David Dewhurst

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Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst

David Dewhurst is only the third Republican since Reconstruction to serve as lieutenant governor of Texas. Dewhurst was born in Houston in 1945.

Dewhurst is a veteran, a businessman, a rancher, and a community leader in Houston, where he has served on civic and charitable boards. He earned his bachelor's degree and played basketball at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

He was previously an officer in the U.S. Air Force, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. State Department. In 1981, Dewhurst founded Falcon Seaboard, a Texas-based diversified energy and investments company. He breeds registered Black Angus cattle, is an active team roper, and rides cutting horses in American Quarter Horse Association and National Quarter Horse Association competitions.

1 Defeating Richard Raymond for land commissioner
2 Defeating John Sharp for lieutenant governor
3 Redistricting Texas' U.S. House Seats
4 Dewhurst re-elected lieutenant governor, 2006
5 External links

[edit] Defeating Richard Raymond for land commissioner

Dewhurst was elected as the statewide land commissioner in 1998. A self-described "George Bush Republican," he defeated Democratic State Representative Richard Raymond (born 1960) of Benavides, Texas, in Duval County (later Laredo). During the campaign it was reported by the Houston Chronicle that Raymond was actually living in Bastrop County near Austin, while representing Duval County in the legislature. He submitted and collected on travel vouchers back to Benavides (a much longer distance from Austin) than to Bastrop County. The amount collected was some $32,000. Dewhurst accused Raymond of being a "career politician." Raymond replied that he did not intend to remain in politics all his life.

In 1991, in a letter to the Austin American-Statesman, Raymond endorsed a state income tax as the best way to address Texas' fiscal problems. When he ran for land commissioner, Raymond forfeited his Duval County legislative seat. He won another state House seat in 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2006 (April 11 primary runoff victory, now unopposed in the general election) from neighboring Webb County. This was the seat originally held by Congressman Henry Cuellar of Laredo.

Dewhurst received 2,072,604 votes (57.42 percent) to Raymond's 1,438,378 ballots (39.85 percent). A Libertarian polled the remaining 2.72 percent. At the time, George W. Bush was successfully running for reelection as governor and secured more than two-thirds of the vote over the Democratic nominee, the outgoing Land Commissioner Garry Mauro of Bryan, who had served since 1983.

[edit] Defeating John Sharp for lieutenant governor

David Dewhurst was elected lieutenant governor in November 2002, when he defeated former Democratic Comptroller John Sharp of Victoria. He succeeded Lieutenant Governor Bill Ratliff of Mount Pleasant. "Moderate" Republican Ratliff did not contest the lieutenant governor's position in the primary but was instead re-elected to the state senate from his Northeast Texas district. Ratliff served barely a year of that last term to which he was elected in 2002 before he resigned to return to private life. Dewhurst polled 2,341,875 votes (51.77 percent) to Sharp's 2,082,281 (46.03 percent). (Two minor candidates polled the remaining 2.19 percent.) In that campaign, Dewhurst stressed his interest in public education and opposition to school vouchers.

[edit] Redistricting Texas' U.S. House Seats

In 2003, Dewhurst assisted the Republican leadership, including then U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, Texas, House Speaker Tom Craddick of Midland, and Governor Perry, in passing a sweeping congressional redistricting bill that increased the number of Republican U.S. House seats in Texas from 15 to 21 in the 2004 elections. Minority Democrats were left with 11 seats. In his capacity as the presiding officer of the Texas Senate, Dewhurst, in the third consecutive special session called by the governor, allowed the suspension of the custom that 2/3 of the body must vote to consider a bill.

Dewhurst's leadership on redistricting brought him into legal conflict with his former land commissioner opponent, Richard Raymond, then representing heavily Democratic and Hispanic Webb County in the state house. Raymond is the only elected official to be a plaintiff in the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of the DeLay-Perry-Craddick-Dewhurst redistricting plan. Dewhurst and Raymond have also sparred over education policy.

[edit] Dewhurst re-elected lieutenant governor, 2006

Dewhurst was easily renominated for lieutenant governor in the Republican primary held on March 7, 2006. He defeated Tom Kelly, the same unknown candidate whom he bested for the nomination in 2002. Dewhurst then overwhelmed Democrat Maria Luisa Alvarado, a veterans issues research analyst and the winner of her April 11 runoff primary, in the November 7 general election. He received 2,512,197 votes (58.2 percent) to Alvarado's 1,616,945 (37.4 percent). Libertarian Judy A. Baker polled another 188,956 votes (4.4 percent). There were 4,318,098 ballots cast in the race out of 13,074,279 total Texas voters. Turnout was hence 33.02 percent of registered voters.

Dewhurst is widely expected to seek the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2010. Although political scientists have long maintained that the lieutenant governorship in Texas is more politically powerful than the governorship, two of the most recent lieutenant governors, Rick Perry and David Dewhurst, as well as the late Preston Smith of Lubbock clearly had their eyes on the state's top constitutional office. Neither of Perry's two immediate predecessors in the office, William Hobby and Bob Bullock, sought the governorship, though either presumably could have been a strong contender on several occasions had he been willing to run.