s because when we were asking nicely, you know, we weren’t being heard,” Simmons said. “So, that experience is going to inform a lot of the work we do.”

Cook said she cried on the sidewalk in front of the Capitol when waiting to greet a bus full of constituents that had traveled from Houston to Austin. 

“It was such a watershed moment,” Cook said. “Two years ago, I was on that bus pulling up and being greeted by somebody…. To be able to use that experience and those skills to bring people in, to make it easier for them, has been a really cool, full circle moment.” 

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