{"id":24165,"date":"2025-10-28T06:33:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T06:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/24165\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T06:33:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T06:33:16","slug":"state-sen-sarah-eckhardt-announces-run-for-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/24165\/","title":{"rendered":"State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt announces run for Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\tAudio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/about\/ethics\/#ai-policy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AI policy<\/a>, and give us <a href=\"https:\/\/airtable.com\/appFeleeKVUN0Iytx\/pagPG40gbkU0EfjIr\/form\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>State Sen. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.texastribune.org\/sarah-eckhardt\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sarah Eckhardt<\/a> launched her campaign for Texas\u2019 10th Congressional District on Monday, saying voters in the district, long held by Republicans, deserve choices.<\/p>\n<p>The Austin Democrat\u2019s announcement comes a month and a half after Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, said he is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2025\/09\/14\/michael-mcccaul-retiring-texas-congress-republican-austin\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">vacating<\/a> the Republican-leaning district after more than 20 years in office.<\/p>\n<p>In her launch video, Eckhardt compared the spirit of her campaign to the efforts to build large-scale infrastructure projects in the district, like Lake Livingston and the Mansfield Dam, and the level of cooperation it took the Founding Fathers to create the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not going to agree on everything, but just like those original 13 colonies, we can work together to build things that last as long as Mansfield Dam \u2014 not just until the next election cycle,\u201d Eckhardt said.<\/p>\n<p>Eckhardt was elected to the Texas Senate in 2020. She is now serving her second term, which ends in early 2029. This means she won\u2019t have to give up her seat to run for Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Eckhardt has deep roots in Austin, having previously served as a Travis County Commissioner and Travis County Judge. She\u2019s also the daughter of the late Rep. Bob Eckhardt, who represented Texas\u2019 8th District in Congress from 1967 until 1981.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As a state senator, Eckhardt\u2019s campaign website touts her focus on strengthening climate resiliency, expanding health care, and criminal and social justice.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The district was redrawn this summer to include more Democratic areas of Austin, but is still likely to remain under Republican control. If the new boundaries had existed during the 2024 election, Donald Trump would have won the district with 60.5% of the vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The district includes Texas A&amp;M University in College Station and stretches from parts of Austin into East Texas.<\/p>\n<p>So far, 10 candidates have filed to run in the Republican primary, including lawyer Chris Gober, who has represented Elon Musk, and lobbyist Jessica Karlsruher. Two other Democrats, college professor Dawn Marshall and voting rights advocate Tayhlor Coleman, have filed for the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Candidates have until Dec. 8 to jump into the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Gabby Birenbaum contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<p>Disclosure: Texas A&amp;M University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/support-us\/corporate-sponsors\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16702,16703,27,29,28,1863,2860,6588],"class_list":["post-24165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-michael-mccaul","tag-sarah-eckhardt","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-senate","tag-u-s-house-of-representatives","tag-well-c-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24165","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=24165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}