Get to Know Your Candidate: Mary Elizabeth Klenz — Texas House District 17

For 30 years, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Klenz delivered babies and cared for women in some of the most underserved corners of Texas. Now the retired obstetrician-gynecologist is running for the Texas House in District 17, which covers Bastrop, Burleson, Caldwell, Lee and Milam counties.

Who she is

Klenz came to Texas in 1999 as a new OB/GYN drawn to rural health care, and spent the next 25 years practicing in the Rio Grande Valley. "I have worked as a physician (Ob/Gyn) in private practice for 30 years," she wrote in her League of Women Voters Vote411 answers. "Most of that time has been working in underserved areas in south Texas. I also have a master's degree in Public Policy."

She and her husband have since moved to Lee County, in the Giddings area, for retirement — which puts her on the receiving end of the same growth pressures she now campaigns about: power plants, data centers, traffic and industrial development reshaping rural communities like the ones she served.

Klenz won the Democratic nomination in March, taking a three-way primary outright without a runoff.

What she stands for

Her campaign runs under the banner "Standing Up for Rural Texas and the People Who Live Here," and water is her lead issue. "Our groundwater is being pumped out of our district to fuel growth somewhere else," her campaign site says. She calls for pausing new large groundwater-export projects while aquifer health is assessed, halting the Vista Ridge project — which pumps Burleson County groundwater to San Antonio — if the data show unsustainable depletion, revising the "rule of capture," and fixing aging water infrastructure. "Growth isn't the enemy," she says, "but it must be guided by people who live here and care about this place."

Drawing on her medical career, she supports expanding Medicaid, reinstating Affordable Care Act subsidies, and creating incentives for rural primary and emergency care. On schools, she would repeal the state's voucher program, which she says "siphons one billion dollars away from public schools," and raise teacher salaries. She also wants to halt large-scale data center construction until environmental guidelines are in place and give counties and cities authority over where they locate, repeal the 2023 state law limiting local ordinances, protect the doctor–patient relationship on reproductive care, and pursue campaign-finance reform and easier voter registration.

For Milam County voters, her groundwater message lands close to home — the district's aquifers and the fight over who gets to pump them are shared concerns across the five counties she hopes to represent.

House District 17 voters will decide the race on the Nov. 3 general election ballot. Early voting runs Oct. 19–30.