The Texan Podcast - Comptroller Candidate Don Huffines at the Texas GOP 2026 State Convention

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts candidate Don Huffines joined The Texan's Reporter Meridith Dyer at the Republican Party of Texas' 2026 state convention to discuss his endorsement from President Donald Trump, the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, his "Holy Grail of Texas history," and more.Listen to more interviews from The Texan wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, follow us and leave a review.

Okay, well, thank you so much for joining us at the Texan News. I'm Meredith Dyer with Dawn Huffines, who's running for comptroller. You have talked about Doge, how you're going to get in, you're going to doge. What agencies or organizations are going to be in your crosshairs? Well, honestly, it's everything. It really is. First, my own agency, of course, I've got to get my arms around that. It's 3,000 employees.

We have 20 offices around the state. So after that happens, then I'll dig into the others. And where we spend the most money is, of course, education, the state does, and health and human services. So people say, what do you want to doge? Well, I want to look at where we're spending the most money because that's where we can have the biggest impact quickest. So nobody's safe? No one is safe. Okay.

I always say, I said this in my speech earlier. I use an analogy. Nobody likes cleaning out the garage, but you sure like pulling in when it's done. And right now the garage is so full you can't get the door open. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. So Trump endorsed you in the primary, which is going directly against what Abbott's choice was.

In the future, how would you balance that relationship if they disagree on other issues? Well, look, we all, I had a lot of endorsements that almost every conservative organization. And then Trump came in right there towards the end of the campaign. And I sure appreciated it because I worked hard, hard to get that endorsement because he is, he is the king of the Republican Party. And I'm a big Trump person. And I've supported the president since 16, 20, 24. A lot. I've worked hard for the president and I admire him. But I talked to the governor. He called me

right after the election and we had a long conversation, a 20 minute phone call and a great conversation. Then I went and had dinner with him at the governor's mansion. He and Cecilia, Mary Catherine and I said we're on equal, we're on good terms and we're all agree that we've got to unite and work forward, go forward to beat the atheist leftists. Okay. Tifa, the tech, um, Texas Education Freedom Accounts, which you will be as part of the comptrollers. Just topped over 100,000 recipients. And I know there was nearly 275,000 people that had applied for it. So you're going to be inheriting this program that's already in motion.

Day one, are there any changes that you want to make to that? Well, you know, I'm not there, honestly. So I don't know exactly what they're doing with the program. I know Odyssey's run and in some other. And some, but look, I'm a champion of education. accounts. I actually wrote legislation in that when I was in the Texas Senate. And I'm so excited that's a 274,000 kids or families have signed up for it. You know, it just proves how hungry and thirsty and desperate our parents are to get out of the government school system. They're not

failing. They fail. And I'm in charge of the marketing as as controlled. I'm in charge of all the rules and regulations related to this program. And so I want the program to be as big and real. And robust as possible. And I think it's imperative that every parent is fully informed about it. So that with, there's 274,000 on the list with minimal marketing. Imagine if we had robust marketing, how many would be on the list? What would be your marketing strategy? Because that was something, as I follow this. I cover a lot of education. And I asked a couple of times kind of what was being done. I know there was some vague general things that were said, but just it wasn't front and center and I did know that there were a lot of there was some people some polling recently

that showed that quite a few parents were not aware of the program so what kind of your business guy you talk about a lot marketing wise what would you how would you get that that out i would i would work with DEA on that and make sure that particularly the government schools that the government schools were probably the ones that were not marketed well to because private schools can organize right they can organize the catholic schools and parish schools and things like that they were pretty organized, but the government school is not so much. So I want to have a real organized structure for the government schools and the government students that every parent has to sign off from the fact that they know there's $10,000 waiting all of them. You do a lot of interviews,

obviously, at the end of this, is there any, is there one thing that you wish you were asked more about or that you always want to talk about in an interview that you don't get to talk about as much? That's an interesting question. I would say, I mean, think about that. Okay. Well, or do you cover politics or just, but I like whatever you want to. I'm a big Texas history buff. Okay.

We do some, we do date like this day in Texas history on the Texan. So we do like to cover some Texas history. Do you know I have one of the best Texas history collections in Texas. Okay. It's at the Alamo. It's on the second floor. I've loaned it to them annually. I keep redoing the long form.

And I think I have the holy grill of Texas history. And you're going to say, Mary, what is? that. Okay, you want to guess? You're going to tell me, right? I'm going to tell you. I have Sam Houston's Battlesaber from San Jacinto. Okay. And I have Santa Ana's Battlesaber from San Jacinto. And we can, people can go see that at the Alamo right now. Go up to the Alamo. I've got their uniforms. I've got, I've got just a really large collection of Houston's artifacts and Santa Ana's artifacts. So I'm and I have a large collection of Texas money. Okay. The bonds and the red bags and other things like that when we were our own country. And if it's perfect in the

Comptroller's office, I'm going to put it on the wall in there. You're going to take it from the Alamo and bring it to the Comstorlers office? I got enough to spread it. Okay, okay, okay. Well, I didn't expect that, but thank you so much for sharing. Yeah. Love to hear about different things from people. We appreciate you giving us your time. You know, because I love Texas. I bring up a point on that is that that's what makes Texas unique is our history. It really defines you where you are and while we're special. They don't have that anywhere. else. Our liberty was founded on the blood of Texas patrons, as you know. And there's really no other state things that say that. We're wrong country. And if we lose that affinity for our heritage,

we lose our culture. And we lose our culture. We're going to be like every other state. And we don't ever want to do that. Well, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. You're certainly welcome.