{"id":428689,"date":"2026-09-07T11:47:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T11:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/428689\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T11:47:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T11:47:25","slug":"qa-texas-agriculture-commissioner-candidates-on-school-meals-screwworm-other-priorities-central-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/428689\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Texas agriculture commissioner candidates on school meals, screwworm, other priorities | Central Austin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three candidates are running to lead the Texas Department of Agriculture<\/a> in the Nov. 3 election.<\/p>\n

What you need to know<\/p>\n

Libertarian Austin R. Kelly, Republican Nate Sheets and Democrat Clayton Tucker are vying to become Texas’ next commissioner of agriculture. The commissioner’s duties include regulating agriculture, administering nutrition programs and providing rural economic development assistance, according to the TDA website.<\/a><\/p>\n

There is no incumbent in this race after Sheets beat sitting Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller in the March Republican primary<\/a>. Tucker ran uncontested in the March Democratic primary, while Kelly was selected as the Texas Libertarian Party’s candidate during an\u00a0April nominating convention<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The winner of the November midterm election will be sworn in to succeed Miller in January. Write-in candidates may also appear on the ballot; however,\u00a0Community Impact\u00a0does not send questionnaires to write-in candidates.<\/p>\n

Preparing for the polls<\/p>\n

Early voting runs from Oct. 19-30, and Election Day is Nov. 3. In addition to\u00a0eight statewide races<\/a>, the following state and federal seats are up for election this fall:<\/p>\n

38 U.S. House seats (by congressional district)<\/p>\n

Four seats on the Texas Supreme Court (statewide)<\/p>\n

Three seats on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (statewide)<\/p>\n

Three seats on Texas’ 15th Court of Appeals (statewide)<\/p>\n

16 state Senate seats (by legislative district)<\/p>\n

150 state House seats (by legislative district)<\/p>\n

Eight State Board of Education seats (by SBOE district)<\/p>\n

For more coverage of local and state races, visit\u00a0communityimpact.com\/election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zooming in<\/p>\n

Community Impact’s goal with election Q&As is to provide a side-by-side, equitable resource for Texas voters to review candidates’ perspectives before they head to the polls.<\/p>\n

To ensure that candidates are the ones defining their positions, if candidates did not complete the questionnaire after multiple attempts to contact them,\u00a0Community Impact’s website reads “candidate did not respond to questionnaire before press time.” Candidates were informed of this policy.<\/p>\n

Candidates were asked to keep responses under 50 words, answer the questions provided and avoid attacking opponents. Answers may have been minimally edited or cut to adhere to those guidelines, or for style and clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three candidates are running to lead the Texas Department of Agriculture in the Nov. 3 election. What you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[148945,132,134,133,148947,148208,86042,116483,148946,145929,5304,148948,148951,148949,65871,148950,5877,133326,145922,109506,2879,148944,10204,148954,148953,2963,145923,6605,145920,148952,18335,28194,144155,72862,122268,118689,145921,21434,13090,145930],"class_list":["post-428689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-agriculture-commissioner-qa","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-austin-r-kelly","tag-candidate-perspectives","tag-candidate-qa","tag-clayton-tucker","tag-commissioner-of-agriculture","tag-community-impact-voter-guide","tag-data-centers","tag-get-to-know-austin-r-kelly","tag-get-to-know-clayton-tucker","tag-get-to-know-nate-sheets","tag-nate-sheets","tag-nature-nates","tag-new-world-screwworm","tag-nov-3-election","tag-november-election-texas","tag-school-lunches","tag-sid-miller","tag-texas-agriculture-commissioner-race","tag-texas-ballot","tag-texas-biosecurity","tag-texas-consumer-protection","tag-texas-democratic-party","tag-texas-dems","tag-texas-department-of-agriculture","tag-texas-election-guide","tag-texas-farming","tag-texas-food","tag-texas-gop","tag-texas-libertarian-party","tag-texas-midterms","tag-texas-producers","tag-texas-republican-party","tag-texas-sample-ballot","tag-texas-voter-guide","tag-texas-water","tag-what-to-know-for-the-november-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428689","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=428689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}