The Lone Star State hasn’t elected a Democrat as lieutenant governor since Bob Bullock in 1994, but Vikki Goodwin says she believes Texans are tired of book bans and nanny state-style THC regulations.
Goodwin, an Austin Democrat who’s served in the Texas House of Representatives since 2019, told the Houston Press before the March primaries that her campaign focused on housing affordability, public education, clean water and healthcare. Since then, her opponent Dan Patrick has provided a lot more material to work with; specifically, the elimination of all hemp-derived products and more than 2,000 books from the shelves of public school libraries.
Goodwin is among many members of the Texas legislature trying to unseat Republicans in statewide races.
State Reps. Gina Hinojosa and Rep. Jon Rosenthal are running for governor and railroad commissioner, respectively. Sen. Nathan Johnson is in a bitter battle with Mayes Middleton to become the next Texas attorney general. And of course, one of the biggest federal races in the country pits Democratic nominee Rep. James Talarico against AG Ken Paxton for a U.S. Senate seat previously held for decades by Republican John Cornyn.
Patrick has been on a mission to ban intoxicating hemp-derived products since late 2024, a stance that has earned him favor with alcohol distributors and drawn the ire of people who use THC products to treat PTSD, sleep disorders and chronic pain. Some of those people are Republicans, and they’re having a tough time with proposals to ban all products rather than just regulate them like alcohol and tobacco.
As of July 31, recreational marijuana is still illegal in Texas, but hemp, derived from the same plant, is not if the product contains no more than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC. Tinctures and gummies can still be purchased but vape pens with THC and synthetic THC products cannot.
Smoke shop employees have said they’re returning banned products to manufacturers, and confusion abounds around what people can possess and how the new law will be enforced. Texas law enforcement officers have said they don’t have a mechanism to test whether a vape contains THC or nicotine.
Goodwin held a rally earlier this month at White Oak Music Hall to show her support of a November ballot measure that would decriminalize small amounts of marijuana within the city of Houston.
“It’s a rally to legalize and regulate cannabis products, kind of like alcohol is regulated,” Goodwin told the Press on the morning of the event. “A lot of people are unhappy about what’s happened because everyday people use it for pain relief, anxiety, sleep aids, all sorts of things.”
At the rally, which featured samples of legal cannabis products and music by R&B singer and activist Kam Franklin, Goodwin told the crowd that it’s now a felony to possess a vape pen containing any amount of THC.
“Purchase and possession of products that you could buy over the counter just a few weeks ago are now illegal. Thousands of Texas manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers lost their business overnight. Consumers who relied on tested, labeled products are now buying from an unregulated market,” she said.
On the night of Goodwin’s event, Patrick released an attack ad using an AI-generated video suggesting Goodwin wants to raise taxes. Goodwin pointed out that Patrick voted to give billion-dollar tax breaks to data centers and said the ad proves that the lieutenant governor is worried about the close race and is prioritizing “culture wars and kickbacks” over real economic issues that Texans care about.
Patrick, who was elected to the Texas Senate in 2006 and ran for lieutenant governor for the first time in 2014, has never lost an election. A poll conducted by Texas Pulse in August showed Goodwin with a 2 percentage-point lead over Patrick but a Texas Southern University poll from last month showed Patrick leading by 7 percentage points and revealed that many Texas voters aren’t familiar with Goodwin.
Some political experts have suggested that Ground Game Texas’ petition to put marijuana decriminalization and an end to “no-knock” warrants before Houston voters is an effort to get first-time voters to the polls who will also cast ballots for Democratic candidates. Houston Mayor John Whitmire has said that arresting people for possession of a few ounces of marijuana is already a low priority and officers don’t burst into people’s homes without announcing themselves.
However, Houston officials confirmed earlier this month that misdemeanor marijuana arrests have soared by almost 1,300 percent since Whitmire was elected in December 2023.
Ground Game Texas executive director Catina Voellinger says it’s imperative to have policies on the books to support what is done in practice.
“Texas regulates alcohol. We regulate big tobacco. We don’t send someone to jail simply because they possess a six-pack of beer,” she said. “The government created rules around these products. Why is our instinct with cannabis, a plant, to reach for handcuffs rather than sensible regulation?”
But weed isn’t the only problem Patrick’s campaign is facing. He recently announced that he wants to ban 2,200 books from public school libraries, including Night by Elie Wiesel, a 1956 memoir that recounts the author’s experience and his father’s death in a Nazi concentration camp. The book is on the State Board of Education’s required reading list, so it doesn’t make any sense to remove it from libraries, Goodwin says.
“I’m sure he has no idea what books are on that list,” she told the Press. “Twenty-two hundred is a huge number. It’s really just meant to send a chilling effect through our schools. Librarians feel under attack because it’s their job to select books and we already have a process in place where if parents disagree with a book in their library, they can make a complaint and it goes through a process.”
“Removing 2,200 books is just ridiculous,” she added. “We should be encouraging our kids to read, not discouraging them. I think a lot of people disagree with the book ban. It’s not anything that anybody was talking about when Dan Patrick had that press conference to talk about it. It just seems like he’s out of touch with what people are concerned about.”
In an August 19 press conference, Patrick said he’ll introduce new legislation in the session that starts in January to ensure that, if public schools don’t remove “obscene” titles like Flowers for Algernon and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from their shelves, they’ll see a drop in their accountability ratings.
Senate Bill 13, passed in 2025, granted school boards the authority to remove books based on complaints from parents but Patrick claims many Texas districts aren’t complying.
“So we’re coming for the books,” he said at his press conference. “We ask that you do it on your own and remove these books.”
EveryLibrary, a national political action committee based in Chicago, created a petition calling for Texans to stand against Patrick’s “latest push to make school library censorship part of his 2026 re-election year political agenda.”
“Decisions about which books belong in school libraries should be made thoughtfully by professional educators, librarians, parents and local communities,” EveryLibrary members said in a statement. “They should not be dictated from Austin through political threats. A school does not suddenly become worse at teaching mathematics, reading, science or history because a politician objects to a title in its library. Using the accountability system in this way would turn school performance scores into an instrument of political compliance.”
The November midterms have become a battle between some Republicans pursuing Christian nationalist values that the other side believes to be harmful and discriminatory, and Democrats being criticized for what are perceived to be socialist policies that the other side believes will bankrupt the government.
President Donald Trump held a GOP rally in Dallas last week to raise money for Paxton and implore Texans to vote Republican. Gov. Greg Abbott has pledged to spend millions in Harris County to turn the community “dark red.”
Goodwin says she knows it will be challenging to pull off a blue wave, but she’s committed to spending a lot of time in Houston to ensure that voters at least know who’s on the ballot and what they stand for.
“Houston is a big city. We know that the Republicans are going to put a lot of money into Houston, trying to turn it and get voters to go their way, so I want to make sure voters hear my message as well,” she said.
