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Sarah Eckhardt
2020 - Present
2029
5
Sarah Eckhardt (Democratic Party) is a member of the Texas State Senate, representing District 14. She assumed office on July 31, 2020. Her current term ends on January 9, 2029.
Eckhardt (Democratic Party) ran for re-election to the Texas State Senate to represent District 14. She won in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Eckhardt previously served as the Travis County Commissioners court judge from 2014 to 2020. She resigned from the court on May 12, 2020, in order to run in the special election for Texas State Senate District 14.[1]
Education
Eckhardt earned a B.F.A. from New York University, going on to receive her J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She was admitted to the bar in 1998.[2]
Career
In 2006, Eckhardt was elected county commissioner of Travis County (Precinct 2). She held that seat until the spring of 2014 when she began her campaign for county judge.[3] Prior to her election, Eckhardt served for eight years as a prosecutor with the Travis County District Attorney's Office.[4]
Committee assignments
Note: This membership information was last updated in September 2023. Ballotpedia completes biannual updates of committee membership. If you would like to send us an update, email us at: editor@ballotpedia.org.
2023-2024
Eckhardt was assigned to the following committees:
- Committee of the Whole Senate
- Local Government Committee
- Nominations Committee
- Senate Transportation Committee
- Veteran Affairs & Border Security Committee
2021-2022
Eckhardt was assigned to the following committees:
- Local Government Committee
- Water, Agriculture, & Rural Affairs Committee
- Nominations Committee
- Veteran Affairs & Border Security Committee
Sponsored legislation
The following table lists bills this person sponsored as a legislator, according to BillTrack50 and sorted by action history. Bills are sorted by the date of their last action. The following list may not be comprehensive. To see all bills this legislator sponsored, click on the legislator's name in the title of the table.
Elections
2024
See also: Texas State Senate elections, 2024
General election
General election for Texas State Senate District 14
Incumbent Sarah Eckhardt won election in the general election for Texas State Senate District 14 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Sarah Eckhardt (D) | 100.0 | 321,035 |
| Total votes: 321,035 | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Texas State Senate District 14
Incumbent Sarah Eckhardt advanced from the Democratic primary for Texas State Senate District 14 on March 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Sarah Eckhardt | 100.0 | 64,908 |
| Total votes: 64,908 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Campaign finance
Endorsements
Eckhardt received the following endorsements.
2022
See also: Texas State Senate elections, 2022
General election
General election for Texas State Senate District 14
Incumbent Sarah Eckhardt defeated Steven Haskett in the general election for Texas State Senate District 14 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Sarah Eckhardt (D) | 82.2 | 265,094 |
 | Steven Haskett (L) | 17.8 | 57,305 | |
| Total votes: 322,399 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Stephen Lutostanski (Independent)
- Pat Dixon (L)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Texas State Senate District 14
Incumbent Sarah Eckhardt advanced from the Democratic primary for Texas State Senate District 14 on March 1, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Sarah Eckhardt | 100.0 | 77,309 |
| Total votes: 77,309 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Libertarian convention
Libertarian convention for Texas State Senate District 14
Pat Dixon advanced from the Libertarian convention for Texas State Senate District 14 on March 12, 2022.
Candidate | ||
| ✔ |  | Pat Dixon (L) |
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Campaign finance
2020
See also: Texas state legislative special elections, 2020
General election
Special general election for Texas State Senate District 14
The following candidates ran in the special general election for Texas State Senate District 14 on July 14, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Sarah Eckhardt (D) | 49.7 | 60,531 |
 | Eddie Rodriguez (D) | 33.9 | 41,202 | |
 | Donald Zimmerman (R) | 12.9 | 15,753 | |
| Waller Thomas Burns II (R) | 1.2 | 1,464 | ||
 | Jeff Ridgeway (Independent) | 1.2 | 1,410 | |
| Pat Dixon (L) | 1.1 | 1,323 | |
| Total votes: 121,683 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
2018
General election
General election for Travis County Judge
Incumbent Sarah Eckhardt won election in the general election for Travis County Judge on November 6, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Sarah Eckhardt (D) | 100.0 | 350,949 |
| Total votes: 350,949 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Travis County Judge
Incumbent Sarah Eckhardt advanced from the Democratic primary for Travis County Judge on March 6, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Sarah Eckhardt | 100.0 | 95,214 |
| Total votes: 95,214 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
2014
See also: Texas judicial elections, 2014
Eckhardt ran for election to the Travis County Court.
Primary: She was successful in the Democratic primary on March 4, 2014, receiving 54.9 percent of the vote. She competed against Andy Brown.
General: She faced Mike McNamara and Richard Perkins in the general election on November 4, 2014.
[5]
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Sarah Eckhardt did not complete Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.
2022
Sarah Eckhardt completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Eckhardt's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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Texans. After receiving an LBJ School Master of Public Affairs and law degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998, Eckhardt worked for eight years as an Assistant Travis County Attorney. From 2006-2013 she served as Travis County Commissioner representing 300,000 people. From 2015-2020 she served as the Travis County Judge presiding over the Commissioners Court and representing 1.3 million people.
Senator Eckhardt believes that elective office is a temporary trust bestowed by the people who elect her. She values policy above politics. And she believes that government exists to assure that opportunity is within reach of every Texan. Government should be effective, efficient, fair and minimally intrusive.
- JUSTICE - Eckhardt believes in holding people accountable when they pose a threat to society and returning them to productive civic belonging as soon as the threat has been vanquished. But across the nation and especially in Texas incarceration of people for substance use disorder and other mental health infirmities has skyrocketed. Texas incarcerates more than 800 per 10,000 people, a rate well above the national average. Black brown and poor people are disproportionately jailed. And, conditions inside Texas jails and conditions imposed on people after release are stifling. Eckhardt advocates for safe and effective mental health treatment, including substance use disorder treatment, outside of the criminal justice context. r
- HEALTH - Eckhardt believes that every Texan should have access to physical and mental healthcare, including reproductive healthcare. But Texas has the lowest insurance rate in the country. Physicians are barred from providing abortions. Even finding a physician is difficult when nearly 15% of Texas counties do not have a single physician. The State ensures that every county has a jail, but nearly ¼ of Texas counties have no hospital. Eckhardt advocates for an expansion of Medicaid to insure 1M more Texans and help rural hospitals stay open to serve them, restoration of safe and legal reproductive healthcare, and deeper state investment in public health and emergency mental health care.
- CLIMATE - Eckhardt believes that climate change requires rapid innovations in energy, water and infrastructure that markets cannot or will not produce without government involvement. Texas is the largest producer of energy, including renewable energy, but also the largest consumer of energy. Texas is becoming more arid as its thirsty population grows. And Texas infrastructure is battered year round by increasingly extreme drought, flood, wildfires and hurricanes. Eckhardt advocates for increases in renewable energy generation, decreases in per capita energy and water consumption, identification and conservation of our finite water sources and hardening of public infrastructure to shelter us from increasingly frequent extremes.
development, criminal justice, water policy, and budget and finance. Some of her previous accomplishments
include curtailing the spread of COVID-19 in Central Texas through early and decisive region-wide
orders, preserving more than 30,000 acres of green space, building a multi-county collaboration for the
preservation of groundwater, maintaining a vibrant construction economy while raising safety standards
for workers, establishing a Travis County Public Defender's Office, and instituting jail and arrest diversion
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
2020
Sarah Eckhardt did not complete Ballotpedia's 2020 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
Scorecards
A scorecard evaluates a legislator’s voting record. Its purpose is to inform voters about the legislator’s political positions. Because scorecards have varying purposes and methodologies, each report should be considered on its own merits. For example, an advocacy group’s scorecard may assess a legislator’s voting record on one issue while a state newspaper’s scorecard may evaluate the voting record in its entirety.
Ballotpedia is in the process of developing an encyclopedic list of published scorecards. Some states have a limited number of available scorecards or scorecards produced only by select groups. It is Ballotpedia’s goal to incorporate all available scorecards regardless of ideology or number.
Click here for an overview of legislative scorecards in all 50 states. To contribute to the list of Texas scorecards, email suggestions to editor@ballotpedia.org.
2024
| To view all the scorecards we found for this legislator in 2024, click [show]. |
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In 2024, the Texas State Legislature was not in session. |
2023
| To view all the scorecards we found for this legislator in 2023, click [show]. |
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In 2023, the Texas State Legislature was in session from January 10 to May 29.
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2022
| To view all the scorecards we found for this legislator in 2022, click [show]. |
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In 2022, the Texas State Legislature was not in session. |
2021
| To view all the scorecards we found for this legislator in 2021, click [show]. |
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In 2021, the Texas State Legislature was in session from January 12 to May 31.
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2020
| To view all the scorecards we found for this legislator in 2020, click [show]. |
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In 2020, the Texas State Legislature was not in session. |
See also
2024 Elections
External links
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Candidate Texas State Senate District 14 |
Officeholder Texas State Senate District 14 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ KVUE, "Interim Travis County Judge Sam Briscoe sworn in as Sarah Eckhardt officially resigns," May 12, 2020
- ↑ Martindale, "Sarah Eckhardt Lawyer Profile," accessed September 30, 2014
- ↑ Official campaign website of Sarah Eckhardt, "About Sarah," accessed September 30, 2014
- ↑ Official campaign website of Sarah Eckhardt, "What does the county judge do?" accessed September 30, 2014
- ↑ Austin American-Statesman, "Sarah Eckhardt leads, Andy Brown concedes in Travis County judge race," March 5, 2014
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by - |
Texas State Senate District 14 2020-Present |
Succeeded by - |
| Preceded by - |
Travis County Judge 2015-2020 |
Succeeded by - |
| Preceded by - |
County commissioner Travis County 2006-2014 |
Succeeded by - |
