Texas has a powerful new House speaker after years of escalating Republican infighting. Dustin Burrows won the job on Tuesday with the support of Democrats who favored him over a challenger backed by the GOP’s emboldened hard right.

The leadership fight in Austin follows months of all-out political warfare between Republican factions and could further empower the state’s most strident conservatives.

Lubbock Republican state Rep. Dustin Burrows clenched the speakership of the Texas House on Tuesday in the culmination of an unusually long and unusually public mudfight for the role. As expected, Burrows relied on a coalition of Democratic and Republican members to win,