AT THE TIME it seemed they had outdone themselves. In the past two legislative sessions Texas Republicans outlawed abortion, allowed gun-owners to carry their weapons without permits, gave state judges the power to deport immigrants, banned diversity offices in public universities and nixed all sorts of progressive city laws. In a note to funders last summer, the Republican state party chair declared that the flurry of policies amounted to “probably the most sweeping conservative change ever passed in our Texas state legislature”.

It may come as a surprise, then, that the speaker of the Texas House, the man responsible for getting those bills through the  lower chamber, is at risk of losing his job for not being conservative enough. On May 28th Dade Phelan (pictured) will face his first challenger in a decade in a run-off primary election that threatens to end his political career. If he loses it will be the first time that Texas’s speaker has been dethroned since a scandal took down the governor, lieutenant-governor and speaker in 1972. His challenger, David Covey, an oil-and-gas consultant and political newbie, has been endorsed not only by many of Texas’s top dogs but by America’s most famous Republican, Donald Trump. The primary has become the most expensive state-representative race (with spending of some $7.5m) in American history, according to AdImpact, a data firm.