The Firebrand of Abilene Runs for the Texas Senate

A state representative from Abilene wants to make her mark in the Texas Senate, but the district she wants to serve presents significant challenges in geography that spans the state’s urban versus rural political divide.

Susan Lewis King currently represents District 71 in the Texas House of Representatives, marked generally around Taylor, Nolan and Jones Counties in and around Abilene. Last September, King announced her intentions to run for the vacant Senate District 24, an odd-shaped territory King describes as looking like “a big ear that’s been bent over.” The weird shape isn’t the problem, she said. The problem is from where and to where the ear extends.

From the west, the district starts in Taylor County with part of her hometown of Abilene. Then the district heads east and south down the Colorado River, through Brownwood, San Saba, Lampasas and Llano. Then further east to Bell County and Fort Hood, south to North Austin, and the lobe of the ear sits in the exurb of San Antonio, encompassing Kerr and Bandera Counties.

What little the citizens of small rural Abilene and smaller Brownwood have in common with urbanized Austin and San Antonio, other than all being Texans, gives plenty of ammo for King’s runoff contender, Dawn Buckingham, an ophthalmologist from Austin. That ammo is living in a denser population with many more voters.

“The urban areas like to take our water and they have the voters to do it,” King said.

Yet, King squeaked out a win in what was, for all intents and purposes, a three-way tie in the March 1 Republican primary. King earned 26 percent of the vote; Buckingham, 25; and another Austin suburbanite from Bee Cave, businessman Jon Cobb, was at 21 percent. King and Buckingham are in a runoff May 24, a difficult date for voter turnout. By Election Day, citizens in many municipalities, particularly Abilene, will have just voted for city and county candidates May 7.

“The easy way to remember this, is that the runoff for Senate District 24 is on May 24,” King said.

King has a leg up in the runoff. Former challenger Jon Cobb endorsed her.

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Above: Rep. Susan King describes Senate District 24 as "an ear that's been bent over." (LIVE! Photo/Joe Hyde)

The Stump Speech

When Susan King arrived Saturday afternoon at the Pappy Slokum Brewery, 409 S. Treadway in Abilene, to speak at the Abilene Police Officers Association candidate forum, she was met at her car with a rather large entourage of Abilene firefighters and police officers. “Hey, you want to get your picture taken with Susan King?” one of the firefighters asked. In an all-day slate of speeches from 10 candidates, including Jodey Arrington of Lubbock who is running for the U.S. Congress, King was to deliver the keynote, even if informally designated.

Dressed in her distinctive red cowboy boots with her jeans neatly tucked in, and a patriotic red and blue top, onlookers noted that whether she’s dressed formally or casually, the red boots are her signature.

“When I first showed up to work in the House, I was surrounded by strong men. A mentor and friend of mine explained that if I was going to compete, I needed a brand,” King explained. The boots are her brand.

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Above: Susan King's boots worn Saturday were custom-made by Texas boot manufacturer Lucchese in El Paso. (LIVE! Photo/Joe Hyde)

“You’ve got a great looking dog over there,” King started her remarks, pointing to a large dog in the small audience. Immediately, King's outsized personality connected with the crowd.

King is running an outsider campaign. And by outsider, she described her approach to government as making progress by solving problems, not by winning the election with soaring rhetoric and then failing to accomplish much in office. State Rep. Drew Darby of San Angelo frequently laments about the newly-minted urban and suburban representatives who are so conservative they will vote “No” to everything, whether it’s spending money or finding more revenue, while the state-maintained roads in West Texas fall apart. In the Texas Legislature, “The Establishment” isn’t left-of-center Republicans and Democrats; it’s the Tea Party.

King doesn’t express this, though she did note Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick runs the Texas Senate. Former conservative radio commentator Patrick rose up in Texas politics on the lift created for him by the urban Houston-area Tea Party organizations.

King has a very conservative voting record herself, though. She supported more spending on border security and supports giving more local control of school boards (she was on the Abilene ISD board for years). As a nurse, she hates Obamacare and led the fight against it in the Texas Legislature. For the ultimate proof of her conservative cred, the National Rifle Association endorsed her in her 2014 campaign for re-election to the Texas House. When asked about Wendy Davis, the hero of the progressive organizers of Battleground Texas, she scoffed, “And where is she now?”

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Above: Joe Hyde interviews Susan King in Abilene. (Contributed Photo/Chuck Galco)

Conservative cred isn’t enough, King argued. Representatives have to want to work together and have experience doing so in order to accomplish the business of the state, she contended.

“The Senate and the House in the State of Texas don’t work well together,” she said. “They’re like two roads going to the same town, and they just kind of diverge from their destination.”

She admitted there are exceptions, including retiring Sen. Troy Fraser who currently holds the office for the 24^th district, and she said she admires former Sen. Robert Duncan, now Texas Tech University System Chancellor, who formerly represented the Concho Valley.

“When it comes to the legislative process, it’s ‘we’ and ‘they’,” she said. Both chambers have to pass the bill to send to the governor’s desk for signature, but there’s not a good synergy right now, King explained.

King said the state representatives in her senate district need a strong senator who can combine efforts to pass bills for the good of the constituents.

“State representatives must work together for the force of the (senate) district,” King explained. “The big cities do this very well. I don’t have high, soaring rhetoric for my platform. My job is to bring your voice to the State Capitol. That’s it. There’s a big difference between a ‘representative’ and a ‘politician.’ A representative works to solve your problems. The name ‘politician’ comes from ‘poly’ and ‘ticks’. ‘Poly’ means ‘many’, and ‘ticks’ are those blood-sucking creatures.”

Anson Prison

King’s frustration with the way the Texas House and Senate do not work together was revealed when she attempted to solve the funding issue with a brand new, $35 million jail for parole and probation violators built in her House district in Anson, in Jones County, north of Abilene. The City of Anson bet on the outcome when the Texas Department of Criminal Justice expressed a need for such a facility and the city issued bonds to pay for infrastructure additions to facilitate building the private equity-funded facility. A year after the new jail was built, in 2011, the TCDJ suddenly lost interest in Anson’s jail and abandoned them. It sits empty today, costing the City of Anson $16,500 per month for debt service, and King said, about another $5,000 per month to maintain the empty prison.

“Ever heard of the ‘bridge to nowhere’?” King asked. “That is nothing compared to this.”

King said she worked tirelessly to get a bill passed through the House only to have it arrive dead on arrival in the Senate. The Abilene Reporter-News names urban legislators as the antagonists who refused to fund the new jail, including Sen. John Whitmore of Houston, who chairs the criminal justice committee. The Reporter-News reported that Jones County Judge Dale Spurgin said Anson went ahead with the new jail after Whitmore championed building the new facility in 2007.

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Above: Opening Day of the 84th Texas Legislative Session. Rep. King in her boots from Sweetwater. (Susan King on Facebook)

King’s 2013 legislation, Texas House Bill 1025, would have purchased the facility for $19.5 million and taken Jones County and the City of Anson off the hook. But it was killed by Sen. Whitmore and company in the Senate. “I don’t think Sen. Whitmore is particularly fond of rural West Texas,” Judge Spurgin is quoted in the July 2013 Reporter-News article.

King doesn’t view her unsuccessful effort to find a solution for the Anson jail as a failure. Rather, she said, it illustrates how the rural versus urban divide in Texas politics trumps liberal versus conservative ideology.

To match the power of urban legislators and their vast number of constituents who can out-vote rural Texas, King said rural Texans need strong leaders representing their communities who can fill large shoes. She believes she is uniquely qualified to fill them. Look at her red boots.