Six days after losing his bid for a fourth term, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced a new consulting firm that will sell legislative strategy ahead of the 2027 session. The launch of Patrick Strategies on Monday, Nov. 9, comes as Republicans inside his own party blame state leadership, Patrick included, for a Democratic sweep that broke the GOP’s three-decade hold on statewide offices, as the Houston Chronicle put it.
A firm built on Senate know-how
In the announcement, published in full by the Gilmer Mirror, Patrick said the firm “will advise clients on legislative and business development matters, developing strategies to help them achieve their objectives.” He added: “I will not serve as a lobbyist.”
The Patrick Strategies website lists legislative strategy, problem solving, business development and leadership training. It says Patrick is “a master of the Senate and House rules and knows where the money is in the budget,” and it tells visitors: “The 90th Session will bring new challenges. Be prepared with Patrick Strategies.” A line at the bottom of the page says the group is “only a strategic consulting group” and does “not engage in lobbying.”
Capitol insiders read it differently. In a Nov. 9 Quorum Report column, Harvey Kronberg and Scott Braddock wrote that “just about everybody in the game sees this as an effort by Patrick to retain leadership of the Senate while profiting off his ability to dominate his Republican senators.” They added that it “may be the first time in Texas that an elected official has started publicly recruiting clients while still in office.” Patrick remains lieutenant governor until his term ends in January.
A 16-point swing in his own race
Democrat Vikki Goodwin, a state representative from Austin, received 5,083,581 votes (51.73%) to Patrick’s 4,484,652 (45.63%), a margin of 598,929 votes, according to unofficial results from the Texas Secretary of State, last updated Nov. 4 at 5:48 p.m. ET. The results are pending certification. In 2022, Patrick won the same office with 53.75% of the vote, a margin of 10.3 points. That is a swing of about 16.4 points against him in four years.
Democrats won every major statewide office on the ballot and flipped the Texas House, the Texas Tribune reported. Politics Elections has the full county-by-county Texas breakdown.
- U.S. Senate: Republican Ken Paxton 42.97%; Democrat James Talarico 55.06%; margin D+12.1
- Governor: Republican Greg Abbott 45.67%; Democrat Gina Hinojosa 52.80%; margin D+7.1
- Attorney General: Republican Mayes Middleton 45.94%; Democrat Nathan Johnson 52.38%; margin D+6.4
- Lt. Governor: Republican Dan Patrick 45.63%; Democrat Vikki Goodwin 51.73%; margin D+6.1
- Comptroller: Republican Don Huffines 46.15%; Democrat Sarah Eckhardt 51.30%; margin D+5.2
Source: Texas Secretary of State, unofficial results last updated Nov. 4, 2026, 5:48 p.m. ET; pending certification. Margin is the Republican share minus the Democratic share of all votes cast in the race.
Blame from his own party
The sharpest criticism came from Republican Comptroller Don Huffines, who lost his own race to Democrat Sarah Eckhardt. At his election night party, Huffines blamed Gov. Greg Abbott and Patrick by name, faulted both men for seeking fourth terms, and said Republicans had failed to deliver on promises such as property tax relief, according to the Texas Tribune, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Houston Chronicle.
In a farewell letter posted on X on Nov. 6, Huffines did not name Patrick, but he wrote that “our leadership lacked the courage to act” and that “the grassroots begged, were ignored, and got basically nothing.”
“Our officials governed from the mushy middle: desperate to stay in power, desperate for the prestige and approval of elitists and lobbyists. … How do you campaign on a promise you have been making for 12 years?”
Texas Comptroller Don Huffines, Nov. 6, 2026
The fourth-term question had followed Patrick for years. He initially said his 2022 term would be his last, then reversed himself in 2023, the Texas Tribune reported.
The THC fight
Few proposals earned Patrick more backlash than his push to ban hemp-derived THC products, the Texas Tribune reported. He made the ban a top priority in 2025, and the Legislature passed it before Abbott vetoed it, KUT News reported. At a June 2025 news conference, Patrick said he would not legalize marijuana in Texas and that if voters wanted to remove him from office over it, so be it, according to KUT. The smokable-hemp restrictions now in force came from Abbott’s administration after the veto, KUT noted, but most of the industry’s political anger was aimed at Patrick.
Goodwin built her campaign around undoing the restrictions, the Tribune reported. JD McCormick, founder of the American Healthy Alternatives Association, told the Tribune that Patrick clearly underestimated how popular hemp was. Chad Wilbanks, a former executive director of the Republican Party of Texas, argued that veterans and seniors were angry about the state’s THC ban, according to the Tribune.
The Paxton trial and the primaries that followed
Critics also point to Patrick’s role as presiding officer in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s 2023 impeachment trial. In late June 2023, months before the trial began that September, Patrick’s campaign reported a $1 million donation and a $2 million loan from Defend Texas Liberty PAC, a group that opposed the impeachment, the Texas Tribune reported. After the Senate acquitted Paxton on Sept. 16, 2023, Patrick used a speech from the dais to blast the House’s impeachment process, the Tribune reported.
Then-House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, responded the same day in an official statement: “Lt. Governor Patrick would conclude by confessing his bias and placing his contempt for the people’s House on full display.” Patrick later defended the donation, saying he had raised almost as much from donors who were not aligned with the pro-Paxton side, the Tribune reported.
After this year’s defeat, Republicans who spoke with the Tribune listed the Senate’s acquittal of Paxton, and the primary battles that grew out of it, among the turning points that set up the loss.
A Senate built for primaries
In the Texas Senate, Patrick’s influence reached into Republican primaries. No Republican Senate candidate had defeated a Patrick-endorsed primary opponent since he became lieutenant governor, and the Senate passed all 40 of his priorities in 2025, the Texas Tribune reported in January. The Tribune also reported that he gave $750,000 to state Sen. Brent Hagenbuch in the last election cycle.
Kronberg and Braddock argued in their Quorum Report column, headlined in part “his brand of politics endangers the GOP majority,” that “the GOP primary is diminished in value and the general election is now the main event going forward.” They wrote that Republican senators now face a choice between recognizing a Democratic presiding officer and deferring to what they called Patrick’s “in absentia leadership.”
Patrick’s explanation
In his election night statement, posted on X on Nov. 4, Patrick called the race “a wave election in Texas and across the country” and listed “affordability, gas prices, data centers, 765-kV lines” among the issues important to voters. “It was a fair election, and I accept the majority will of the voters,” he said. He also defended his record: “Together, we eliminated school property taxes for seniors and cut them in half for those under 65.”
Born Dannie Scott Goeb in Baltimore
Patrick was born Dannie Scott Goeb on April 4, 1950, in Baltimore, according to the Library of Congress name authority file. Patrick wrote on his campaign website that “my legal birth name was Dannie Scott Goeb.” There he explains that he used the on-air name Dan Scott, later chose Dan Patrick with his wife, and changed his legal name to Dan Goeb Patrick so voters would recognize him on the ballot.
A 2006 Houston Chronicle story, quoted by PolitiFact, reported that he legally changed his name in the fall of 2003 while considering a run for office. In 2014, PolitiFact found no support for a rival’s claim that the name change was meant to hide debts. In his Nov. 4 statement, Patrick said he came to Texas in 1979 as a sportscaster at KHOU-TV.
What comes next
Goodwin takes office in January, and the Legislature convenes Jan. 12, according to the Texas Tribune. Patrick Strategies is marketing itself to clients for that same session.
