Jim Dunnam

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James R. (Jim) Dunnam (1963- ) is an American state politican and lawyer who currently serves in the Texas House of Representatives. As the House Democratic Leader, Dunnam is best known for engineering the Killer D's walkout to Ardmore, Okla., to postpone consideration of Tom DeLay's mid-decade redistricting plan. The walkout is credited with starting serious media inquiry into DeLay's actions as majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, which ultimately led to DeLay's resignation in 2006.

Dunnam was educated at Baylor University, where he earned an undergraduate business degree and a law degree. Born in McLennan County, Tex., Dunnam is the second son of Clyde Vance Dunnam and Elnora Eveline Hohertz, and the grandson of William Vance Dunnam, who served as a member of the Texas House of Representatives from Coryell County in the 35th Legislature, 1917-1918.

[edit] Political Career

One of just two Democrats to defeat a Republican incumbent in the 1996 elections, Dunnam arrived in Austin marked for potential advancement. At the end of his first session, he had reversed budget cuts to a local college that occurred two years before. At the end of his second session, he was noted as a "comer" and potential top legislator. He fulfilled that prediction in the next session. At the end of the 2001 legislative session, Dunnam was hailed by Texas Monthly magazine as one of Texas's ten best legislators because his "success in the House rested on talent rather than title and [he] could do what [he was] big enough to do. Though he lacked a chairmanship or even a seat on a powerful committee, Jim Dunnam was big enough to pass two of the session's biggest and best bills: charter-school reform and tougher restrictions on open containers of alcohol in cars."

As the first leader of a Democratic minority since Reconstruction, Dunnam was charged with sheparding a demoralized caucus through a "highly partisan House." Even observers who disagreed with his tactics continued to recognize his abilities as a legislator. "In mastery of the legislative arts," Texas Monthly noted in moving Dunnam from the best to worst list, he "has few peers and fewer superiors."

[edit] References

• Paul Burka, et al., The Best and The Worst Legislators, Texas Monthly (July 1999).
• Paul Burka, et al., The Best and The Worst Legislators, Texas Monthly (July 2001).
• Paul Burka, et al., The Best and The Worst Legislators, Texas Monthly (July 2003).
• Michael King, Ardmore Remembered, Austin Chronicle (May 21, 2004).
• Jeffrey Toobin, Will Tom DeLay’s Redistricting in Texas Cost Him His Seat?, New Yorker (Mar. 6, 2006).
• Texas Birth Index, 1903-1997
• Tex. Legis. Council, Members of the Texas Legislature, 1846-1962 260, 264 (1962).