Sarah Eckhardt declared victory against Republican Texas Comptroller Don Huffines in the race to become the state’s next chief financial officer. She became the first Democrat to oversee the powerful state office in decades.
Eckhardt, a state senator from Austin, won the election against Huffines three months after Gov. Greg Abbott appointed him to the office. Huffines was sworn in after trouncing Abbott’s preferred candidate for comptroller in the GOP primary early this year.
Her resounding victory arrived as Democrats gained control of key state government offices after being locked out of power for a generation.
On Wednesday, Eckhardt said that she had a brief conversation with Huffines and planned to speak with him about his exit plan, suggesting she would like to enter office before January. “I will be having discussions with him because clearly he’s been in the position that I’m in currently, saying that he needed to have a direct hand in the revenue estimate,” she told reporters.
Eckhardt’s campaign centered on ensuring the office operates as a government watchdog that takes on financial malfeasance and waste while scrutinizing state spending on Republican-led efforts. She will enter office with Democratic peers in the governor’s mansion and presiding over the Texas Senate, two key power players the comptroller has to work with to accomplish the agency’s most important charges.
The new wave of Democratic state leaders will likely join Eckhardt in scrutinizing Republican policies they vehemently opposed.
Those GOP initiatives include one of the agency’s most important tasks: implementing a new $1 billion program that offers families taxpayer-funded vouchers to send their kids to private schools and pay for educational expenses. Eckhardt, who will become the first Democratic comptroller since 1999, has vowed to audit the program.
The office is responsible for an assortment of other essential charges, like distributing sales tax revenue to local governments, overseeing state contracts and inspecting procurement processes.
Although Huffines was appointed and never elected to the office in a general election, he began overhauling the agency during his brief stint at the helm. He revamped the organization’s structure and came under fire for a number of decisions that raised questions within the office’s ranks, like the appointment of a young deputy comptroller to oversee the agency’s day-to-day operations.
In a speech Tuesday night, he blamed the decisive Democratic victory on Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and all the “mushy middle people.”
“I hope they’re happy ‘cause now we are all gonna suffer. I blame it all on our leadership thinking they’re gonna go for four terms as governor, four terms as lieutenant governor — I mean seriously?” Huffines said to cheers at his event. “People are tired of the Republicans being in office.”
Four years ago, Huffines challenged Abbott in the gubernatorial primary but lost. Huffines, a former state senator and self-described champion of liberty, had long pushed to eliminate property taxes, and called for the state to build its own wall along the Texas-Mexico border before Abbott started pushing for the same ideas.
In campaigning against Eckhardt, Huffines pointed to his quasi-incumbency and how he wasted no time in taking on government abuse. At the same time, in the weeks leading to November, he often warned Republican crowds about the threat presented by Democrats and the momentum they were riding into Election Day.
“We’re not doing good right now in the early vote. We’re getting beat by the leftists,” Huffines said in Lubbock. “We’re getting beat bad. You need to know that. You need to be scared.”
