Texas Independence Leader Vows 'War' on GOP: 'Buckle Up'

A leading Texas independence campaigner has vowed to "go to war" with the state's Republican Party after it rejected an over 139,000-signature petition calling for a vote on Texan secession to be included on its March 2024 primary ballot.

Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), which organized the petition, said to "buckle up" and vowed to take legal action on an episode of his podcast, The Texas News.

The campaign for an independent Texas, dubbed "TEXIT," has scored a number of wins over the past couple of years as American politics becomes increasingly polarized by ideology and region. In June 2022, the Texas GOP backed calls for a vote on whether the state "should reassert its status as an independent nation" at its convention in Houston.

In March 2023, then-Texas state Representative Bryan Slaton introduced legislation demanding a referendum on "whether or not the State should investigate the possibility of Texas independence," though it failed to pass the committee stage.

Miller delivered the 139,456-strong petition to the Republican Party headquarters in Austin in December, saying there had originally been 170,097 signatures but that 30,426 were rejected by the TNM. The requirement to get a vote on the Texas GOP primary ballot was 97,709 valid signatures of registered voters in the state.

Of the signatures submitted by the TNM close to half were rejected by the Texas GOP, which claimed they were either invalid or contained errors such as a lack of information or being signed online rather than by hand. The Republicans also said the petition was delivered in an "untimely" manner as it was received on the deadline rather than the day before.

In a letter to Miller setting out his objections, Texas Republican Party chair Matt Rinaldi said: "The vast majority of petition signatures were invalid. A number of the signatures omitted one or all of the residence address, county of registration, and date of birth/voter registration number. Many contained invalid voter names.

"Only an estimated 8,300 of the purported 139,000 signatures were in the petition signer's own handwriting. The remainder of the signatures submitted were electronic."

Rinaldi said the TNM had fallen short of the required figure, commenting: "For these reasons, the voter petitions delivered by the Texas Nationalist Movement on December 11 are rejected as untimely and, even if they had been timely submitted, do not contain the required 97,709 valid signatures to place a matter on the 2024 Republican Primary ballot."

A Republican Party of Texas spokesperson told Newsweek they did not want to comment beyond the content of Rinaldi's open letter for legal reasons. Newsweek has also contacted the Texas Nationalist Movement for comment via email.

In an episode of The Texas News podcast titled "We Are Going To WAR With The Texas GOP," Miller said the TNM is going to fight for those who want a TEXIT referendum, regardless of whether they signed the petition or not.

The TNM had already threatened the Texas GOP with a court case prior to Miller's letter in a resolution approved by its board of directors on December 27. It stated that as the Republican Party of Texas had "failed to acknowledge or act upon these submitted petition signatures in accordance with the stipulations of the Texas Election Code" the board "hereby authorizes the initiation of legal action."

The resolution didn't specify exactly what form this legal action could take.

Update 1/10/24, 3:05 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to note the Republican Party of Texas declined to comment beyond Rinaldi's open letter.