Longtime Texas U.S. Representative, former U.S. Senate nominee and State Senate President Pro Tempore Lloyd Doggett announces his retirement
Doggett is currently the Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health.
At the behest of Donald Trump, Republicans in Texas have been aggressively re-drawing the state’s Congressional maps in an attempt to flip several Democratically-held seats via gerrymandering. One longtime incumbent has opted to try and make it an easier path for his colleagues.
Lloyd Doggett has announced he will not run for re-election in 2026. Doggett had previously indicated that he would step aside if the heavily gerrymandered map would become official, which it seems to have done so following a highly controversial decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the new map, Doggett would have had to run against fellow incumbent in the Democratic primary next year.
At present, Doggett holds his seat in the United States House of Representatives via the 37th District of Texas. He was first elected to the House in 1994 from the 10th District. Over the years, he has also won elections in the 25th and 35th Districts.
Previously, Doggett was the Democratic nominee for one of Texas’ seats in the United States Senate in 1984. Though he emerged victorious from a primary field that included U.S. Representative Kent Hance and a former Congressman and future U.S. Senator Bob Krueger, Doggett lost the general election to Republican Phil Gramm, another U.S. Representative, by a significant margin. Gramm would go on to be the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
Earlier in his career, Doggett was elected to the Texas Senate via the 14th District for the first time in 1972 and eventually became its President Pro Tempore in 1983. In 1988, he was voted as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas.
A grandson of Swedish immigrants, Lloyd Doggett is a native of Austin, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the Student Body President, and later joined the faculty of the University of Texas School of Law.
In 1969, Doggett married Libby Belk. The couple have two daughters.