Texas Republicans

John Goodwin Tower (September 29, 1925 – April 5, 1991) was an American politician and military officer who represented Texas in the United States Senate from 1961 to 1985. He was the first Republican elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since Reconstruction. Tower is known for leading the Tower Commission, which investigated the Iran-Contra Affair in the Reagan administration.
Born in Houston, Texas, he served in the Pacific Theater of World War II. After the war, he worked as a radio announcer and taught at Midwestern University (now Midwestern State University) in Wichita Falls. He switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in the early 1950s and worked on the 1956 presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Tower lost Texas's 1960 Senate election to Democratic Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, but performed relatively well compared to his Republican predecessors. With the Democratic victory in the 1960 presidential election, Johnson vacated his Senate seat to become Vice President of the United States. In the 1961 special election, Tower defeated Johnson's appointed successor, Bill Blakley. He won re-election in 1966, 1972, and 1978.
Upon joining the Senate in 1961, Tower became the first Republican Senator to represent a state in the South since 1913. He was the only Southern Republican in the Senate until Strom Thurmond switched parties in 1964. A political conservative earlier in his career, Tower staunchly opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Starting in 1976 with his support of Gerald Ford rather than Ronald Reagan in the 1976 Republican primaries, Tower began to alienate many fellow conservatives. He became less conservative over time, later voicing support for legal abortion, gay rights, and opposing President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983.
Tower retired from the Senate in 1985. After leaving Congress, he served as chief negotiator of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the Soviet Union and led the Tower Commission. The commission's report was highly critical of the Reagan administration's relations with Iran and the Contras. In 1989, incoming President George H. W. Bush chose Tower as his nominee for Secretary of Defense, but his nomination was rejected by the Senate. After the defeat, Tower chaired the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Tower died in the 1991 Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 2311 crash.

Charles Fountain Willis, Jr. (July 23, 1918 – March 16, 1993) was an American political campaigner and low level government official.
Willis was born in Beaumont, Texas, and earned a B.A. from the University of Florida in 1939.
During World War II, Willis was a commander in the Naval Air Arm of the United States Navy. He served as a patrol pilot, a bomber pilot, and a fighter pilot. His efforts earned the Distinguished Flying Cross three times, three Air Medals, and a Purple Heart.
After the war, Willis entered private industry and founded Willis Air Service in 1946. In 1951, Willis and Stanley M. Rumbough Jr. co-founded the "Citizens for Eisenhower" movement in an attempt to secure the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Willis continued his work for the Eisenhower campaign in 1952 by joining the campaign staff. He is credited for coining the iconic political slogan, "I Like Ike."After Eisenhower's election in late 1952, Willis joined Eisenhower's staff and served as assistant to the assistant to the president from January 23, 1953, until June 30, 1955.Following Willis' departure from the White House, he served as assistant to the chairman of W. R. Grace and Company until 1957 when he became president of Alaska Airlines.
He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia.

Jack Frasure Hyles (September 25, 1926 – February 6, 2001) was a leading figure in the Independent Baptist movement, having pastored the First Baptist Church of Hammond in Hammond, Indiana, from August 1959 until his death. He was well known for being an innovator of the church bus ministry that brought thousands of people each week from surrounding towns to Hammond for services. Hyles built First Baptist up from fewer than a thousand members to a membership of 100,000. In 1993 and again in 1994, it was reported that 20,000 people attended First Baptist every Sunday, making it the most attended Baptist church in the United States. In 2001, at the time of Hyles's death, 20,000 people were attending church services and Sunday school each week.

Peter J. O'Donnell Jr. (April 21, 1924 – October 10, 2021) was an American businessman, securities investor and philanthropist. From 1962 to 1969, he was the Texas Republican state chair. In 1963, he was also the national chair of the Draft Goldwater Committee.

Marvin Harold Zindler (August 10, 1921 – July 29, 2007) was a news reporter for television station KTRK-TV in Houston, Texas, United States. His investigative journalism, through which he mostly represented the city's elderly and working class, made him one of the city's most influential and well-known media personalities.

Hilary J. Sandoval Jr. (January 29, 1930 – June 11, 1973) was an American businessman who served as Administrator of the Small Business Administration from 1969 to 1971.He died on June 11, 1973, in El Paso, Texas, from complications of brain surgeries at the age of 43.

Charles Ruford Holcomb (born 1933) is a retired Texas judge who served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals from 2001 to 2010.
He graduated from Robert E. Lee High School. He attended Lee College in Baytown and Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, for his undergraduate education. He served in the United States Air Force Reserve from 1951 to 1953; he then graduated in 1958 from South Texas College of Law.From 1959 to 1966, he was the city attorney, first for Deer Park and then for Orange in far southeastern Texas. In 1967, he was elected to the County Court at Law of Orange County and served until 1972. During the school term of 1970–1971, he was also adjunct professor of Government at the Lamar University extension campus in Orange.From 1972 to 1981, he was in private practice with Cox, Holcomb & Sinclair, contemporaneously serving Cherokee County as county attorney from 1974 until 1981, when he was elected district attorney for the same county, a position he retained until 1991.In 1992, he was elected as a Democrat for the position of Justice of the Twelfth Court of Appeals, a post he held 1998. From 1998 to 2000, he sat by assignment in trial and appellate courts as a senior judge. Judge Holcomb was elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000 as a Republican. His term on the Court of Criminal Appeals began in 2001. Holcomb, then seventy-one, was required by law not to serve as an active judge after he turned seventy-five in September 2008.He faced two challengers for re-election in the Republican primary election in 2006, Judge Robert Francis of Dallas, and then State Representative Terry Keel of Austin. Keel challenged both Holcomb and Francis for technical flaws in their applications to be on the ballot. Holcomb's candidacy was affirmed by the Texas Supreme Court and he won re-nomination and reelection. After his re-election, the Texas Constitution was amended to allow judges who turn seventy-five during their term to serve-out a four-year term, meaning Holcomb could serve four years of his six-year term. Holcomb retired from the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2010 and decided to run for the Senate election in 2012, but the nomination instead went to Ted Cruz, who won the party runoff election against David Dewhurst.

Clymer Lewis Wright Jr. (July 24, 1932 – January 24, 2011) was a Texas conservative political activist and journalist. He brought term limits to Houston municipal government and encouraged Ronald Reagan to run for president.

George Strake Jr. (born June 10, 1935) is an American politician. He served as Secretary of State of Texas from 1979 to 1981.

Herman Paul Pressler III (born June 4, 1930), is an American judge who was a justice of the Texas 14th Circuit Court of Appeals in his native Houston, Texas. Pressler was a key figure in the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention, which he initiated in 1978. He has been accused of sexual misconduct or assault by at least six men, some of whom were underage at the time of the alleged activity.