Lena Guerrero - Railroad Commissioner

Railroad Commissioner

In 1991, Governor Ann W. Richards, a fellow Democrat, appointed Guerrero to fill a vacancy on the three-member Railroad Commission. Her selection was said to have symbolized Richards' hope of a "New Texas"; prior to that, the commission's members had always been white males.

In 1992, Guerrero faced voters in her bid for a six-year term on the Railroad Commission. When it was revealed that Guerrero had lied about having graduated from UT, the momentum shifted heavily to her Republican opponent, attorney Barry Williamson, a native of Arkansas.

Guerrero later obtained her UT degree—she had been nineteen credits short of a bachelor's degree—and became an Austin lobbyist for Bravo Communications, representing such clients as American Telephone & Telegraph, Blue Cross, and the Tigua Indians. She helped pass a bill to allow the Tigua Indians casinos on their reservation. In defending her position, Guerrero said that the issue "is not about gambling. This is about the Indians and their right to use their land.".

In the race for Railroad Commissioner, Guerrero had expected to face Carole Rylander, then a Democrat whom Guerrero had supported in the successful nonpartisan race for mayor of Austin in 1977. However, Rylander, later Carole Strayhorn, lost the Republican primary to Williamson. Strayhorn's second husband, Hill Rylander, as president of the UT Alumni Association, learned that Guerrero did not have the college degree that she claimed when the association planned to honor her as a "distinguished alumna". Some official biographies at the time indicated Guerrero was a member of Phi Beta Kappa; she was not.

In a 1998 interview with the Houston Chronicle, Guerrero reflected that she had mishandled her resignation from the Railroad Commission. "... if you can't learn and go on and you dwell too much in the past, then you're really wasting your present." She resigned two months short of her being able to enter the State's health insurance program, which worked against her financially when she was stricken in 2000 with two malignant brain tumors.

Guerrero underwent proton beam therapy at Loma Linda University Medical Center near San Bernardino, California. Lobbyist Mignon McGarry said that Guerrero went for treatment at Loma Linda after having been admonished by physicians at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that she would otherwise not live more than two years.