Texas State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, spoke about her run for the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts at the LBJ Patman Center on Monday.
Eckhardt, a UT alumna, has represented UT and West Campus in the state Senate since 2020 and is now serving her second regular term, which will end in 2029. She previously campaigned for Congress but switched to the comptroller race on Dec. 8, 2025. Eckhardt won the Democratic nomination for comptroller on Tuesday and will face Republican nominee and former state Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas, in the November election. A Democrat has not won the statewide office in Texas since 1994.
The comptroller’s office has watchdog functions that can counteract “one-party dictatorship,” she said at the conversation hosted by Evan Smith, a journalist and professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. The comptroller functions as the state’s chief financial officer, reporting on economic trends, monitoring appropriations and collecting taxes.
She said she was attracted to the comptroller’s office as the statewide office cannot be gerrymandered following a Texas mid-decade redistricting in July 2025.
“The job here, whether it’s in a statewide run or a congressional run, is to stop this one-party dictatorship,” Eckhardt said. “I figured my better use was in a statewide run.”
Eckhardt said comptroller-related issues college students should be concerned about include the Permanent University Fund, a state-owned, multi-billion-dollar endowment that gets allocated to Texas A&M and UT System schools annually, as it goes through the comptroller’s office.
The school voucher program is another issue that, while not directly impacting higher education, will reduce resources for public schools and make it harder for public school students to get into flagship universities, Eckhardt said.
Eckhardt said she wants to use the office’s reports to offer Republican representatives “cover” to protest issues that they may not support in private but are still widely supported by the GOP.
“At least I can report out what I know,” Eckhardt said. “Many of my Republican colleagues have a muzzle so tight over their face that the retribution is so swift if they are to step out of line.”
Eckhardt said she wants to advocate for federal funding allocation for programs, like SNAP benefits and funding for indigent civil and criminal defense. She said Texas is not siphoning federal income taxes into these programs as the state does not want “strings attached” to the federal government.
“We don’t want the federal government to tell us what to do, but this is your money,” Eckhardt said. “We already paid it in income.”
Eckhardt said Texans deserve a state government that will support its citizens equally.
“Money doesn’t care what hat you wear,” Eckhardt said. “You need the public dollars invested in the prosperity of all Texans. We have seen a growing pay-to-play system that only invests in the Texans that vote for the one party in power.”
