Kay Bailey Hutchison Biography
Kathryn Ann Bailey Hutchison, known as Kay Bailey Hutchison (born July 22, 1943), is the senior United States Senator from Texas.
She is a member of the Republican Party. In 2001, she was named one of the thirty most powerful women in America by Ladies Home Journal. The first woman to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate, Hutchison also became the first Texas U.S. senator to receive more than four million votes in a single election.
Hutchison is the most senior female Republican senator, and fifth most senior female senator, having assumed office in June 1993 behind Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD, 1987), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, 1992), Barbara Boxer (D-CA, Jan. 1993), and Patty Murray (D-WA, Jan. 1993).
Early life
Hutchison was born in Galveston to the former Kathryn Ella Sharp and Allan Abner Bailey, Jr., an insurance agent. She has two brothers, Allan and Frank. Hutchison grew up in La Marque, Texas.
She married her first husband, John Pierce Parks, a medical student, on April 8, 1967; they divorced in 1969. She married her second husband, Ray Hutchison, in Dallas on March 16, 1978. They have two adopted children: Kathryn Bailey and Houston Taylor, both adopted in 2001. She also has two stepdaughters, Brenda and Julie, from her husband's previous marriage. Ray Hutchison is a former member of the Texas Legislature, a former state Republican chairman, and ran an unsuccessful bid for the Texas governorship, having lost the Republican nomination in 1978 to Bill Clements, a senior partner with the law firm of Vinson & Elkins, of Dallas.
Hutchison and her family have their primary residence in Dallas, where her children attend school. She has a second house in Virginia, where she lives when the Senate is in session. In August 2009 she put her Virginia house up for sale, and her campaign stated, "She's no longer going to be in the United States Senate. She's coming home to Texas. That's why it's for sale." She has also purchased a house in Nacogdoches, Texas. She is a supporter of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation where she is an honorary board member.
She received her bachelor of arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1962, where she was a cheerleader and a sister of Pi Beta Phi sorority. She received her J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law in 1967. Following her graduation from law school, she was the legal and political correspondent for KPRC-TV in Houston. Hired by Ray Miller, host of the long-running
The Eyes of Texas anthology series, Hutchison was the first female onscreen newswoman in Texas.
Early career
In 1972, Hutchison was elected to the Texas House of Representatives from a district in Houston. She served until 1976. She was vice-chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1976 to 1978. She was a candidate for election to the United States House of Representatives in 1982 for the Dallas-based 3rd District, but was defeated in the primary by Steve Bartlett. She temporarily left politics and became a bank executive and businesswoman.
Kay Bailey Hutchison was a bank executive of a failed bank in Texas and met and married her second husband Ray Hutchison who was the chairman of the Texas Republican Party in 1976 but left in 1977 to pursue his gubernatorial campaign. In 1978, Ray Hutchison lost the nomination to Bill Clements, by a lopsided vote of 115,345 (72.8 percent) to 38,268 (24.2 percent). Kay met Ray when they were both Texas legislators and Kay's interest in politics grew exponentially. Ray is currently a senior attorney at the largest and most powerful law firm and lobbying organization in Houston, TX. (Vinson & Elkins)
Personal wealth
Hutchison’s husband, Ray, a prominent Dallas bond attorney, makes slightly less than a half million dollars a year in combined salary and deferred compensation, records provided by her campaign show. A big stake in Exxon-Mobil, valued at between $250,000 and $500,000, along with other stock holdings and equity investments, have also helped provide the family yearly dividend income of about $60,000 a year since 2001, records show. The Hutchison family reported assets of between $2.8 million and $6.7 million in 2008, not including homes used for residential purposes, Senate records show. The Senate records give ranges of asset value, making an exact calculation impossible.
Elections
1993
Hutchison was elected Texas State Treasurer in 1990 and served until June 1993 when she ran against Senator Bob Krueger for the right to complete the last two years of Lloyd Bentsen's term. Bentsen had resigned in January 1993 to become Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration. Krueger had been appointed by Texas Governor Ann Richards to fill the seat until a replacement was elected.
A field of 24 candidates sought to fill Bentsen's unexpired term, in the May 1993 special election. The top two vote-getters were Hutchison (593,338, or 29 percent) and Krueger (593,239, also 29 percent). Two conservative Republican congressmen, Joe Barton of Dallas (284,135 or 13.9 percent) and Jack Fields of Houston (277,560, or 13.6 percent) split pro-life voters. Their combined vote was 561,695, still short of a runoff berth. A fifth candidate, Democrat Richard W. Fisher, son-in-law of Republican former U.S. Representative James M. Collins, polled 165,564 votes (8.1 percent); the remaining candidates had about 6 percent combined. Running far behind the pack was the Houston conservative political activist and former crusading journalist Clymer Wright, father of his city's 1991 term-limits initiative.
During the campaign Krueger charged that Hutchison was a "country club Republican" and insensitive to the feelings of minorities. In January, the
Houston Chronicle reported that both Hutchison and Fields had promised to serve a maximum of two six-year terms in the Senate as part of her support for term limit legislation for members of Congress. In April, the
Dallas Morning News reported that Hutchison had repeated her pledge to serve only two terms in the U.S. Senate, if elected, and had also said term limits ought to cover all senators, including Senator Phil Gramm (Republican), who had been elected in 1984 and re-elected in 1990. (He would stay in the Senate until 2002.) The term-limits legislation never passed, and Hutchison has said that she would not leave the Senate in the absence of such legislation, because doing so would unilaterally hurt Texas at the expense of other states in the seniority-driven institution.
After the initial voting, most of the Barton and Fields voters switched to Hutchison, who won the runoff, 1,188,716 (67.3 percent) to 576,538 (32.7 percent). Lower turnout in the runoff resulted in a decrease in Krueger's vote total, by 17,000. Hutchison became the first woman to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate.
Following Hutchison's election in 1993, Texas has had two sitting Republican U.S. senators. Shortly after the special election victory, Travis County authorities, led by Democratic district attorney Ronnie Earle, raided Hutchison's offices at the State Treasury looking for proof of allegations that Hutchison used state equipment and employees on state time to help with her campaign. She was indicted by a grand jury in September 1993 for official misconduct and records tampering. Hutchison stated that she was the innocent victim of a politically motivated prosecutor. Earle attempted to get Democratic Governor Ann Richards to appoint Earle to the senate seat, but he has denied that his legal actions against Hutchison were politically motivated.
The case against Hutchison was heard before State District Judge John Onion in February, 1994. During pre-trial proceedings, the judge announced that he would make no rulings on the admissibility of evidence prior to the trial. The evidence was to include data from tapes maintained by Treasury employees. Hutchison had allegedly given instructions that the data be deleted from the department's computers (during the course of the trial, the data were turned over to the Travis County DA's office).
Following Onion's ruling, Earle declined to proceed with his case. Onion swore in a jury and the panel acquitted Hutchison since Earle choose not to present evidence. The acquittal barred any future prosecution of Hutchison.
1994
In 1994, the election for her first full term, Hutchison received 2,604,281 votes (60.8 percent) to 1,639,615 votes (38.3 percent) cast for Democrat Richard W. Fisher, the son-in-law of the late Republican Congressman James M. Collins, who had also run in the special election the year before.
2000
In 2000 she defeated Democrat Gene Kelly, with 4,082,091 (65 percent) to 2,030,315 (32.2 percent). She carried 237 of the 254 counties, including one of the most Democratic counties, Webb County (Laredo). This was the only time since the early 1900s that Webb County had supported a Republican candidate for any office on a partisan ballot. More than four million Texans voted for Hutchison that year — still the record highest number of actual votes ever cast in Texas for a non-presidential candidate (George W. Bush received 4,526,917 votes in Texas in the 2004 election).
2006
Speculation began in 2004 that Hutchison would run for Governor of Texas in 2006, challenging current Governor Rick Perry in the Republican primary. However, on June 17, 2005, Hutchison announced that she would seek reelection to the Senate instead, reneging on an earlier promise to a two-term limit. Many political analysts speculated that she did not believe she could defeat Perry in the GOP primary because of his popularity among Christian conservatives, while her Senate seat was unlikely to face a serious threat.
Hutchison's Democratic opponent in the November 2006 general election was former Houston attorney and mediator Barbara Ann Radnofsky (born July 8, 1956), who had not previously run for public office. Radnofsky received 44 percent of the vote in the primary and won a runoff election against Gene Kelly with 60 percent of the vote. Kelly had been the unsuccessful Democratic nominee against Hutchison in 2000. Libertarian Scott Lanier Jameson (born July 1, 1966), a real estate consultant from Plano, also ran for the seat.
Radnofsky faced an uphill battle in a state that has not elected a Democrat statewide since 1994, as George W. Bush's landslide reelection as governor in 1998 had helped carry Republicans into all the other statewide offices. In the August 2006 Rasmussen poll, Hutchison led her opponent by 30 percentage points — 61 to 31. The Survey USA Poll, which is not a head-to-head matchup, but only lists approval ratings of incumbents, found Hutchison with a 61 percent approval rating. The Zogby poll, in contrast, showed a closer result, but still showed Hutchison with a 17.3 percent lead — the highest of any incumbent Republican Zogby tracks. The authors stated "...Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who got 65 percent of the vote in 2000, is a safe bet to win a third term."
On election night 2006, Hutchison won re-election to another term, winning 2,661,789 votes (61.7%). Radnofsky won 1,555,202 votes (36.04%). Radnofsky only won in base Democratic areas, carrying only border counties with strong Hispanic majorities, such as El Paso and Webb (Laredo) and in Travis County (Austin). Hutchison won everything else, having won majorities in 236 of the state's 254 counties.
2010 gubernatorial election
On August 17, 2009, Senator Hutchison formally announced that she was a Republican candidate for Governor of Texas and positioned herself as a moderate alternative to Governor Rick Perry. Perry criticized Hutchison for her pro-choice position and received endorsements from social conservatives in the state.
Although Hutchison led Perry in polls taken in early 2009 and was perceived by many to be the front-runner in the race, by the fall her lead had evaporated and she consistently trailed the incumbent in the final months before the primary. Hutchison accumulated a list of high profile endorsements that included former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, legendary baseball player Nolan Ryan, and several current and former congressmen and Cabinet secretaries. However, a relatively good state economy and dissatisfaction with Congress created a political environment that Perry was able to capitalize on. Hutchison lost the primary to Perry, 31 to 53 percent, with the remainder of the vote going to Debra Medina, a dark horse candidate with ties to the Tea Party movement.
