Why Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s endorsed candidates always win
By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune
January 14, 2026
Jon Gimble says he has plenty to offer GOP primary voters in his bid for an open Texas Senate seat.
He’s a lifelong Texan and a local public servant, upsetting a Democrat in 2014 when he was elected district clerk in McLennan County. And he says he has political relationships in Austin while also being in touch with residents living in rural areas outside of Waco, who feel some of their biggest problems are neglected at the Capitol.
But the one thing Gimble can’t offer might kneecap his chance of representing the district southwest of Dallas he seeks: an endorsement from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the upper chamber’s kingmaker.
“I’m not running against the lieutenant governor,” Gimble said. “They’re going to do what they’re going to do.”
If history is any predictor, Gimble’s campaign is toast. No GOP candidate for the Texas Senate has ever defeated a Patrick-endorsed primary opponent since he became the state’s second-in-command over a decade ago. Patrick, whose campaign did not respond to interview requests or questions for this story, will oftentimes back his candidates with money or campaign appearances, but the real power of his endorsement stems from the strength of his own political capital.
Republican groups and donors — recognizing the inevitability of his endorsement — get in line with their own endorsements and cash hoping to cultivate relations with the odds-on favorite and Patrick himself. Notably, the lieutenant governor has also tilted the odds toward his chosen candidate by marshaling the endorsement of President Donald Trump, who has been unusually attuned to Texas’ downballot races thanks to his close relationship with Patrick.
But Patrick is also known to donate lavishly. Last election cycle, he gave $750,000 to Sen. Brent Hagenbuch, of Denton, who won a competitive race in an open seat.
Patrick has thrown his weight around especially in primaries to replace departing incumbents, ensuring that GOP senators who retire or go on to seek higher office are replaced with fresh faces with familiar views. Less than two months away from the primary election, it is evident the lieutenant governor would like to keep it that way: He has endorsed Republicans running in four of the five open red-leaning Senate seats — two of whom face no primary challengers.
And Patrick’s endorsement alone can stave off competitors.
“Patrick’s endorsement is of enormous value in a Republican primary,” said Bill Miller, a longtime Austin lobbyist who co-founded the influential HillCo firm. “You can’t really overestimate that.”
The result has been an upper chamber stuffed with Patrick allies who are in lockstep with the chamber’s presiding officer and his vision of pushing the Legislature ever rightward. His grip in the Senate has effectively prevented efforts to legalize casinos in Texas and for many years stifled efforts to expand the medical marijuana program. The Senate reliably passes his every whim. Last year, it passed all 40 of his priorities outlined ahead of the session and by the end of two overtime legislative sessions, the Legislature passed new restrictions on the bathrooms trans Texans can use, long one of Patrick’s priorities that had eluded the governor’s desk.
In Gimble’s race, Patrick is backing state Rep. David Cook of Mansfield. But Gimble believes he can break the Patrick endorsement spell in part because he sees a math problem for Cook.
Cook is well known in Tarrant County, but Senate District 22, left open by the retirement of GOP Sen. Brian Birdwell, is much larger. Gimble’s home county, McLennan — which contains Waco — is the biggest source of primary votes among the district’s 12 counties. Meanwhile, Tarrant County voters accounted for 17% of the votes cast in the same primary.
Patrick has not yet given Cook any financial backing, however, the next campaign finance filing deadline is later this week. Cook’s campaign did not respond to an interview request.
A third candidate, Rena Schroeder, is also running in the primary.
“I’m sure there is about to be a flood of mail and TV and radio ads trying to convince everyone that he, in his plaid sweater vest, has a shotgun and rifle,” Gimble said. “But I grew up here. My dad grew up here. My grandad had the first local television station show.”
With his accrual of power, Patrick is often described as ruling the Senate with an iron fist. But his supporters are quick to note that the lieutenant governor’s most important powers — creating and appointing committees, deciding where to send bills and when to bring them to the floor — are bestowed by senators, who at the beginning of each session approve the chamber rules that let the presiding officer largely run the show as he sees fit.
While Patrick may rule in part by consensus, he has also given senators reason to fear crossing him. He often leaves little doubt about where he stands on key issues and remains unafraid of flaming those who oppose him, at times stripping dissenters of their committee chairmanships.
During his first legislative session as lieutenant governor in 2015, Patrick began moving to shore up his power by pushing senators to reduce the number of votes required to take up a bill in the 31-seat chamber. The threshold, lowered from 21 to 19, meant the Senate’s 20 Republicans could pass their priorities without any Democratic support.
Craig Estes, then a longtime Republican senator from Wichita Falls, voiced concern that the change would increase polarization in the chamber and abstained from the vote on whether to lower the threshold.
When Estes was up for reelection in 2018, Patrick endorsed his opponent — and spent $17,000 to help him. Estes lost his seat.
Since then, Patrick has had little cause for taking out dissident GOP incumbents, a breed that has all but vanished from the Senate. Still, he has continued to march into intraparty warfare by tilting the odds toward his preferred candidates in open primaries.
That playbook was encapsulated as recently as the November special election for an open Senate seat in North Texas. Patrick’s chosen candidate, Leigh Wambsganss, trounced the other Republican in the race, former Southlake Mayor John Huffman, to advance to a runoff against the lone Democratic candidate, Taylor Rehmet.
Huffman’s campaign received nearly $3 million from pro-gambling groups eager to make inroads in the Senate, giving him a financial advantage. Wambsganss said she, like Patrick, opposes the effort to legalize casinos in Texas. She received 36% of the vote to Huffman’s 16%, preventing the gambling industry from gaining a foothold in the upper chamber.
The runoff will take place Jan. 31 to finish out the term of former Sen. Kelly Hancock, another cautionary tale for senators who stepped down in the summer to be appointed acting comptroller of public accounts. Wambsganss, the chief communications officer for the Christian conservative wireless provider Patriot Mobile, faces no primary opponent in her quest to win it in November.
It is hard to imagine any Republican senator pushing back against Patrick, said Joshua Blank, the manager of polling and research at the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
That was evident during this year’s legislative session, when senators backed Patrick’s priority legislation to ban all hemp-derived THC products — like gummies that have a similar effect to marijuana — only to have it vetoed by the governor. Patrick’s prohibition drew the darling of the hard right rare criticism from right wing commentators, personalities and activists.
“The lieutenant governor has created some negatives for himself among a small set of Republican voters,” Blank said. “But nonetheless, he remains a very popular figure.”
There’s one open primary race the lieutenant governor has not yet endorsed in.
Rep. Trent Ashby, R-Lufkin, and Rhonda Ward, a former member of the Texas GOP’s governing executive committee, are duking it out for the seat opened by the retirement of Sen. Robert Nichols, who has represented a chunk of east and southeast Texas since 2007.
There’s little reason for either of them to even think about saying anything negative about Patrick.
“I will be the conservative ally that he needs,” Ward said in an interview. Ashby’s campaign said the representative was not available for an interview.
Left out of the equation, and often the policy making, are the chamber’s 11 Democrats. And that’s not expected to change — thanks in part to the decade-old rule change that stymied the minority party’s clout on party-line votes.
To those inside the Capitol, it is Patrick’s opinion that matters above all else. Miller, the lobbyist, said that when he meets with a senator about any given issue, the conversation frequently starts with a question: What’s the lieutenant governor say?
Carla Astudillo contributed to this report.
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This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.