Steve Munisteri

Stephen Peter Munisteri (born December 25, 1957) is an American attorney who served as the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas from 2010 to 2015.

He founded Munisteri Properties, a company with interests in commercial properties and whose primary asset was a Greenway Plaza-area building built in 1961 by Gerald D. Hines, which Munisteri redeveloped in 1993.

Munisteri was active in politics early in his teenage years, first working as a volunteer for the campaigns of Texas Republicans Hank Grover and John Tower in 1972, though the two were bitter intraparty rivals.

Munisteri then formed a conservative club at Memorial High School in Houston.

In 1976, he was elected State Vice Chairman for Texas Young Americans for Freedom, was an active volunteer for Ronald Reagan and attended the Republican National Convention.

From 1977 to 1980, he served as state chairman for YAF and was also elected to YAF's national board of directors.

In 1977, Texas YAF was named the most improved state organization at its 1977 national convention.

Under Munisteri's chairmanship, YAF began the practice of issuing legislative rankings for members of the Texas House of Representatives.

Early in his political career, Munisteri served as state chairman of the Texas Chapter of Young Americans for Freedom and founded the Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) in 1980.

In 1980, after experiencing dissatisfaction with the top-down leadership of the national YAF organization at its February 1980 convention, Munisteri proposed a new Texas-based conservative organization to the Texas YAF board.

The board voted unanimously to create a new organization named Young Conservatives of Texas.

The organization was founded on Texas Independence Day, March 2, 1980, at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas.

Munisteri served as the first state chairman.

Munisteri served as state chairman of Young Texans for Reagan in 1980 under Reagan Texas Chair Ernie Angelo.

He continued his Republican Party (GOP) activism as a precinct chairman of precincts 213 and 133 in Harris County in the 1980s, and was also elected to the State Republican Executive Committee for Senate District 17.

Munisteri has worked in over 50 campaigns in a volunteer capacity.

Munisteri founded the firm on November 1, 1982, the day before the defeat of Bill Clements as the first Republican governor of Texas since 1873.

The firm is now known as Sprott, Rigby, Newson, Robbins & Lunceford, P.C.

In addition to his legal practice, Munisteri was also involved in numerous other businesses in his professional career.

He also founded Munisteri Exploration in 1989, and has participated as a partner in the drilling of 60 oil and natural gas wells through 2014.

As a side business, Munisteri managed dozens of professional boxers from 1989 to 2009, when he fully retired from the business.

In 1995, he worked for the Lamar Alexander presidential campaign and helped to put together the Texas volunteer organization under Alexander's state chair Robert Mosbacher Jr.. He also traveled to New Hampshire, Iowa, Florida and South Carolina on behalf of the Alexander campaign in 1996.

In 1999, Munisteri spent a month in Iowa to assist the George W. Bush presidential campaign in the Iowa straw poll, and then spent a month in California running a Bush campaign office in San Fernando.

In 2004, Munisteri was part of the Bush legal response team in Ohio during that year's presidential race.

Munisteri sold the Greenway Plaza Area building in 2007.

However he still owns an interest in two shopping centers and a commercial building, as well as residential property.

In 2008, he traveled to Iowa to assist Texas Land Commissioner Jerry E. Patterson in supporting Fred Thompson for president.

That same year, Munisteri went on to South Carolina to volunteer on behalf of Thompson, and then later spent two months in Iowa assisting John McCain Iowa director Charlie Liebschutz.

In September 2009, Texas GOP State Chairman Tina Benkiser announced her resignation at the quarterly State Republican Executive Committee meeting in Austin.

Under Texas law, each major party must at all times have a woman as either its chairman or vice-chairman.

Since Vice-chairman Robin Armstrong did not relinquish his position to seek to succeed Benkiser as state chairman, only a woman could be elected to fill the position.

On October 24, 2009, the SREC elected Texas GOP National Committeewoman Cathie Adams as Benkiser's successor by a vote of 36–25.

Munisteri was elected chairman at the state convention held in Dallas on June 13, 2010, when he unseated Cathie Adams, the wife of a Dallas chiropractor, who had held the position for only eight months.

He is the first challenger in modern Texas Republican history to defeat a sitting incumbent for the position of state chairman.

On January 22, 2010, Munisteri announced his candidacy for state chairman, citing a desire to make the RPT a "more effective organization" by using his "strong business administrative skills".

He was the second declared challenger in the race, as former SREC member Tom Mechler of Amarillo, had announced his candidacy the previous summer.

Munisteri stepped down as party chairman to join U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky as a senior advisor to Paul's 2016 presidential campaign.

Munisteri received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the UT Law School, completing both degrees in five, instead of seven, years.

With his degrees in hand, Munisteri returned to Houston and worked at the law offices of Funderburk and Funderburk (now Funderburk Funderburk Courtois, L.L.P.) for fourteen months before deciding to open his solo law practice, which he continued in partnership with others, for twenty-seven years.

In 2017, Munisteri was appointed to the White House staff as deputy assistant to the president and principal deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison.