Dolph Briscoe
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Dolph Briscoe was an American politician and businessman and governor of Texas between 1973 and 1979.
Born in Uvalde, on April 23, 1923, Briscoe graduated from the University of Texas in 1942, at which he was a brother of Alpha Phi Omega. While at UT, Briscoe was a selected a Newman in the Texas Cowboys in the spring of 1940. He then joined the Army, serving in southeast Asia during World War II.
Briscoe was elected to the state legislature in 1949 and served until 1957. He then returned to Uvalde to manage his family's ranch and other businesses. In 1968, Briscoe competed unsuccessfully in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. There was a runoff between the more liberal contender, Don Yarborough of Houston (no relation to U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough), and Lieutenant Governor Preston Smith of Lubbock. Smith won the runoff and then defeated Republican Paul W. Eggers of Dallas in the general election.
In 1972, Briscoe returned to politics, seeking and receiving the Democratic nomination for governor of Texas over incumbent Preston Smith, whose late tenure was marred by the Sharpstown scandal. After he defeated liberal activist Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Corpus Christi for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in a heated runoff primary, Briscoe narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, staunchly conservative State Senator Henry Grover of Houston, in the November 1972 general election. The final tally was 1,633,493 (47.9 percent) for Briscoe and 1,533,986 (45 percent) for Grover. The Hispanic La Raza candidate, 29-year-old Ramsey Muñiz, received 214,118 votes (6 percent), nearly all believed to have been at Briscoe's expense. Grover might well have defeated Briscoe in the Nixon-Agnew reelection landslide had not Senator John G. Tower undercut his fellow Republican's candidacy. Grover and Tower had feuded over the direction of the Texas GOP, with Grover preferring a more populist, middle class appeal, while Tower was viewed by many as establishment and elitist. Nevertheless, Tower won his third Senate term in 1972, as Grover was losing to Briscoe by some 100,000 votes.
As governor (he served the last two-year term and the first four-year term in Texas, he focused on the maintenance and efficiency of existing government agencies as opposed to the creation of new ones. As a veteran rancher, Briscoe also worked to help the farmers and ranchers of the state during his tenure. This included the eradication of the screw worm on both sides of the Rio Grande River.
In the 1974 general election -- the first for a four-year term in Texas since 1873 -- Briscoe defeated the Republican nominee, former Lubbock Mayor James "Jim" Granberry, a dentist, who was the choice of Senator Tower, by a wide margin, 1,016,334 to 514,725 in a heavily Democratic year. (There were also 93,295 votes for the Hispanic La Raza candidate and another some 30,000 for other minor candidates.)
In 1974 and 1975, Briscoe undercut two serious attempts to write a new constitution for the state of Texas. He said that the proposals before the legislature, acting as a constitutional convention in 1974, and later, in 1975, before the voters, would cause expansion of government and weaken the executive branch, already considered too weak by most political scientists.
Briscoe was defeated in the Democratic primary in 1978 by former Chief Justice John L. Hill, who was in turn very narrowly defeated in the general election for Texas governorship by Republican Bill Clements. Also running unsuccessfully in that 1978 primary was Briscoe's old intraparty rival, former Governor Preston Smith.
Briscoe has won many political and civic awards over the years, including the designation of "Mr. South Texas." He is a banker and rancher in Uvalde.