Kay Bailey Hutchison
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Kathryn Ann Bailey Hutchison, usually known as Kay Bailey Hutchison (born July 22 1943 in Galveston, Texas), is the senior United States Senator from Texas. She is a member of the Republican Party.
Hutchison grew up in La Marque, Texas. She received her B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1962, where she was a cheerleader. She later received her J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin Law School in 1967. Following her graduation from law school, she was the legal and political correspondent for KPRC-TV in Houston.
In 1972 Hutchison was elected to the Texas State House of Representatives from a district in Houston, of which she was a member until 1976. She was vice-chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1976 to 1978. She was a candidate for election to the United States House of Representatives in 1982 for the Dallas-based 3rd District, but was defeated in the primary by Steve Bartlett. She temporarily left politics and became a bank executive and successful businesswoman.
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Election to the Senate
Hutchison was elected Texas State Treasurer in 1990 and served until June 1993 when she ran against Senator Bob Krueger for the right to complete the last two years of Lloyd Bentsen's term. Bentsen had resigned in January 1993 to become Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. Krueger had been appointed to fill the seat, by Texas Governor Ann Richards, until an all-party primary was held in May 1993.
Hutchison (593,338, or 29 percent) and Krueger (593,239, or 29 percent) were the top two voter-getters in the special election. Two conservative Republican congressmen, Joe Barton of Dallas (284,135 or 13.9 percent) and Jack Fields of Houston (277,560, or 13.6 percent) split the right-of-center, pro-life voters. Their candidacies worked inadvertently to secure Hutchison a runoff slot. Had only one of the two run in the special election, Congressmen Barton and Fields combined would have still had insufficient votes to secure a runoff berth. Their combined vote was 561,695, still a third place finish. A fifth candidate, Democrat Richard Fisher polled 165,564 votes (8.1 percent).
Thereafter, most of the Barton and Fields voters flocked to Hutchison, who won the runoff, 1,188,716 (67.3 percent) to 576,538 (32.7 percent). Lower turnout in the runoff actually worked to shrink Krueger's raw vote by 17,000. Hutchison hence became the first woman to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. For the first time in modern history, Texas would also have two sitting Republican U.S. senators, a phenomenon that has continued to the present day.
Shortly after the special election victory, Travis County authorities, led by district attorney Ronnie Earle, raided Hutchison's offices at the State Treasury looking for proof of allegations that Hutchison used state equipment and employees on state time to help with her campaign. She was indicted by a grand jury in September, 1993 for official misconduct and records tampering. Time magazine (July 14, 2003) reported: "Earle amassed thousands of documents as evidence and many thought the new Senator would lose her job. But at a pretrial hearing, the judge and Earle clashed over the admissibility of the documents; fearing he would lose, Earle declined to present a case. Hutchison was quickly acquitted and Earle was portrayed as a fool."
In 1994, the election for her first full term, Hutchison received 2,604,281 votes (60.8 percent) to 1,639,615 votes (38.3 percent) cast for Democrat Richard Fisher, the son-in-law of the late Republican Congressman James M. Collins, who had also run in the special election the year before.
In 2000 she defeated Democrat Gene Kelly, with 4,082,091 (65 percent) to 2,030,315 (32.2 percent). She carried 237 of the 254 counties, including one of the most Democratic counties, Webb County (Laredo). This was the only time since the early 1900s that Webb County had supported a Republican candidate for any office on a partisan ballot. More than four million Texans voted for Hutchison that year -- still the record highest number of actual votes ever cast in Texas for a candidate.
Senate career
Hutchison serves on the following Senate committees: Appropriations; Commerce, Science and Transportation; Rules and Administration; Veterans' Affairs.
In June of 2000, Hutchinson and her Senate colleagues coauthored Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate. In 2004, her book, American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country, was published.
Since 2001, Hutchison has been vice-chairwoman of the Senate Republican Conference (caucus), making her the fourth-ranking Republican in the Senate behind (as of 2005) Majority Leader Bill Frist, Majority Whip Mitch McConnell and conference chairman Rick Santorum. McConnell has suggested that Hutchison might become conference chairwoman in 2007.
Hutchison is a member of The WISH List (Women In the Senate and House), the nation's largest fundraising network for pro-choice Republican women. This is very unusual, since Texas Republicans tend to be strongly pro-life. The extent to which she is pro-choice is debatable; in the past years NARAL has given her ratings of 0%, 7%, 20%, and 0%. [1] While in the Texas House of Representatives (1973 to 1977), Hutchison worked with Sarah Weddington, the attorney who won the Roe v. Wade case, to protect rape victims from having their names published. She has since supported some abortion rights, but not federal funding for them.
On October 23, 2005, in reference to the White House CIA leak investigation, Hutchinson called a possible charge of perjury a "technicality," although she was one of 45 senators to vote guilty on the charge of perjury against President Clinton during his impeachment trial.
2006 re-election campaign
Template:Main Speculation began in 2004 that Hutchison would run for Governor of Texas in 2006, challenging current Governor Rick Perry in the Republican primary. However, on June 17, 2005, Hutchison announced that she would seek reelection to the Senate instead. In doing so, she reversed her position from November 1994. On that election night, she said "I’ve always said that I would serve no more than two full terms. This may be my last term, or I could run for one more. But no more after that. I firmly believe in term limitations and I plan to adhere to that." [2]
Hutchison's Democratic opponent in the November 2006 general election is Houston attorney Barbara Ann Radnofsky, who has not previously run for public office. Radnofsky did not get a majority of votes in the primary; she won a runoff election against 80-year-old Gene Kelly, a San Antonio-area lawyer and perennial candidate, who was the unsuccessful Democrat nominee against Hutchison in 2000.
Radnofsky is expected to face an uphill battle, in a state that has not elected a Democrat statewide since 1994 and against a highly popular Hutchison.
Other
In February 2006, TheWhiteHouseProject.org[3] named Hutchison as one of its "8 in '08", a group of eight female politicians who could possibly be elected President in 2008.
Hutchison has two adopted children with husband Ray Hutchison. He has grown children by a previous marriage.
External links
References
- Selby, W. Gardner. "Earle lost Kay; can he beat DeLay?". Austin American-Statesman, Oct. 2, 2005. pp. A1, A8-A9.
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