Preston Smith (governor) - Political Career

Political Career

Smith was first elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1944 and then to the Texas State Senate in 1956. He won the Senate seat by defeating in the primary the incumbent Kilmer B. Corbin, the father of actor Barry Corbin. In 1962, Smith won the lieutenant governor's race, securing majorities in all but 16 of the 254 counties to defeat the Republican O.W. "Bill" Hayes, the running-mate of gubernatorial candidate Jack M. Cox of Houston.

In 1968, Smith was elected governor, a position he held from 1969 to 1973. He succeeded the popular Democratic Governor John B. Connally, Jr., who later switched to the Republican Party. To win the governorship, Smith first defeated Don Yarborough in the 1968 Democratic runoff election. Several other candidates, including Dolph Briscoe, a large landholder from Uvalde in the Texas Hill Country, and former Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr, also of Lubbock, were eliminated in the primary.

Smith then twice defeated Republican nominee Paul W. Eggers, a tax attorney from Wichita Falls and later Dallas, and a close friend of U.S. Senator John G. Tower. In the high-turnout general election of 1968, Smith received 1,662,019 ballots (57 percent) to Eggers' 1,254,333 (43 percent). In the low-turnout general election of 1970, Smith, who had been unopposed in the Democratic primaries, received 1,197,726 votes (53.6 percent) to Eggers' 1,037,723 (46.4 percent). Smith's terms were still two years each. The state switched to four-year terms in 1974.

Smith was embroiled in the Sharpstown scandal stock fraud scheme of 1971 and 1972, which eventually led to his downfall. Smith lost his third-term bid for the governorship of Texas to Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde in the Democratic primary in 1972. He ran a distant fourth in the primary, behind Briscoe, women's activist Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Corpus Christi, and Lieutenant Governor Ben F. Barnes, formerly of Comanche County.

Among his appointments, Smith named former State Senator Grady Hazlewood of Amarillo and Austin as a regent of Hazlewood's alma mater, West Texas A&M University in Canyon.In 1969, Smith named state Representative Randy Pendleton of Andrews to head the Office of State and Federal Relations in Washington, D.C.