Early Career
While he was a doctoral student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Craddick decided to run for the legislature to succeed the incumbent Republican Frank Kell Cahoon of Midland, was not seeking a third two-year term. According to Craddick's official biography, even his father, businessman R.F. Craddick (1913–1986), warned him: "Texas is run by Democrats. You can't win." Although this part of Texas had become very friendly to Republicans at the national level (portions of this area, for instance, supported Barry M. Goldwater's 1964 presidential run, and Midland itself has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1948), Democrats held most offices at the local level well into the 1980s.
Nonetheless, the Eagle Scout was elected to the Texas House in 1968, one of eight Republicans in the chamber at that time. His victory came on the same day that Richard M. Nixon was elected as U.S. President.
In 1975, Craddick was named chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, the first Republican to have chaired a Texas legislative committee in more than a century. In Texas, a legislator need not be in the majority party to head a committee.
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