Texas Will Soon Have a Vacancy in a Crucial Election Role

The secretary of state for Texas announced Tuesday she would step down without explanation just months before the midterm elections, and Texas Republicans are looking to the governor to decide on a replacement.

Gov. Greg Abbott will appoint a successor to Jane Nelson, but the timeline for filling the position is unclear. In the meantime, the November elections are quickly approaching, and several key races, like the race to replace Sen. John Cornyn, will be put to voters this fall.

“I think Greg Abbott is a smart governor and he’ll know who to replace her with, and I think we’ll be fine,” Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) told NOTUS. “What I’d like to see is somebody who’s gonna fight for our election integrity and make sure that we’ve got increased trust in our election system.”

Another Republican also deferred to Abbott.

“That’s a decision the governor will make,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told NOTUS when asked what he is looking for in a replacement. “I have confidence in the governor.”

Several House Republicans from Texas said they were unaware of Nelson’s decision to leave her post. Reps. Michael Cloud, Dan Crenshaw and Nathaniel Moran declined to comment this week when asked by NOTUS about it, saying they had not seen the news.

Abbott’s replacement pick will serve until the Texas legislative session begins in January 2027, meaning they will be in place through the midterms.

The governor did not respond to a request for comment from NOTUS about who would be appointed, or when.

Nelson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NOTUS.

In a news release on Tuesday announcing she would leave her position on July 17, she largely pointed to career accomplishments and did not provide an explanation for her abrupt exit.

“It has been an honor to serve the people of Texas in this role,” Nelson said in the release. “My time as Secretary came at an important moment for Texas, and I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish as an agency in under four years.”

Her tenure was contentious: She faced lawsuits from her own party, which wanted closed primaries. The current system of open primaries allows voters to participate in any party’s primary. But the GOP argued that Democrats use the open system to elect more moderate candidates in Republican primaries.

Attorney General Ken Paxton took the side of the state Republican Party against Nelson, who argued a change would confuse voters.

President Donald Trump continues to cast doubt on elections and is actively pushing legislation like the SAVE America Act that would require stricter voter identification. He has pushed states to seize ballots and collect private information from the voter rolls. They’re issues that the chief election official would have a lot of power over, and there’s concern Nelson’s replacement could be overly political.

“What we really need, and what people like Greg Abbott have been so opposed to, is a secretary of state who’s just going to administer the election, not be sending our voter rolls to the feds, not be participating in the conspiracy theories that Trump drums up,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas). “I hope that we can just get back to having someone who is just going to call balls and strikes and make sure that everybody’s able to cast their ballot and that everybody’s vote is legally counted.”

This is not the first time in recent history that Texas has found itself lacking a secretary of state right before a major election. In 2019, David Whitley was appointed after the previous secretary stepped down, and he used the role to try to purge around 100,000 naturalized citizens from the voter rolls, an effort the courts halted.

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the voting rights group Common Cause Texas, said a change in leadership could have cascading effects on the nearing midterms.

“What we would like to see from the nominee is someone who really demonstrated a commitment to helping educate Texans about voting and who really wants to increase participation in our elections,” Gutierrez told NOTUS. “We’d also really like to see someone who doesn’t have a long history of working closely with our governor on political things, which has been the case with a couple of our past appointees.”

A long-term replacement will have to be approved by the state Senate. Abbott has appointed six secretaries of state since entering office in 2015, only three of whom were confirmed by the state Senate.