Partisan Affiliations
In her campaigns for school board, college board, and mayor, Strayhorn was not identified by partisan affiliation since those posts are elected on a nonpartisan basis. Strayhorn was a Democrat until the mid-1980s; she served as Democratic nominee Walter Mondale's campaign chair in Travis County during the 1984 presidential election. Strayhorn switched parties and became a Republican in 1986, when she was the GOP nominee for the U.S. House seat held by J. J. Pickle.
According to the Associated Press, "Strayhorn has insisted that she is a Republican but is going independent to set partisan politics aside and do what's right for Texas." She has attempted to equate her independence to that of the legendary Sam Houston, who resigned as governor in 1861 to protest Texas' decision to join the Confederate States of America (and who was the only independent candidate to win election as governor of Texas).
Strayhorn sometimes draws comparisons to the late Governor Ann Richards, a Democrat, although the two often found themselves on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Read more about this topic: Carole Keeton Strayhorn
Famous quotes containing the words partisan and/or affiliations:
“Democracy and Republicanism in their best partisan utterances alike declare for human rights. Jefferson, the father of Democracy, Lincoln, the embodiment of Republicanism, and the Divine author of the religion on which true civilization rests, all proclaim the equal rights of all men.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)