Texas Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, asks questions about the proposed redistricting map of Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, as the Texas Senate prepares to take a vote on the redistricting bill passed by the Texas House of Representatives, Aug. 22, 2025.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Dealing with the Texas budget is like wrangling vipers. The slithery items are always moving around, you never really know what’s going on, and if you poke at the wrong place you can expect to feel a sudden sharp pain — perhaps from an aggrieved special interest lobbyist or some other reptilian creature indigenous to the State Capitol.
But over her career as a county judge and state senator, Sarah Eckhardt, 62, hasn’t just wrestled with vipers, she’s eaten them.
For Comptroller of Public Accounts: Sarah Eckhardt
Sarah Eckhardt ★★★★ — With experience in county government and the state Senate, this scion of a Democratic political family wants to help the Legislature tackle tax loopholes and runaway subsidies for special interests.
Don Huffines ★★ — He was appointed by Gov. Abbott to this position in July, and his short tenure has been stained by chaos, scandal and conspiracy theories. Texans deserve a comptroller who treats taxpayer dollars with respect.
“Tastes like chicken,” she told us.
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That’s because she’d regularly join her daddy, longtime Houston representative and congressman Bob Eckhardt, and his friends on long trail rides through the Piney Woods. They’d use makeshift spears to jab any rattlesnakes that might cross their path and, at the end of the ride, grill them for dinner.
Which is a long way of saying that Sen. Sarah Eckhardt knows a great deal about what it means to be a Texan. If you want to hear what politics used to sound like in our state, before online influencers and self-appointed pundits started setting the agenda, listen to her speak — and not just because she has one of the best homegrown wits since Ann Richards. It’s because you’ll hear that she cares about fiscal responsibility, and fundamentally understands how our state and local tax system was originally designed to work. When she talks about keeping government efficient, it’s not just talk: As county judge of Travis County, she regularly cut property tax rates and kept a skinflint attitude about spending taxpayer dollars.
To be blunt: She’s the exact sort of person Texans should want in the office of state comptroller.
Rumpled but happy, United States Representative Bob Eckhart hugs his daughter Sarah after winning his sixth straight term to the House of Representatives.
Blair Pittman/Houston Chronicle
The position oversees state finances, publishing budget projections and running audits. Basically, the comptroller serves as the CFO of Texas. The office doesn’t have much authority to change the budgets, but it sure can highlight important issues and direct legislators’ attention.
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Meeting with the editorial board, Eckhardt spoke with a common-sense attitude about the office, referencing the work of past comptrollers such as Bob Bullock, John Sharp and, notably, Republican Glenn Hegar, who stepped down last year to become president of Texas A&M.
“Hegar was quiet but highly capable,” she said. “My only objection to Hager was that he didn’t put in plain English what he was trying to advise.”
She even carried around one of his reports that highlighted how cutouts and loopholes mean that most sales in our state actually aren’t being taxed.
“So what he’s saying is we are exempting more than we’re collecting,” she told us.
For example, think of that $3.2 billion giveaway to data centers over the next two years, thanks to a special sales tax break. Now imagine all of the other special tax treats lawmakers have granted for the powerful and politically connected over the years. Those gifts inherently shift the burden onto everyday Texans.
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Where Hegar offered no formal recommendation, Eckhardt would encourage the Legislature to close those loopholes, broaden the tax base and use the revenue to lower property taxes.
“That the best way to reduce property taxes is for the state to clean up their damn act on the taxes that they collect,” she said. “Stop giving away the store to businesses that don’t need subsidies.”
Except for the casual cursing, it’s reminiscent of Mitt Romney’s presidential tax plan. How’s that for fiscal responsibility?
Eckhardt counts private school vouchers among those runaway subsidies. She points out that the cost is projected to balloon from $1 billion to $4 billion, and she projects it could even reach $7 billion and cover 80% of all private school education in the state.
“Which sounds a lot like what happened with the runaway subsidy for data centers,” she said.
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As comptroller she would want to provide real oversight of the voucher program and make sure it actually delivers quality education, rather than fueling low-quality schools and scammers.
“There’s a school in my Senate district that is an AI-only school that promises two hours a day with basically a chatbot teacher,” she says. You can bet that if she’s comptroller, Texans will hear more about that.
In contrast, Eckhardt’s Republican opponent calls for a spend-baby-spend approach to private school subsidies. Don Huffines, a 68-year-old real estate mogul, wants to double the amount of taxpayer funds we pour into those vouchers.
Huffines, whom Gov. Greg Abbott appointed comptroller in July, chose not to talk with the editorial board as we screened candidates. But we don’t have to guess what he’d do if elected.
Former Senator Donald Huffines, a former Republican member of the Texas Senate, speaks to the crowd during a legislative priorities rally held by the Republican Party of Texas at the Texas State Capitol on Saturday, January 9, 2021 in Austin, Tx., U.S.
Matthew Busch, Contributor / For The San Antonio Express-News
The Texas comptroller’s office has 3,000 employees, mostly non-political people who do unsexy but important work like collecting taxes and managing the state payroll. During Huffines’ short tenure as boss, the former state senator imposed DOGE-style hack-and-slash layoffs that created chaos but have done little to save money. He lost hundreds of years of institutional knowledge and experience at the agency, as the Texas Tribune put it, and instead installed a 25-year-old as his top deputy in charge.
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After allegedly firing people because they weren’t sufficiently Christian, he faces lawsuit threats.
And he has announced plans to use his office to investigate fluoride in the state water supply.
Overall, taxpayer dollars should be treated with more respect and caution than Huffines has shownr. We also have questions about his ownership of the late Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.
Libertarian candidate V. Alonzo Echavarria-Garza and Green Party candidate Shehla Faizi are also on the ballot.
We urge all voters to save Texas from Huffines’ wild-eyed antics and go with the fiscally responsible choice, the right choice for Texans. Vote for Sarah Eckhardt for comptroller.