Lt. Gov.-elect Vikki Goodwin on Tuesday named a bipartisan slate of current and former elected officials and aides to lead her transition team as she prepares to take office in January after unseating GOP stalwart Dan Patrick.
Angela Hale, a longtime Texas political activist, will serve as executive director of the transition for the Austin Democratic Party. Its co-chairs are incumbent Democratic Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie; former Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor in 2014; and Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, also a former Democratic state senator.
“I understand the immense responsibility of this position and I am ready to take it on,” Goodwin, a four-term state representative, said during her first news conference at the Capitol since her election. “Voters sent a message Tuesday night: Texans want change and they want their elected leaders to be effective.”
Rounding out the leadership are former GOP Sen. Kel Seliger, a Patrick foe who left the upper chamber in 2023 after nearly two decades, and Tommy Williams, a veteran of both chambers who also advised Gov. Greg Abbott on tax issues. Williams is one of eight registered lobbyists leading Goodwin’s transition — along with Hale and Van de Putte — and makes up the majority of the 14 names announced Tuesday.
The nomination of Seliger and Williams is notable because Goodwin will preside over a Texas Senate that remains in Republican hands. Despite losing control of the lieutenant governor’s office for the first time since 1999, Republicans will control 19 of the Upper House’s 31 seats — and could move to curb Goodwin’s powers, most of which are granted by Senate rules.
When asked Tuesday how she would work with the Senate’s Republican majority, Goodwin said she learned to collaborate with the other team during her eight years in the Republican-controlled Texas House.
“When you pass a bill in the House, you still have to work to get it through the Senate,” Goodwin said. “I already have experience finding common ground even with Republican senators. »
Goodwin’s transition team also includes Judd Messer, former chief of staff for state Rep. Trent Ashby, a Lufkin Republican elected to the Senate last week. Other members include Denise Davis and Jesse Ancira Jr., both former chiefs of staff to former House Speaker Joe Straus, a Republican; and retired Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips.
In hiring Republicans, Goodwin is following a familiar strategy deployed by his GOP predecessors during the last change in party control by the lieutenant governor’s office. In 2002, former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst tapped Bruce Gibson, a former Democratic state representative and chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock. Likewise, Perry also retained some staffers who worked for Bullock when he became lieutenant governor in 1998.
Nothing prevents lobbyists from being part of a transition team, but such appointments can draw criticism by creating the perception that their clients will have influence over the new administration. Patrick, meanwhile, announced Monday that he is creating a consulting firm, Patrick Strategies, which will “advise clients on legislative and business development matters.”
Although he will run the company after leaving office, Patrick said he “will not serve as a lobbyist.”
Randy Erben, a professor at the University of Texas Austin Law School, said hiring lobbyists could benefit Goodwin because of their mastery of how the Legislature works. This practice is permitted by state ethics provisions, Erben said, provided they remain in an advisory role. If the lieutenant governor-elect hires them as state employees, they will have to deregister as lobbyists.
Erben, who himself spent more than two decades as a lobbyist, noted that former House Speaker Tom Craddick hired Bill Miller and Bill Messer — two of Austin’s best-known lobbyists — when he first took the gavel.
“The MPs were saying that the lobby is the largest reference library in the world,” Erben said. “There’s a lot of expertise.”
