{"id":138966,"date":"2026-01-26T22:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T22:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/138966\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T22:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T22:30:07","slug":"union-leader-is-sleeper-in-dems-texas-lieutenant-governor-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/138966\/","title":{"rendered":"Union leader is sleeper in Dems’ Texas lieutenant governor race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Subscribe<\/a>\u00a0to The Blast, The Texas Tribune\u2019s premier newsletter, for exclusive reporting, nonpartisan analysis and the first word on political moves across the state.<\/p>\n

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Steelworkers union leader Marcos V\u00e9lez has emerged as a dark horse candidate in the Democratic race for lieutenant governor, receiving the bulk of his financial support from a donor trail that leads back to the Texas Democratic Party\u2019s top campaign partner, Texas Majority PAC.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, V\u00e9lez\u2019s campaign received another major boost: a coveted endorsement from the Texas AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education, the political arm of the largest labor union federation in the state whose backing is among the biggest a Democratic candidate can land. <\/p>\n

The mix of labor support and big money is presenting an opening for V\u00e9lez in his primary against four-term state Rep. Vikki Goodwin of Austin. Whoever earns the nomination will no less face an improbable battle to unseat Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the powerful and popular presiding officer of the Texas Senate with nearly $40 million in his campaign coffers. <\/p>\n

Less than 40 days from the March 3 primary election, V\u00e9lez has been raking in endorsements from labor and beyond, including one from the Houston LGBTQ+ Political Caucus, the oldest civil rights organization in the south dedicated to LGBTQ issues. In a statement Monday, V\u00e9lez said he was \u201chonored to have the support of the Texas AFL-CIO and their hundreds of thousands of union brothers and sisters.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I might not be a career politician, I am the candidate in this race who understands the struggles of working Texans and who will address them when in office,\u201d said V\u00e9lez, the assistant director of the United Steelworkers union\u2019s District 13. <\/p>\n

A Pasadena native who is relatively unknown among voters, V\u00e9lez has also hauled in cash from an eyebrow-raising source, at least indirectly. <\/p>\n

Since mid-2025, shortly after Kendall Scudder was elected Texas Democratic Party chair, the TDP has worked with the Texas Majority PAC as a coordinated campaign dubbed Blue Texas. TMP, a Houston-based organization backed by liberal megadonor George Soros, came onto the scene in the 2024 cycle and has focused on making gains for Democrats outside big cities, with the broader goal of flipping the state.<\/p>\n

As a general rule, the group remains neutral in the primaries, but recent campaign finance reports show TMP indirectly supporting V\u00e9lez. <\/p>\n

On Dec. 23, TMP gave $60,000 to a PAC called Houstonians for Working Families. A week later, the PAC donated $30,000 to V\u00e9lez\u2019s campaign and spotted him another $25,000 for his campaign launch video the following day.<\/p>\n

TMP\u2019s $60,000 to Houstonians for Working Families accounted for two-thirds of the group\u2019s receipts in the second half of 2025. And the $55,000 HFWF gave to V\u00e9lez \u2014 plus $3,900 earlier in December \u2014 accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total fundraising haul he has reported since launching his campaign on Nov. 17.<\/p>\n

Still, Goodwin had a significant cash advantage over V\u00e9lez at year\u2019s end, disclosing a $161,000 war chest to V\u00e9lez\u2019s $51,000 cash on hand. The Austin Democrat also vastly outspent V\u00e9lez over the back half of the year, $492,000 to $6,000. A third candidate, Courtney Head, reported having $17.35 cash on hand. <\/p>\n

Goodwin said in an interview Monday that she spoke with Scudder, the party chair, on Friday night, after the Tribune first reported<\/a> on TMP\u2019s contribution. She said Scudder assured her TMP is not directly working with V\u00e9lez and that he is focused on rebuilding the party and not picking sides in primaries. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can donate the way that they want,\u201d Goodwin said, adding that she was focused on building trust and connecting with voters and donors around the state. \u201cA statewide race is tough. It\u2019s a big state. There\u2019s a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she remained confident the nominee would receive total backing from TMP in the general election. <\/p>\n

Texas Democratic operatives told The Texas Tribune they were shocked by the appearance that Texas Majority PAC is supporting any candidate in a contested primary, particularly against a Democrat who already holds an elected office.<\/p>\n

TMP executive director Katherine Fischer denied that the PAC was officially or unofficially supporting V\u00e9lez.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not endorsing anyone in that race,\u201d Fischer said. \u201cI think he\u2019s a very exciting candidate, but we are primary-neutral.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, V\u00e9lez\u2019s campaign manager, Pl\u00e1cido G\u00f3mez, recently worked for TMP as a grants manager and training director.<\/p>\n

Asked whether TMP was formally supporting his campaign, V\u00e9lez deferred to TMP.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you that they\u2019ve been extremely warm in the reception of my idea to run,\u201d V\u00e9lez said. \u201cI feel like they\u2019re the ones best positioned to speak on where they stand on my campaign. But as a candidate, I\u2019ve found that they\u2019ve been very receptive to the idea of labor candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a half-hour interview last week before he received the AFL-CIO endorsement, V\u00e9lez said he would use the lieutenant governor\u2019s office to help working-class Texans as they struggle with rising everyday costs, which he said were erasing their hopes of economic prosperity. <\/p>\n

He pointed to public sector employees he\u2019s represented, through his union role, who have master\u2019s degrees and earn $40,000 to $50,000 a year. He also said the state is not tapping into potentially rich revenue sources, like hemp-derived THC products and casinos \u2014 two ideas that put him in direct contrast with Patrick, who is for an all-out ban on the THC products and opposes the legalization of gambling. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized we are never going to be able to advance the interests of working-class people unless we have someone that understands those issues actually in office,\u201d said V\u00e9lez, a former mechanic and oil industry worker. \u201cI started looking at the race and I felt like there was an opportunity to actually run a platform based on my actual values, and so I threw my name in the hat.\u201d<\/p>\n

V\u00e9lez added that worker protections pushed by his union have routinely failed to clear the Legislature\u2019s upper chamber, which has been pushed far to the right under Patrick\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n

Should the Democratic nominee unseat Patrick, they would face another challenge once in office: The lieutenant governor\u2019s most important powers are set out in the Senate rules approved by the chamber at the start of each regular legislative session. Republicans will retain a comfortable majority in the Senate when lawmakers return to Austin in January, meaning they would likely rein in those powers \u2014 which include creating and appointing committees and deciding where to send bills and when to bring them to the floor \u2014 if a Democrat takes over the lieutenant governor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Subscribe\u00a0to The Blast, The Texas Tribune\u2019s premier newsletter, for exclusive reporting, nonpartisan analysis and the first word on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2137,1864,288,27644,40554,27,42073,2963,29,293,28,8627],"class_list":{"0":"post-138966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-2026-elections","9":"tag-dan-patrick","10":"tag-elections","11":"tag-lieutenant-governor","12":"tag-renzos-stories","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-texas-afl-cio","15":"tag-texas-democratic-party","16":"tag-texas-headlines","17":"tag-texas-legislature","18":"tag-texas-news","19":"tag-vikki-goodwin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}