Senfronia Thompson has sat in the Texas House since 1973, and on November 6, 2026, she said she has the votes to pick up the gavel.
The Houston Democrat, 87, released a list of 90 members pledged to elect her speaker of the Texas House. Eight of them are Republicans. Winning the job takes 76 votes in a 150-member chamber, and the formal vote comes on January 12, the first day of the next session. No woman and no Black member has ever held the office.
Thompson represents District 141 in Houston and is the longest-serving woman and the longest-serving Black member in Texas legislative history. Members call her the dean of the House. The session she would preside over is the state’s ninetieth and her own twenty-eighth.
What she said first was not about settling scores. “I’m not here to punish anybody. I did that when I was a parent,” she said. She said the chamber would not be a dictatorship under her, that she expects members to represent their districts, and that the work takes “the expertise of Republicans and the expertise of Democrats, working as a unit.”
She said she wants the Legislature to remember “who brought us to the dance,” and to spend the session on “education, health care. You name it.”
“We are willing, and we’re rolling up our sleeves, and we are ready to go,” she said. “We’re ready to fight.”
