|
Thomas Russell Craddick, Sr., known as Tom Craddick (born September 19, 1943), is the first Republican to have served as Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives since Reconstruction. Craddick wielded the Speaker's gavel from 2003-2009. A House member from the district based in Midland, Craddick was first elected in 1968 at the age of twenty-five. On November 6, 2012, when Craddick won his 23rd term in the Texas House, his daughter, Christi Craddick, was easily elected as a Republican to the Texas Railroad Commission, the state's utility regulatory body. ==Early career== While he was a doctoral student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Craddick decided to run for the legislature to succeed the incumbent Republican Frank Kell Cahoon of Midland, who was not seeking a third two-year term. According to Craddick's official biography, even his father, businessman R.F. Craddick (1913–1986), warned him: "Texas is run by Democrats. You can't win." Although this part of Texas had become very friendly to Republicans at the national level (portions of this area, for instance, supported Barry M. Goldwater's 1964 presidential run, and Midland itself has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1948), Democrats held most offices at the local level well into the 1980s. Nonetheless, the Eagle Scout was elected to the Texas House in 1968, one of eight Republicans in the chamber at that time. His victory came on the same day that Richard M. Nixon was elected as U.S. President. In 1972, Craddick and former State Representative Frank Kell Cahoon encouraged Ernest Angelo, Craddick's neighbor, to run for the position of mayor of Midland being vacated by Edwin H. Magruder, Jr. Mayor Pro-tem Pat M. Baskin, the ormer chairman of the Midland County Democratic Executive Committee, also filed to run. Craddick believed that Baskin if elected would use the mayoral office to attempt to derail Craddick's bid for a third term in the state House in the general election scheduled for November 7, 1972. Angelo agreed to run for mayor if Cahoon would seek one of the at-large city council seats. The deal was struck, and both won their races.〔Billy Hathorn, "Mayor Ernest Angelo, Jr., of Midland and the 96-0 Reagan Sweep of Texas, May 1, 1976," ''West Texas Historical Association Yearbook'' Vol. 86 (2010), p. 83〕 Craddick thereafter was elected to his third term in the House. In 1975, Craddick was named chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, the first Republican to have chaired a Texas legislative committee in more than a century. In Texas, a legislator need not be in the majority party in order to chair a committee. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tom Craddick」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|