Just months ahead of closely contested midterm elections, Texas is about to get a new top voting official. Many locals there fear the frontrunner is a 34-year-old conservative state lawmaker and pastor with no election administration experience. In Texas, the governor picks the secretary of state, and it's unclear when Republican Gov. Greg Abbott will make a formal announcement.
The current top elections official, Secretary of State Jane Nelson — who announced her resignation earlier this month — is expected to stay in office until July 17. For weeks though, signs have pointed to Nelson's successor being state Rep. Nate Schatzline, a pastor at a Fort Worth megachurch with ties to Christian nationalism, who has repeated baseless claims about widespread fraud in American elections.
What the Right Is Saying
Schatzline has aligned himself with President Trump's views on elections and is an ally of Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton. Schatzline voted against impeaching Paxton when he was embroiled in scandal in 2023, and Paxton posted online that he was "proud to call [Schatzline] a friend" in 2025.
In interviews and social media posts, Schatzline has made clear he believes there was significant election fraud through mail-in ballots. "It's not even debatable the amount of election fraud we had through mail-in ballots," Schatzline said in an interview last year with John Herold, an election denial influencer who helped popularize a QAnon-adjacent election conspiracy theory after 2020.
An Abbott spokesperson did not respond to questions about Schatzline, saying only that "an announcement on an appointment will be made at a later date." Schatzline himself did not respond to NPR's request for an interview or comment.
What the Left Is Saying
Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, says the unusual timing of this appointment raises accountability concerns. "We don't get to see if this person is qualified to do the job and do an actual job interview until they've gotten to do the most single most important function of this job," Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez worries any pick from Abbott's office that pushes the office in an overtly partisan direction would have downstream effects this November. "The stakes could not be higher" in an election where competitive races could decide the balance of power in Congress, he noted.
"This job is incredibly important," Gutierrez said. "There's just a really long list of things that someone in that position could do if they saw their job as being more political than just … supportive."
What the Numbers Show
Texas has the second-most registered voters in the country, making election administration there particularly consequential. Several competitive races in November could determine control of Congress.
Schatzline turned a legislative focus on voting in recent sessions. He authored no election-related bills during his first session in the Texas House but authored or co-authored at least five in the 2025-'26 session, according to available records.
Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, drafted an analysis report for members on how Schatzline could affect elections. The report noted that previous secretaries of state have been institutionalists who "prioritized stabilizing relationships with county officials, providing bipartisan-friendly training resources, and shielding local administrators from overt partisan warfare."
"He has never run an election, managed a polling place, or operated a county voter registration database," McGinn's report stated. The analysis also noted that Nelson was herself a state lawmaker before taking over voting in Texas, and it's not unprecedented for a secretary of state to lack election oversight experience.
The Bottom Line
The timing of Nelson's departure — after the Texas legislature is already out of regular session — means whoever Abbott appoints can hold the job in an acting capacity until next year, when the legislature meets and votes on a permanent replacement. This structure allows the appointed official to act with less immediate oversight during the most critical election period.
McGunn's report suggests Schatzline would represent what it calls a "disruptor model" of secretary of state leadership: "highly ideological, responsive to grassroots activist demands, and comfortable using the office as an active enforcement agency."
Schatzline is not running for reelection to his statehouse seat. Observers say the formal announcement from Abbott's office could come at any time.