Former TX Governor Dolph Briscoe To Be Honored as "Great Westerner"

Former Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe Jr., who presided during the state's oil and gas boom years and left office after a stunning primary defeat, will be inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners in Oklahoma City next month.

Briscoe, governor from 1973 to 1979, will be honored at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City on April 17. Others being inducted are Wina Rae Calhoon, a pioneer teacher and minister, and Thomas "Broken Hand" Fitzpatrick, a mountain man, guide and fur trader.

Briscoe was elected to the Texas House from Uvalde in 1949 and served as a legislator for eight years.

After quitting the Legislature, Briscoe was designated the state's Outstanding Conservation Rancher. He served as president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, the South Texas Chamber of Commerce and the Texas Chamber of Commerce.

In 1960 as president of the cattle raisers group, Briscoe headed a group that got $3 million in voluntary contributions to encourage federal and state funding to launch a screwworm eradication program in Texas and the Southwest, a move considered by livestock growers to be the most important and beneficial development in the industry's history.

Briscoe left office after a shocking upset in the 1978 Democratic primary at the hands of Attorney General John Hill, who was defeated that November by Bill Clements, Texas' first Republican governor since Reconstruction.

In 1994, Briscoe was inducted into the State Fair of Texas, Heritage Hall of Honor and a year later into the Texas Business Hall of Fame.

Scores of others are already inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners. They include former President Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and humorist and writer Will Rogers.

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I believe that Briscoe worked hard in two vain attempts to carry TX for Bill Clinton of neighboring AR.

Dolph has to be the greatest nonentity ever elected governor of any state, the ultimate whitebread politician.

Anyone who wants to see Dolph's modus operandi should rent 'The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas'.

So9

2 posted on 03/30/2004 5:42:13 AM PST by Servant of the 9 (Screwing the Inscrutable or is it Scruting the Inscrewable?)

There are some who think that the late Sen. John G. Tower, R-TX, covertly supported Briscoe in his 1972 gubernatorial victory. Why? Tower was feuding with the GOP candidate for governor, then State Senator Hank Grover, R-Houston. Grover later tried to run for the Senate when Tower retired in 1984 but ran poorly in the GOP primary, won that year by Phil Gramm.

3 posted on 03/30/2004 5:59:35 AM PST by Theodore R. (When will they ever learn?)

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