Texas

Texas has a "plural executive," deliberately built so the Governor cannot run the whole show. Voters separately elect a long list of statewide officials who answer to the electorate, not the Governor: the Lieutenant Governor, the Attorney General, the Comptroller of Public Accounts (the state’s tax collector and chief financial officer), the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and the Commissioner of Agriculture. Three elected Railroad Commissioners regulate the oil and gas industry, a famously misleading title, since the commission has little to do with railroads today. The State Board of Education is elected too.

Notably, the Secretary of State is one of the few major offices the Governor actually appoints. Because so many department heads are elected in their own right, a Texas Governor often presides over an executive branch staffed by rivals, sometimes from the same party, sometimes not.

The standout is the Lieutenant Governor, who is elected separately from the Governor and is more a legislative officer than an executive one: presiding over the State Senate, deciding which bills are heard, shaping committee assignments, and co-driving the budget. Many observers consider it the single most powerful office in Texas.

The Texas Legislature is bicameral: a 31-seat State Senate (four-year terms) and a 150-seat House of Representatives (two-year terms). It is a part-time body, legislators are paid $7,200 a year plus a per diem while in session, so most hold other jobs.

The defining feature is the calendar. The Legislature meets in regular session only once every two years, in odd-numbered years, and that session is capped at 140 calendar days. Everything the state does for a two-year budget cycle has to be crammed into roughly four and a half months. Between sessions, only the Governor can convene a special session, and the Governor sets its agenda, which is a major source of gubernatorial leverage in an otherwise weak office.

A bill is filed, referred to committee, and, if it survives, scheduled for floor debate. In the Senate the Lieutenant Governor controls the flow; in the House the Speaker and the Calendars Committee do. After passing one chamber the bill repeats in the other, and a conference committee reconciles differences. The 140-day clock makes internal deadlines brutal: bills that miss a calendar cutoff simply die for two years.

The Governor can sign a bill, veto it, or let it become law without a signature, and Texas grants a line-item veto over appropriations. A veto override needs two-thirds of each chamber, but here the biennial calendar creates a quirk found in few states: because the Legislature usually adjourns before the Governor’s veto deadline, most vetoes land after lawmakers have gone home, leaving no opportunity to override. The "post-adjournment veto" is, in practice, final.

Texas does give voters a direct role in one area: amending the state constitution. The Legislature refers amendments (and it does so often, the constitution has been amended hundreds of times), which voters then ratify at the ballot. There is no citizen statutory initiative, though.

The Texas governorship is constitutionally weak but situationally strong. The Governor does not control most of the executive branch (those officials are elected) and shares budget power with the Legislative Budget Board, which the Lieutenant Governor and Speaker dominate. What the Governor does hold is a powerful, hard-to-override veto, the line-item veto on spending, thousands of appointments to state boards and commissions, and sole authority to call and set the agenda for special sessions.

Clemency is sharply limited. The Governor cannot grant a pardon or commutation on their own, it requires a recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, much like Georgia. The one unilateral power is a single 30-day reprieve in a death-penalty case.

Texas elects its judges in partisan elections, all the way up. It is also one of only two states (with Oklahoma) to split its highest court in two: the Supreme Court of Texas hears civil and juvenile cases, while a separate Court of Criminal Appeals is the court of last resort for criminal matters. Below them sit the Courts of Appeals and the trial-level District Courts. Mid-term vacancies are filled by gubernatorial appointment, after which the appointee must stand in the next partisan election.