![]() She says Bush also helped redirect the party. “In running both of those races, what Bush did was he built an organization across the state,” Barta said. Although he ran tough, the Massachusetts native couldn’t overcome charges of being a carpetbagger. Next came a successful run for Congress, and then another Senate loss in 1970. Senate race against incumbent Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough. “And you have to find enough issues that will build a coalition that will allow you to not only win on the local level but on the statewide and national level as well,” Neerman said. “And that echoes today’s Republican Party and it is the same issues party chairmen are facing today.”Īt the end of the day, Bush understood a political party is a medley of different groups. “Blending them in with the traditional moderate Republican base was a very difficult thing,” Neerman said. Then, he picked off Democrats angry about integration. Bush with wife Barbara in 1945.įirst, Neerman says, he embraced the radical right. And his role as a party builder began.Ĭredit Associated Press George H.W. In 1962, Bush became chairman of Harris County. Neerman says it was after Bush moved from Midland to Houston that his political career picked up speed. “He came in at a time when the Republican Party was the minority party in the state,” said Jonathan Neerman, a former chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party. After becoming a millionaire, Bush turned to public life. 1 on the country charts.īush built a network in the oil fields, started his own oil company, and raised six children. Back then, Midland was a small, close-knit community. The Yale graduate bought a little house in Midland in 1950 in a development nicknamed Easter Egg Row. “Back in the ‘50s when he was in Midland, he was a precinct chairman and the Republicans used to joke back then there were so few of them back then they could meet in a phone booth!”īush moved his family to West Texas in 1948 to get into the oil business, not public life. “Bush was a pioneer in building the Republican Party in Texas,” said SMU professor Carolyn Barta, who covered Bush's campaigns and presidency as a reporter. In World War II, he fought to knock down a foreign enemy. ![]() He’d fallen into the Pacific Ocean after being shot down by the Japanese. When Bush landed in Odessa, Texas, in the late 1940s, it wasn’t his first time navigating a vast ocean of blue. The nation’s 41st president helped build the Republican Party in Texas. Former President George H.W. Bush died Friday night. ![]()
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