Lt. Gov.-elect Vikki Goodwin taps bipartisan transition team as she prepares to lead a GOP-majority Senate

By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune
November 10, 2026

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. 

Longtime Texas political operative Angela Hale will serve as executive director of the Austin Democrat’s transition. Its co-chairs are outgoing Democratic state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie; former Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, the party’s 2014 nominee for lieutenant governor; 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 at her first Capitol press conference since being elected. “The voters sent a message on Tuesday evening: Texans want change and they want their elected leaders to be effective.”

Rounding out the leadership are former GOP state Sens. Kel Seliger, a Patrick foe who departed the upper chamber in 2023 after nearly two decades, and Tommy Williams, a veteran of both chambers who also advised Gov. Greg Abbott on fiscal matters. Williams is one of at least eight registered lobbyists leading Goodwin’s transition — along with Hale and Van de Putte — making up a majority of the 14 names announced Tuesday.

Bringing on 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 chamber’s 31 seats — and could move to restrict Goodwin’s powers, most of which are granted by Senate rules. 

Asked Tuesday how she will work with the Senate’s GOP majority, Goodwin said she learned to collaborate with the other team during her eight years in the Republican-controlled Texas House. 

“When you get a bill passed in the House, you still have to work to get it passed through the Senate,” Goodwin said. “I have that experience already of finding common ground with even the Republican senators.”

Also on Goodwin’s transition team is Judd Messer, a former chief of staff to 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 ex-House Speaker Joe Straus, a Republican; and retired GOP Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips. 

In hiring Republicans, Goodwin is following a familiar strategy deployed by her GOP predecessors when the lieutenant governor’s office last changed party control. In 2002 former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst tapped Bruce Gibson, a former Democratic state representative and chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock. Similarly, Perry also retained some staffers who worked for Bullock when he became lieutenant governor in 1998. 

Nothing bars lobbyists from serving on a transition team, but such appointments can attract criticism by creating the perception that their clients will have influence over the incoming administration. Patrick, meanwhile, announced Monday that he is forming a consulting firm, Patrick Strategies, that will “advise clients on legislative and business development matters.”

Though he will lead the firm after he departs office, Patrick said he “will not serve as a lobbyist.”

Randy Erben, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said hiring lobbyists could benefit Goodwin because of their command of how the Legislature works. The practice is permissible under the state’s ethics provisions, Erben said, as long as they remain in an advisory role. If the lieutenant governor-elect hires them as state employees, they would have to deregister as lobbyists.

Erben, who spent more than two decades as a lobbyist himself, noted previous House Speaker Tom Craddick hired Bill Miller and Bill Messer — two of the best-known lobbyists in Austin — when he first won the gavel.

“Members used to say that the lobby is the world’s largest reference library,” Erben said. “There’s a lot of expertise.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.