Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick lost his bid for a fourth term to Democratic state Rep. Vikki Goodwin of Austin, and the Associated Press declared Goodwin the winner early Wednesday, Nov. 4, The Texas Newsroom reported. “It was a fair election, and I accept the majority will of the voters,” Patrick said in his concession statement, CBS Austin reported.
Goodwin, a real estate broker who took a Republican-held House seat in 2018, ends a 27-year Democratic drought in the job, The Texas Tribune reported. “The people of Texas have spoken, and we made history,” she told supporters, according to CBS Austin.
Patrick, 76, spent nearly a decade pushing bills to limit which bathrooms transgender Texans can use. “This was a wave election in Texas and across the country,” his statement began, according to KPRC.
The AP also called the governor’s race for Democrat Gina Hinojosa over Gov. Greg Abbott, and Gayety’s LGBTQ+ election results are tracking the rest. “I cannot help but think of Governor Ann Richards and the great Barbara Jordan sitting up in heaven and cheering,” Goodwin said at her watch party in downtown Austin, The Texas Newsroom reported.
Patrick’s Pulse Post and the 2017 SB 6 Bathroom Bill
Hours after the June 2016 shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Patrick’s Facebook and Twitter accounts posted the verse “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows,” the Tribune reported. Both posts were gone by about 11 a.m. “Those posts are chosen in advance and scheduled in advance,” Patrick wrote on Facebook.
In January 2017, Patrick and Sen. Lois Kolkhorst unveiled Senate Bill 6, which would have tied restroom use in public schools and other government buildings to “biological sex,” The Texas Tribune reported. “You can mark today as the day Texas is drawing a line in the sand and saying no,” Patrick said.
The Senate passed it that March. “The Texas Privacy Act reflects common decency and common sense and is essential to protect public safety,” Patrick said in a statement from his office.
House Speaker Joe Straus wouldn’t move it, and Patrick threatened to hold up must-pass bills to force a special session. Abbott called one that summer, but Straus never sent the revived bill to a committee, and it died in August 2017, the Tribune reported. Patrick said afterward that he’d urged Straus to pass it and “put this issue in the rearview mirror.”
Texas SB 8 Bathroom Law Took Effect Dec. 4, 2025
“Unfortunately, under previous speakers, the bill never cleared the House,” Patrick said in an Aug. 6, 2025, statement after the Senate passed another version.
Abbott signed Senate Bill 8, by Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, on Sept. 22, 2025, the Tribune reported. It orders state and local government facilities, including public schools, to take “every reasonable step” to keep people in multi-stall restrooms and changing rooms that match their sex assigned at birth, according to a Tribune explainer. The law sets civil penalties of $25,000 for a first violation and $125,000 for each subsequent violation. Each day a violation continues counts separately. The penalties apply to state agencies and local governments, with notice and an opportunity to correct a first violation.
Patrick’s 2023 priority list carried SB 14, which he titled “Ending Child Gender Modification,” and SB 12, “Banning Children’s Exposure to Drag Shows,” KXXV reported. SB 14’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors took effect that September, and the Texas Supreme Court upheld it in June 2024, Axios reported.
In Houston, U.S. District Judge David Hittner ruled for a second time on Aug. 25 that the drag law is unconstitutional, and he blocked the attorney general from enforcing it, the ACLU of Texas said. “Drag is art, drag is joy, and drag is protected expression,” Equality Texas CEO Brad Pritchett said in the ACLU’s release.
Dan Patrick Loses the Texas Senate Gavel to Goodwin
The lieutenant governor runs the Texas Senate and picks who sits on its committees, CBS Austin reported. “Republicans felt like they were invincible and entitled. We showed them that they are not,” Goodwin said as she declared victory, CBS Austin reported.
Senators write the rules that give the job most of its muscle, and there’s already talk of curbing Goodwin’s say over which bills reach the floor, the Tribune reported. “I’m proud of my voting record and my A+ rating from Equality Texas,” Goodwin says on her campaign site, which backs “the freedom to love who they love and be who they are without fear of harm.”
Texas’ U.S. Senate race drew the biggest share of the roughly $183 million Republicans and their allies spent on trans-themed TV ads, Gayety reported in October, and fake “Texas Transgender Student Union” mailers hit homes before the vote. “The reality is undeniable: fearmongering about transgender people is a losing strategy,” GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement Wednesday.
Goodwin takes office with Hinojosa on Jan. 19, 2027, the first Tuesday after the Legislature convenes, as the Texas Constitution requires, The Dallas Morning News reported.
