[2] First elected in 2010, Carter made history by becoming the first Republican African-American woman to serve in the Texas House when she unseated the Democratic incumbent Carol Kent.
Carter won by simply pointing to Kent's record as being far too liberal for her area of Dallas and that voters in the district were far more conservative than the person who was representing them.
On November 29, 2016, Carter was named as a Transition Landing Team member [5] for the newly elected President Donald Trump in the Department of Justice.
Carter had announced on July 9, 2013 that she would be a candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission in the Place 1 seat vacated by the outgoing incumbent, Barry Smitherman, who ran instead for Texas Attorney General in 2014 to replace the three-term incumbent, Greg Abbott, the 2014 gubernatorial nominee who seeks to succeed the retiring Governor Rick Perry.
However, on October 22, 2013, Carter announced that she was ending her bid for the Railroad Commission and would instead seek reelection to a third two-year term to her state House seat.