Elton Ray Hutchison, known as Ray Hutchison (born September 1932), is a prominent Dallas, Texas, attorney, who served in the Texas House of Representatives in the 1970s and is married to the state's senior Republican senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison. In 1957, Hutchison graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas with honors. He obtained his J.D. degree, cum laude, from the same institution in 1959.
Hutchison is a partner in the firm of Vinson and Elkins, based in the Trammel Crow Building. His principal area of practice is public finance. For more than forty years, he has assisted state and local governments in the use of their constitutional and statutory authority to provide and finance various public activities.
Hutchison became chairman of the Texas Republican Party in 1976 but left in 1977 to pursue his gubernatorial campaign. However, in 1978, he lost the nomination to Bill Clements, by a lopsided vote of 115,345 (72.8 percent) to 38,268 (24.2 percent). (Another 4,790 votes or 3 percent went to Charles Thompson.) Clements went on to win the general election, thus becoming the first Republican governor of Texas since Reconstruction.
Hutchison met his wife, then known as Kay Bailey, when both were state legislators, he from Dallas and she from Houston.
Hutchison resides with his wife in Dallas. They adopted two infant children in 2001, a son and a daughter. Both Hutchisons have been previously married. Ray Hutchison has grown children from his first marriage.
| Preceded by New district |
Member of the Texas House of Representatives from District 33-Q (Dallas) 1973–1977 |
Succeeded by Lee Jackson |
| Preceded by Missing |
Chairman of the Texas Republican Party
Elton Ray Hutchison |
Succeeded by Ray Barnhart |