Dallas's Senate Seat Is Open: Nathan Johnson's Win as Attorney General Means a Special Election Still to Be Called
Johnson (D-Dallas) and Austin's Sarah Eckhardt both won statewide office on election night. Their Senate seats — his in Dallas, hers in Austin — must be filled by special elections that have not yet been called, even as the 19–12 Republican Senate prepares to write its own rules.
DALLAS — Dallas is about to elect a state senator all over again. Sen. Nathan Johnson, the Dallas Democrat, won the office of Texas attorney general on election night — and that win vacates his Senate seat, which "needs to be called" for a special election, in the words of the Texas District & County Attorneys Association's post-election legislative rundown. Austin faces the same arithmetic: Sen. Sarah Eckhardt won the comptroller's race, opening her seat on the same terms. No call, date or field has been announced for either race in any source read Monday.
The vacancies land in a chamber already mid-argument about itself. The Senate remains in Republican control with a projected 19–12 majority — the same split as the current one — but with a Democratic lieutenant governor-elect presiding, the old operating system is in question: as the prosecutors' association puts it, in the Dan Patrick era the lieutenant governor appointed all committees and their chairs, directed bills and controlled the flow of debate, while the Senate can decide its own rules, including who appoints committees and how many votes it takes to bring a bill to the floor. All of that gets decided when the 90th Legislature convenes in January — quite possibly before Dallas and Austin have their new senators.
For Dallas, the practical stakes are immediate. Bill filing for the session opened Monday morning, and every other senator's office is already staffing, filing and counting votes for January's rules fight and the speaker-era realignment across the building. Dallas's Senate district will do that work with a seat in transition — represented in the interim by a departing attorney-general-elect, and in the session, whenever the special election is called and run, by whoever North Texas voters send to Austin to finish the term. The desk will file the election call, and the field, the moment either is announced.
