Kent Hance

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.

Hance was chosen to succeed David Smith as the chancellor of 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 Texas 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.

Early years and election to Congress

In 1972, Hance ran for the Texas Senate and defeated incumbent 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 sprawling West Texas district.

He served in the Senate from 1973 to 1979, when he ran successfully as a Democrat for the Lubbock-based 19th Congressional District. The seat, which was based in Lubbock 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 businessman from Midland named George W. Bush (the 19th included most of the Permian Basin at the time). Bush won the Republican nomination in a hard-fought but low-turnout runoff primary against the 1976 party nominee, Jim Reese, former mayor of Odessa in Ector County.

The 19th had long been one of the more conservative areas of Texas (it hasn't supported a Democrat for president since 1964). Although the 19th had become increasingly friendly to Republicans at the national level, conservative Democrats continued to represent much of the region at the state level well into the 1990s. Hance claimed Bush was "not a real Texan" because of his privileged upbringing and Yale education. Hance won by seven points - the only time that the future 43rd President of the United States was ever defeated in an election.

Hance was reelected two times. His voting record was that of a typical conservative Texas Democrat; he compiled a lifetime rating of 72 from the American Conservative Union. He did not run for a fourth term in 1984, opting instead to seek the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring John Tower. Hance announced within hours of Tower's withdrawal that he would run for the Senate. He was very narrowly defeated--by only 273 votes--by State Senator Lloyd Doggett of Austin, who was later a long-term Democratic congressman. Hance had received a great deal of support from conservative Republicans who crossed party lines to vote for him in the race, since Hance had run on a conservative platform. Geography also played a role in Hance's loss to Doggett; no one from west of San Antonio has ever represented Texas in the Senate. Hance was succeeded in the U.S. House by a young Republican, Larry Combest, a former aide to Tower.

Hance switches parties

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 was heavily defeated in the primary by another West Texan, controversial Midland businessman Clayton Williams. 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 Texas Supreme Court Justice Steven Wayne Smith in the latter's unsuccessful bid for renomination in the Republican primary.

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Category:1942 births Category:American Christians Category:American lawyers Category:American legal scholars Category:Living people Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Texas Category:People from Lubbock, Texas Category:Texas lawyers Category:Texas State Senators Category:Texas Tech University alumni Category:Texas Tech University faculty Category:Texas Republicans Category:People from the Texas South Plains Category:American university and college presidents Category:United States presidential candidates, 1980 Category:Texas Democrats