Kent Hance

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Kent Ronald Hance (born November 14, 1942, in Dimmitt, Texas) is a lobbyist and lawyer who was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from west Texas, having served from 1979 to 1985. After his congressional service, he switched to the Republican Party. As a conservative Democrat, Hance represented the 19th Congressional District, which then stretched from Midland and Odessa to Lubbock.

Hance was chosen to succeed David Smith as the chancellor of Hance's alma mater, the Texas Tech University system in Lubbock. He is taking a leave of absence from his Austin law firm Hance, Scarborough, Wright, Ginsberg and Brusilow but will continue to sit on profit and nonprofit boards and commissions while at the helm of Texas Tech. He assumed his duties on December 1, 2006. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal quoted Tech board chairman Rick Francis: "The regents believed Hance could further the goals that we had for our chancellor, in terms of energizing our alumni, and those legislators in both Austin and Washington, D.C., and provide the vision that we need for the future."

[edit] Early years and election to Congress

Hance obtained his bachelor of arts degree from Texas Tech in 1965 and went to law school at the University of Texas at Austin. After law school, he was admitted to the Texas bar and in 1968 became a practicing attorney in Lubbock. During this period, he was also a law professor at Texas Tech from 1968 until 1973.

Hance unseated Democratic state Senator H.J. "Doc" Blanchard in the 1972 primary. His campaign at the beginning seemed doomed to failure, but Hance quickly made connection with voters in the west Texas district. He served in the Texas State Senate from 1973 to 1978, when he ran successfully as a Democrat for the U.S. House. The seat had been held for a generation by popular Democrat George H. Mahon, long-time chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Hance's opponent in the general election was a young Republican from Midland, George W. Bush. Hance portrayed Bush as "not a real Texan" because of his privileged upbringing and Yale education, in contrast to the folksy image that Bush would seek to project. Hance later said in an interview that for Bush, the lesson was that "he wasn't going to be out-Christianed or out-good-old-boyed again." [1] Hance is the only person ever to have defeated George W. Bush in an election.

Hance was twice re-elected. Like Mahon, he wore his party ties loosely and compiled a very conservative voting record even by Texas Democratic standards. He did not run for a fourth term in 1984 because he opted to seek the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Republican John G. Tower. Hance announced within hours of Tower's withdrawal that he would run for the Senate. He was very narrowly defeated by the most liberal candidate in the race, State Senator Lloyd Doggett of Austin, who was later a long-term Democratic congressman.

Hance was succeeded in the U.S. House by a young Republican, Larry Combest, a former aide to Senator Tower. Combest served until his resignation in 2003. The seat had become increasingly friendly to Republicans over the years and has remained in Republican hands ever since Hance left the U.S. House.

[edit] Hance switches parties

Hance himself became a Republican in 1985. In 1986, he unsuccessfully sought the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Party voters instead called former Governor William Perry "Bill" Clements, Jr., of Dallas out of retirement for the right to challenge Democratic Governor Mark White. Clements defeated White in the general election and served a second nonconsecutive four-year term. In 1988, Hance was a Texas delegate to his first ever Republican National Convention, which met in New Orleans.

In 1987, Clements appointed his former intraparty rival Hance to a vacancy on the Texas Railroad Commission. The next year Hance was elected as a Republican to the commission on the coattails of presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, father of the young man Hance had defeated for Congress ten years earlier. He left the Railroad Commission in 1990, once again to seek the GOP nomination for governor but lost out to controversial Midland businessman Clayton Wheat Williams, Jr., who in turn was narrowly defeated in the November general election by the Democrat Dorothy Ann Willis Richards (1933-2006). In the primary against Williams, Hance finished second but with only 15 percent of the ballots.

In 2004, against the wishes of Governor Rick Perry, Hance assisted Supreme Court Justice Steven Wayne Smith in the latter's unsuccessful bid for renomination in the Republican primary.

[edit] External links

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/101906/loc_101906028.shtml

Academic Offices
Preceded by David Smith	Chancellor of Texas Tech University 2006 – present	Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by H. J. “Doc” Blanchard	Texas State Senator from District 28 (Lubbock) 1975 – 1979	Succeeded by E.L. Short
Preceded by George H. Mahon	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 19th congressional district 1979 – 1985	Succeeded by Larry Combest