David Dewhurst

David Henry Dewhurst (born August 18, 1945) is an American politician, businessman, and attorney who served as the 41st Lieutenant Governor of Texas, serving from 2003 to 2015.

In 1981, Dewhurst and Ted Law re-established Falcon Seaboard, a Texas-based diversified energy and investments company in Houston that Law had founded in 1935.

The company quickly made Dewhurst a millionaire, but collapsed just as quickly, going into bankruptcy.

Dewhurst then went into business constructing cogeneration plants, which proved to be a tremendous success.

In 1995, Dewhurst married Tammy Jo Hopkins, a 32-year-old model.

In 1996, the company sold its plants for $226 million, and in 2011, Dewhurst was worth an estimated $200 million.

Dewhurst was elected as Commissioner of the General Land Office of Texas in 1998, when the 16-year incumbent, Garry Mauro, waged an unsuccessful campaign for governor against George W. Bush.

Dewhurst was opposed in the general election by Democratic State Representative Richard Raymond, then of Benavides and thereafter of Laredo.

Dewhurst described himself as a "George Bush Republican" and drew on his personal wealth to spend a record $8 million on his run for office (previous candidates for land commissioner had generally spent only $1 million).

The campaign was a bitter one, in which Dewhurst's Republican primary opponent, Jerry E. Patterson, accused Dewhurst of trying to bribe him to leave the race, and Raymond unsuccessfully accused him of embezzlement.

Dewhurst ultimately received 2,072,604 votes (57.42 percent) to Raymond's 1,438,378 ballots (39.85 percent).

Dewhurst was the first Republican to serve as Land Commissioner since the Reconstruction era.

A member of the Republican Party, he was the Texas Land Commissioner from 1999 to 2003.

After she pled no contest to driving while intoxicated in 1999, the couple announced that she would seek full-time help for alcohol abuse.

The couple divorced in 2000.

In April 2021, Dewhurst was arrested on charges of domestic violence at a Dallas hotel.

The arrest record said Dewhurst was chasing a woman, 41, on a patio area near the hotel entrance, trying to retrieve a laptop computer from the woman, when she fell and hit her head on a concrete bench.

Dallas police did not release the name of the victim in the incident and did not further describe the victim's relationship with Dewhurst.

In May 2021, the Dallas County District Attorney's Office declined to accept a domestic violence case against the former lieutenant governor, and no further action was taken.

He breeds registered Black Angus cattle and once competed in National Cutting Horse Association competitions.

He also speaks Spanish.

Dewhurst was elected lieutenant governor in November 2002, when he defeated former Democratic Comptroller John Sharp of Victoria, now the chancellor of Texas A&M University.

In that campaign, Dewhurst stressed his interest in public education and opposition to school vouchers.

He again outspent his opponent significantly with a $9 million campaign.

Dewhurst polled 2,341,875 votes (51.77 percent) to Sharp's 2,082,281 (46.03 percent).

Dewhurst succeeded Bill Ratliff.

(Ratliff did not contest the lieutenant governor's position in the primary, opting instead for re-election to his state senate seat.)

Both brothers visited the Utah Beach Museum on June 7, 2007, and discovered an exhibit detailing their father's mission on D-Day.

Moved, the Dewhurst brothers contributed millions of dollars for the extension of the museum, allowing it to purchase a B-26 Marauder and to open a new building.

Dewhurst is a businessman, a rancher, and a community leader in Houston, where he has served on civic and charitable boards.

He graduated from Lamar High School in Houston and earned his bachelor's degree and played basketball at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, where he was a brother of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

There he received a BA in English with a minor in history.

Lacking the eyesight to become a pilot like his father, Dewhurst became an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force and then an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the United States State Department.

During his years in the CIA, Dewhurst was stationed in Bolivia, arriving shortly before the coup against leftist president Juan José Torres.

He was a candidate in 2012 for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the retiring Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, but he lost his party's runoff election to former Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who went on to win the general election.

Dewhurst's third term as lieutenant governor ended on January 20, 2015.

He served as an advisory board member at the United States Secretary of Energy led by former Governor Rick Perry who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017.

Dewhurst's father, David Dewhurst Jr., was a World War II pilot of a Martin B-26 Marauder of the 553d Fighter-Bomber Squadron.

On D-Day, flying over Cotentin peninsula in the "Dinah Might", he led a squadron bombing German positions on Utah Beach.

After the war, David Dewhurst Jr. was killed by a drunk driver, leaving behind his wife and his two sons, David and Eugene.