Developing Jerry Jones Says It Is Time for Texas to Have Sports Betting. Dan Patrick Was the Lock. The Door Is 21 Senate Votes, and Tuesday Left Republicans Holding 19 of 31.

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Jerry Jones went on 105.3 The Fan on Friday, three days after Texas voters removed the lieutenant governor who had personally kept sports betting off the Senate floor, and said the quiet part in his own dialect. "It is a plus in my mind with the best place in the world for sports, Texas, for us to have the gaming," he said, per the Dallas Morning News, adding that he hoped the "new turnover" in Austin would come to see it that way. He also said Texas is "one of maybe two states" without legal sports betting. It is one of 11, by Covers' count. He was off by nine, which is roughly the number of Republican state senators his side still needs.

That is the whole story, and the rest of this piece is the arithmetic behind it. Dan Patrick's defeat on Tuesday removes a lock. The door is a constitutional amendment, which in Texas requires 21 of 31 senators, and Tuesday's election returned a Senate with 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats, the same as before. The House got easier. The Senate got a new presiding officer and the same count.

What Tuesday changed

Vikki Goodwin, an Austin-area state representative since 2019, beat Patrick by about 52% to 46%, per CBS Texas' count with roughly 5,200 of 5,300 polling places reporting. Patrick phoned her to concede shortly after midnight Wednesday. "This was a wave election in Texas and across the country," he said in his campaign's statement. "I accept the majority will of the voters." He had held the office since 2015. Goodwin is the first Democrat in it since Bob Bullock, whose final term ended in 1999. Kalshi's traders had Patrick at 78% the week before voting, per Covers.

The wave went further than the second floor. James Talarico beat Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate, Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott, and every statewide office flipped, per MultiState's results page. The Texas House went from 88-62 Republican to 81-64 Democratic with five seats still being counted. The Senate did not move: 19 Republicans, 12 Democrats, as it was in January.

Jones, who told the station "I'm really apolitical. I really can't afford to be a party because our fans are all parties," gave $250,000 to a Paxton joint fundraising committee before the election, per the Morning News, and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. Paxton lost to Talarico. Apolitical in Jones' usage means he backs whoever can help the Cowboys, which he said in so many words: "When I have something that will help the Cowboys, then I'm all in." The honest reading is that he is now courting a Democratic Austin after funding a Republican one, and that he would do it again in reverse.

What Patrick actually did in 2023, and why it is not the same as 21 votes

The last time this came close was May 2023. HJR 102, Rep. Jeff Leach's amendment to let the Legislature authorize sports wagering, passed the House 97-44 on second reading on May 10 and came back the next day for final passage needing 100. The first roll call showed exactly 100. A verification that took several minutes found 101, after at least five members who had voted no the day before switched, per CBS Austin. The casino amendment, HJR 155, got 92 and stalled.

Patrick's response, posted that weekend and reported by The Texan: "HJR 102 also will not be referred. Can't waste committee/floor time in the last days." And the reasoning: "Texas is a red state. Yet the House vote on sports betting was carried by a Dem majority. The Texas Senate doesn't pass bills with GOP in the minority." The bill's record on Texas Legislature Online ends on May 12, 2023, "Received from the House." It never got a committee.

Here is the part that matters now. In March 2023, before the House had even voted, Patrick said of Sen. Lois Kolkhorst's companion amendment, SJR 39, that "I have not had one senator come to me who says they're interested in voting for it" beyond the handful already signed on. Kolkhorst is a Republican from Brenham. Her co-author was Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, a Democrat. That was the Senate's public support in 2023: one Republican author and a few names. Patrick refused to refer the bill, and the refusal was real, but he was also telling the truth about the count behind the refusal. Removing him removes the refusal. It does not conjure the nine Republican votes a 12-member Democratic caucus needs to reach 21.

The House got easier

The 2023 coalition was 101 votes in an 86-64 Republican House. Patrick was right that Democrats carried it: even if every Democrat voted yes, which they did not, since Hinojosa, then a representative, voted against both amendments, that left at least 37 Republican votes in the total. By March 2025, 15 House Republicans, 12 of them freshmen who had replaced pro-gambling members, wrote to State Affairs chair Ken King that the new sports betting amendment, HJR 134, was "dead on arrival." "We are confident this legislation does not have the votes necessary to pass the Texas House this session," the letter said, per the Texas Tribune, which counted a net loss of more than a dozen votes from the 2023 coalition. The 2025 bill never got a hearing.

An 81-64 Democratic House changes that math substantially. If the Democratic caucus votes the way it voted in 2023, the amendment needs 19 Republicans rather than 37. There were more than 19 Republican yes votes in 2023 and the 2025 letter did not claim they had all disappeared. The House, in other words, is a plausible 100 in 2027. It was not in 2025.

The Senate did not

Twenty-one of 31. Twelve Democrats, assuming all of them, which the 2023 House record says is not automatic for this party on this issue. Nine Republicans, from a caucus whose most recent public statement on the election came from Sen. Charles Schwertner: "Texas stands as long as the Texas Senate Republican caucus holds the line. We will."

The Tribune's Alejandro Serrano reported on Thursday that the caucus is already discussing the rules. The lieutenant governor's real power, referring bills, naming chairs, deciding what reaches the floor and when, comes from Senate rules adopted by simple majority at the start of each session, not from the constitution. Republicans have 19. Garrett Fulce, a Houston PR executive and former party operative, told the Tribune he "can almost guarantee" they will change the rules to stop a Democratic lieutenant governor from forcing votes Republicans do not want to take. The Tribune asked 14 Republican senators about it and none answered. Goodwin's response was that she is "fairly intelligent" and will "figure out ways to get things done."

There is precedent for this caucus editing the rulebook to fit its count. In 2015 it lowered the floor threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths, 19 votes, when it had 20 members. In January 2021, after losing a seat, it lowered the threshold again to 18 on an 18-13 party-line vote. Patrick's explanation at the time, per the Tribune: "I only have 18 Republicans. I need 16 votes." A caucus that rewrote the floor rule twice to keep bills moving without Democrats is not going to leave a Democrat the power to move bills without Republicans. Goodwin may still refer a 2027 amendment to a committee in January. Whether that committee has a chair who will hear it is a decision 19 people will make before she takes the gavel.

The strongest case for optimism, and our answer

The best argument on the other side is that Patrick's block was never a vote count, it was a veto, and vetoes distort counts. Senators who could hide behind "it will not be referred" never had to tell a Cowboys fan or a Houston casino developer how they would vote. A hearing in 2027, if Goodwin can get one scheduled, forces a recorded position, and recorded positions move under pressure from a House that has already passed the thing and a governor who cannot veto it. Hinojosa, the governor-elect, voted no in 2023 and has offered no gambling framework since, per Covers, but she does not have a say on a joint resolution. Goodwin has said the question belongs to Texans at the ballot box. The industry's money, which built a 101-vote House coalition once, has not gone anywhere. And every statewide Republican lost on Tuesday, which concentrates minds.

Our answer is that a hearing is not 21. Patrick's own 2023 description of the Senate, a Republican author and a few names, has never been contradicted by a Republican senator in public. The Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention registered against the 2023 bill and have not left the state. The 2025 freshman class in the House ran, in part, against the 2023 votes, and won. And the specific mechanism that would let Goodwin force the issue, control of referral and the floor, is the mechanism Republicans are openly discussing taking away in January. If nine of them want to legalise sports betting, they can do it under any rules. Nothing in the record says nine of them do.

So: the 90th Legislature convenes in January 2027. An amendment that passed both chambers by the session's end would go to voters in November 2027, the next date Texas puts constitutional questions on a ballot. Enabling legislation, a regulator and licensing come after that. No Texan places a legal sports bet in 2027 under any scenario, and the scenario that gets them one in 2028 runs through nine Republican state senators who have not been named. Jones is right that it is "a plus." He is wrong about how many states are ahead of him, and the gap between those two numbers is the gap between a radio hit and a law.