Early Political Career
As Carole McClellan, she served on the board of trustees of the Austin Independent School District (which doubled as the Board of Trustees of Austin Community College) from 1972 to 1977. She served as president of both boards from 1976 to 1977. She was elected mayor of Austin in 1977 and held that post until 1983. In 1983, Governor Mark White appointed Rylander to the State Board of Insurance, where she served until resigning in 1986 to challenge unsuccessfully the veteran Democratic congressman, J. J. Pickle of Austin, a longtime friend and political ally of Lyndon B. Johnson.
As Carole Keeton Rylander, she won election to the Texas Railroad Commission in 1994 by beating Democratic incumbent Mary Scott Nabers, an Ann W. Richards appointee, by almost 300,000 votes. The panel primarily regulates the production of oil and natural gas (but no longer has authority over railroads). She served as commission chairman from November 1995 to January 1997, and from June 1998 to January 1999.
Read more about this topic: Carole Keeton Strayhorn
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“He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
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“Power-worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
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“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)