Hegar wins as foe departs
State senator is GOP’S choice for comptroller; Hilderbran withdraws.
The leading Republican candidate for comptroller, state Sen. Glenn Hegar of Katy, finally claimed the GOP nomination Friday after the second-place finisher in Tuesday’s primary bowed out.
State Rep. Harvey Hilderbran of Kerrville announced Friday that he would withdraw from a runoff, allowing Hegar to turn his focus to Democrat Mike Collier, the Houston businessman he will face in the November general election.
Hegar’s vote count hovered just below the majority threshold he needed to win without the runoff. With thousands of provisional and overseas ballots still outstanding, Hegar still might have cleared the mark, but the final count will not be done until next week at the earliest.
Hilderbran garnered just 26 percent of the vote in the four-person race and would have struggled to raise the money to mount a competi
.“tive campaign.
“I ran for this office to en-
act a plan to improve the comptroller’s office for taxpayers and I am excited that Glenn has agreed to work together to enact much of my platform, for the benefit of all taxpayers,” Hilderbran said in a statement.
Hegar thanked Hilderbran for years of service in the Texas House, where he was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee for the past two legislative sessions. And then Hegar turned his eye toward Novem- ber.
“We are excited to continue to visit with voters and to spread our positive message of job creation and innovation across the state of Texas,” he said in a statement.
Hegar, who carried last summer’s landmark anti-abortion legislation, focused heavily on his socially conservative credentials in the campaign. He enters the general election as the heavy favorite to succeed Comptroller Susan Combs, a fellow Republican who is retiring from politics.
A newcomer to poli-
Democrat worked for accounting firm.
tics, Collier worked for 20 years as a top executive at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, an international accounting firm, and then became chief financial officer of a Texas oil company.
“Glenn Hegar is a rubber stamp for Susan Combs’ failed status quo,” Collier said in a statement. “If Texans want a comptroller who has spent more time auditing accounts than giving political speeches, then they’re going to have to vote for the accountant who can hold the politicians accountable.”
The Texas comptroller serves as the state’s chief financial officer and is primarily responsible for collecting state taxes and crafting the official revenue estimate that serves as the basis of the state’s two-year budget.