The Lieutenant Governor runs the Texas senate, and the Texas Legislative Budget Board, appoints committees, special and standing, the chairpersons and members, and what bills will be sent to those committees. The Lt. Governor also becomes acting Governor when the Texas Governor is out of the state or dies. 

The Lt. Governor also recognizes which senators get to speak on which bills and when bills come to the floor if they make it out of committee. So this is a powerful position in the state of Texas. Some arguably say the most powerful position in Texas. 

According to Texas Take, a political podcast by the Houston Chronicle, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has always been steady and cool running for his past two terms. He would have informative ads on why voters should vote for him and didn’t engage in political insults and hurling attack ads against his opponent. 

This year, however, he is. Several of Dan Patrick’s ads have attacked his opponent Mike Collier, who is the Democrat on the ticket. Collier sent a cease and desist letter to tv stations to take Patrick’s last ad, down. Patrick claims Collier, once a senior advisor to the Biden-Harris Administration, will implement policies like President Biden, but for Texas. 

Collier ran in 2018 against Dan Patrick but lost the race. Dan Patrick has been the Lt. Governor for two terms, running for his third. Collier admits on his website to codify Roe v Wade into Texas law if elected Lt. Governor, but much of what Collier stands for is supporting and funding public education, energy infrastructure, fixing the power grid, and lowering property taxes. 

All the while, Collier is attacking Patrick as well, blaming the current administration, Patrick in particular, for gutting public education funds, allowing corporate interests to make profits when the Texas power grid froze in 2021, and increasing Texans’ energy bills and property taxes. Despite what Dan Patrick claims to fight for, Mike Collier continually says in his ads, that Dan Patrick has to go. 

The past few months, both have hurled attack ads at each other, and if Collier was only 5 points down the last election, then he might have a chance come Tuesday. 

Democrat Candidate Mike Collier has an interesting history as a financial watchdog on the Texas Senate and involvement in Texas energy companies. Collier believes his experience in finance, auditing, investing, and being the CFO of a company,  along with being a watchdog in the Texas senate, gives him the experience to handle Texas finances, which is a big part of what the Lt. Governor does. 

Collier’s main goal originally was to help the funding of public schools and first ran for office on that priority. Collier also is running on fixing property taxes. In an interview, Collier gave his take on rising property taxes. “Most of what we do in your community is a joint venture between local and state. [Local] money comes from property taxes. [State] money comes from a lot of places including the large corporations. So as they reduce the taxes from the large corporations they allow the property appraisals to go up, the property taxes to go up, and all they’re doing is shifting the burden onto the backs of homeowners and we get nothing for it.” 

Collier has stated that the state, Patrick specifically, has not been honest about property taxes to Texans and that Patrick keeps making false promises about fixing them.  

On the power grid, Collier wants to fix the grid by using battery storage and create tie-ins to the national grid. Additionally, he wants to hold corporations accountable for profiting off of the Winter Storm Uri that froze the grid, and he wants to bring energy bills down for Texans. “Is not a question of if it will fail, it’s only a question of when it will fail,” says Collier. 

Collier stated plans to close tax loopholes and increase money for Texans. “We need to fund public education and everyone knows that teachers are very unhappy. 65% are thinking about changing and doing something else,” says Collier. “If we don’t get education right we’re not going to get anything right and then property taxes are going up, up, up and they’re going to keep going up until we have an honest accounting about the corporate tax loopholes which starve the state of funds, shifting the burden onto homeowners” said Collier on KVUE. 

Furthermore, Collier is a pro-choice candidate. Collier states he will reverse the Heartbeat Bill and will promote LGBTQ and transgender children’s rights and equality. Collier is a proponent of legalizing marijuana and expanding Medicaid. 

During his time as Lt. Governor, Dan Patrick has championed Second Amendment rights, property tax reform, securing the border, and pro-life policy stances. Patrick has led initiatives for foster care and school choice. 

Patrick has advocated for parental rights to school curriculum and has defended reforms made to the Texas power grid that his opponent seems to attack him for. Patrick is also a staunch opponent of legalized gambling in the state, something that has been pushed last legislative session. Additionally, Patrick is a former radio host, and sportscaster; has written a Christian novel and produced a Christian film. 

He’s been hitting the road across Texas, speaking with rural communities in West Texas, Central Texas, and rural Texas. He is in a competitive race, although Patrick feels confident he will win.

Patrick responds to Collier’s attacks by claiming that he has raised more money for public education in Texas than any other Lt. Governor and increased pay raises for teachers. Patrick also states that the administration will protect public schooling while allowing school vouchers; that school vouchers will not defund public schools. 

On property taxes, Patrick spoke on the 27 billion projected surplus the state legislature is going to have in 2023. “We’re going to send a big tax dividend back to property taxpayers, homeowners, several billion dollars worth,” said Patrick. “Number one, the Homestead Exemption Act was 15,000 dollars when I became Lt. Governor, it’s 40,000 today. That alone saves every taxpayer. They take $40,000 off the top of the price of their home, they don’t have to pay taxes. In next session we’ll take it to $55,000, then we’ll get it to a $100,000” said Patrick.

Patrick explained the issues with property taxes, and that Mike Collier has no idea what he’s talking about. “The other thing we’ve done on property taxes…there was a time that whatever your appraisal went up, your tax bill went up the same…we took that and broke it in half. So you want your property to grow in value so one day when you sell it it’s worth more than you paid for. But you don’t want to be taxed on that value. 

So when you get your property tax bills…those who had these bigger appraisals are going to say that taxes did not fail because we passed a bill in 2019 that says county governments cannot grow more than 3½% unless they want to get a vote of the people. 

School districts are capped at 2½%. We are using sales tax money that we collect to reimburse the school districts for that property tax. So as the values go up, the cities and counties have to lower their tax rate to keep it within 3½%,” says Patrick.

In recent polling amongst registered voters, Patrick leads Collier by 7 points, and among likely voters by 9 points according to UT Tyler. In other UT politics project polling, Patrick is up by 15 points.