{"id":190191,"date":"2026-03-04T14:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T14:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/190191\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T14:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T14:51:08","slug":"austin-democrats-goodwin-eckhardt-lead-in-race-for-lieutenant-governor-and-state-comptroller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/190191\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Democrats Goodwin, Eckhardt lead in race for lieutenant governor and state comptroller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two Austin Democrats are hoping to change Texas politics after a record-breaking turnout in the party&#8217;s primary election.<\/p>\n<p>Sarah Eckhardt will move forward to the November general election after securing a win during the primary election Tuesday night.<\/p>\n<p>State Rep. Vikki <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kut.org\/politics\/2025-05-20\/state-rep-vikki-goodwin-an-austin-democrat-is-running-for-lieutenant-governor\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Goodwin,<\/a> who has represented District 47 in Southwest Travis County for several years, was in a tight race for the lieutenant governor nomination. She had less than the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff against opponents Marcos Isaias Velez and Courtney Head, as of early Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There is a lot of excitement in this election cycle,&#8221; Goodwin said. &#8220;This is great for Texas. We&#8217;ve had 30 years of Republican leadership and people recognize that it is time for change.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>If Goodwin wins the nomination, she will face incumbent Dan Patrick in November.<\/p>\n<p>Eckhardt, who served two terms representing State Senate District 14, received more than 60% of the primary vote for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kut.org\/politics\/2025-12-08\/austin-democrat-sarah-eckhardt-texas-comptroller-campaign\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Texas comptroller<\/a> nomination. She finished well ahead of her opponents, Savant Moore and Michael Lange.<\/p>\n<p>Eckhardt celebrated her early victory on Tuesday night and said she is ready to take on the GOP nominee, Don Huffines. <\/p>\n<p>Huffines, a former state senator, won his primary over several rivals, including acting comptroller Kelly Hancock who took over after the previous comptroller Glen Hegar resigned in July 2025. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is going to be so much fun, y&#8217;all,&#8221; Eckhardt said, while addressing a crowd of supporters on Tuesday night. &#8220;We have a dynamite slate of candidates. We are going to fan out all over the state of Texas for the next 245 days in a relay race, and telling people that Texas prosperity should be for Texans and not just for the rich and powerful.&#8221; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Austin Democrats are hoping to change Texas politics after a record-breaking turnout in the party&#8217;s primary election.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,50553,2133,288,27644,75555,287,10233,2424,27],"class_list":["post-190191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-comptroller","tag-democrats","tag-elections","tag-lieutenant-governor","tag-lt-governor","tag-politics","tag-primary-election","tag-republicans","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190191","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=190191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}