Sylvia Garcia beat fellow Houston Democrat Carol Alvarado in the special election runoff to succeed the late Mario Gallegos in the Texas Senate. She’s doing a final blitz of fundraisers and might be sworn in within a week. She got 53 percent to Alvarado’s 47 percent. 

Barry Burgdorf, general counsel and vice chairman at the University of Texas System, will leave that post at the end of April. He resigned, and is the latest in a steady stream of departures there. 

Robert Brescia is the new executive director of the John Ben Shepperd Public Leadership Institute at the University of Texas-Permian Basin. He was previously CEO of the Community Care College System in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Gov. Rick Perry appointed:

• former Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade of San Antonio to the Texas Workforce Commission.

• Anna Maria Farias of Brownsville, Nancy Paup of Fort Worth, and George Schrader of Dallas to the Texas Woman’s University board of regents. Farias is an attorney. Paup is a fundraising consultant. Schrader is an investor and former city manager.

• Norman Darwin of Benbrook as Injured Employee Public Counsel, which helps with claims in the workers’ compensation system, to another term.

• Alex Meade III of Mission and Bill Dietz Jr. of Waco as directors of the State Affordable Housing Corp. Meade is CEO of the Mission Economic Development Corp. Dietz is an executive with Extraco Banks.

• Rob Kyker of Richardson to the Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. He’s the owner of R&D Sales and Leasing.

• Angelos Angelou of Austin and former state Rep. Gerry Geistweidt of Mason to the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute’s oversight committee. Angelou is an economist. Geistweidt is an attorney.

Deaths: Mary Margaret Farabee, co-founder of the Texas Book Festival and wife of former Sen. Ray Farabee, from cancer. She was 73.

Former Rep. Dick Slack of Pecos, a Democrat who served from 1953 to 1981. He was 98.