WeedVoter

Dawn Richardson Democrat

Texas House, District 54

About this race: The sitting member's recorded votes on the 2025 hemp-THC ban and the Compassionate Use Program expansion are listed below in date order, with their record-vote numbers, as the official journals print them.

Whose record this page shows. The paragraph above is about the race, and part of it describes a different person. Everything after this line on this page is Dawn Richardson’s own record and nothing else — including, where it says so, the finding that no record was located. Every record the paragraph above describes is set out candidate by candidate on the Texas House, District 54 race page.

Dawn RichardsonDemocrat
100/100 support for legal access — top band, 67 to 100 thin — one or two records produced this number · 1 of 1 records scored
How this score is worked out

Seven kinds of act move this number, and they do not count equally. A recorded vote counts 3, and so does authoring a bill or signing an executive action; signing on to somebody else’s bill counts 2. A statement or a questionnaire answer counts 2 as well, and an organisational endorsement counts 1. A vote takes its direction from the bill, whose effect is set out in advance; the rest take it from our reading of what was said, and each one below shows that reading and the reason for it. Acts shown with no number were examined and deliberately left out of the arithmetic, with a reason given.

  • 2026-10-05 questionnaire — Chose "Strongly Support" on maintaining a legal, regulated hemp marketplace and "Yes" on regulation being preferable to prohibition, and wrote that "We regulate cigarettes and alcohol. We can and should regulate these products also." The hedges are "Depends on the program" on a processing incentive and "Case-by-case" on sponsoring any particular bill, not on whether the products stay legal, counted as +2 at weight 2

Average on the −2 to +2 scale: 2. Full method and the bill table.

  • Questionnaire2026-10-05

    Answered the Texas Hemp Business Council’s 2026 candidate questionnaire, saying Texas should regulate hemp products the way it regulates alcohol and tobacco. The Texas Hemp Business Council is a hemp industry trade group; it put twenty questions to 223 candidates for the Texas Legislature and statewide office and publishes the answers it receives in full, without editing. These are the candidate’s own words, submitted by the candidate.

    Asked about the future of hemp in Texas, the answer included: "Grown consenting adults should be able to use this product that benefits, not harms them. By getting it legally through a licensed business, they can assured of the quality and safety of the product. Our state benefits from the tax revenue, and it will be easier to put illegal sellers out of business." Asked why regulation is preferable to prohibition: "We regulate cigarettes and alcohol.

    We can and should regulate these products also. Prohibition does not work as shown with alcohol." Asked who should be permitted to sell THC, to whom, at what dose, in what form and subject to what safeguards: "A licensed knowledge based business that can be inspected, to adults, age 21 and over. The same as we do Alcohol and cigarettes" Asked what enforcement tools Texas should prioritise: "State standards that include licensing based on a knowledge of the drug contained in the product test, age requirement for purchase, no operating within a mile of a school, and inspections of said establishment.

    There should be fines/consequences for violations." Asked whether state agencies or the Legislature should make significant changes in state policy: "In this case the Legislature should establish the regulations so that someone traveling through the state would not be breaking the law depending on which county or city they are in." On the questionnaire’s fixed-choice questions: on maintaining a legal, regulated hemp marketplace, "Strongly Support"; on whether regulation is preferable to prohibition where a product can be made and sold safely, "Yes"; on letting adult Texans make their own choices about lawful wellness products, "Yes"; on distinguishing licensed Texas businesses from illicit operators, "Yes"; on retail regulation, "Reasonable statewide licensing/registration"; on whether the state should devote more time and resources to further restrictive legislation in the 2027 session, "No"; on how high a priority further regulation of low-THC hemp products should be, "Significant priority"; on hemp agriculture, "Support"; on incentives to keep hemp processing and manufacturing in Texas, "Depends on the program"; on whether state agencies may prohibit products or conduct the Legislature has not expressly prohibited, "Legislature should establish the policy"; on keeping regulatory fees proportionate to the cost of administering the program, "Yes"; on tax policy, "Yes"; on consumer choice, "Yes"; on science- and evidence-based regulation, "Support"; on reviewing Texas law if federal hemp rules change, "Yes"; on meeting Texas hemp industry representatives during the legislative session, "Yes"; and on considering sponsoring or co-sponsoring legislation after reviewing the industry and constituents, "Case-by-case".

    The council also asked for the candidate’s top three priorities for Texas; that answer is not about cannabis and is not reproduced here. The date is the date the council recorded the submission, in Central time.

    texashempbusinesscouncil.com, texashempbusinesscouncil.com, texashempbusinesscouncil.com

See the whole Texas House, District 54 race, including every opponent →

Who is paying for this campaign

Campaign finance — Texas Ethics Commission

Texas Ethics Commission filer 87957, filed as “Williams-Richardson, Dawn T.”, treasurer appointment for State Representative, District 54, dated 2023-11-17. The name on the filing is not word-for-word the name on the ballot — both are printed above so you can check the pairing yourself before you rely on it. This pairing was made by hand, not by a rule: Filed under a hyphenated surname ("Williams-Richardson, Dawn T.") and printed on the ballot as Richardson. Given name and seat agree.

Why there are no figures and no industry breakdown here. Texas does not require a candidate to report a contributor’s employer or occupation — the Commission’s own 2026 guide asks for the amount, the contributor’s name and address, and the date, and that is all. So there is nothing in these filings to group into industries, and we have built no such grouping rather than imply one. Separately, the Commission’s bulk filing archive tells automated readers to stay out of it, and we honour that, so we have read no individual Texas contribution record. Treat the itemised question as unchecked by us, not as checked and found empty.

Read this filer’s own reports at the Texas Ethics Commission (ethics.state.tx.us) → — choose Transaction Type “Contributions”, then Search By “Filer ID” and enter 87957. The Commission’s search posts its results, so there is no direct link to one filer’s page; the number above is what makes it one step instead of a hunt.

Any grouping of contributors into an industry is weedvoter’s own classification, applied to employer and committee names exactly as filed. The Commission publishes employers and committees; it never publishes industries. OpenSecrets discontinued its public interface in April 2025, so nothing here is an OpenSecrets classification.

Money received is not a position. Everything on this card is money that changed hands. It is not evidence that any contribution influenced any decision, nothing on it is placed beside a roll call, and we make no claim about anyone’s motive. For what Dawn Richardson has actually done about cannabis, read the record above on this page — the roll calls, the bills that carry their name, and the date of each one, every entry linked to the document it came from. That is the part of this page built to be judged, and it is the part the score is calculated from. No contribution on this card moves that score by a cent.