PRESTON SMITH
GOV. OF TEXAS
THE STATE OF TEXAS

Preston Smith (Governor)
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Preston Smith

40thÊGovernor of Texas
InÊoffice: January 21, 1969 - January 16, 1973
Lieutenant: Ben Barnes
PrecededÊby: John Connally
SucceededÊby: Dolph Briscoe
Born: March 8, 1912 in Williamson County, Texas
Died: October 18, 2003 (agedÊ91) in Lubbock, Texas
PoliticalÊparty: Democratic
Profession: Politician

Preston Earnest Smith (March 8, 1912 - October 18, 2003) was a Democratic Governor of Texas from 1969 to 1973, who earlier served as the Lieutenant Governor from 1963 to 1969.

Early life

Smith was born into a tenant farming family of 13 children in Williamson County near Austin. The family later moved to Lamesa, the seat of Dawson County on the Texas South Plains, where Smith graduated from Lamesa High School in 1928. He thereafter graduated from Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) in Lubbock and built a movie theater business by the middle 1940s.

Political career

Smith was first elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1944 and then to the Texas State Senate in 1956. In 1962 he was elected lieutenant governor, and then in 1968 he was elected governor, a position he held from 1969 to 1973. He succeeded the popular Democratic Governor John B. Connally, Jr., who later switched to the Republican Party. To win the governorship, Smith first defeated Don Yarborough in the 1968 Democratic runoff election. Two other candidates: Dolph Briscoe, a large landholder from Uvalde in the Texas Hill Country, and former Attorney General Waggoner Carr, were eliminated in the primary.

Smith then twice defeated Republican nominee Paul W. Eggers of Dallas, a friend of Senator John G. Tower. In the high turnout general election of 1968, Smith received 1,662,019 ballots (57 percent) to Eggers' 1,254,333 (43 percent). In the low turnout general election of 1970, Smith, who had been unopposed in the Democratic primaries, received 1,197,726 votes (53.6 percent) to Eggers' 1,037,723 (46.4 percent). Smith's terms were still two years each. The state went to four year terms in 1974.

Smith was embroiled in the Sharpstown scandal stock fraud scheme of 1971 and 1972, which eventually led to his downfall. Smith lost his third term bid for the governorship of Texas to Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde in the Democratic primary in 1972. He ran a distant fourth in the primary, behind Briscoe, women's activist Frances ''Sissy'' Farenthold of Corpus Christi, and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes.

Later life and attempted political comeback

In 1974, Smith joined banker Stanton Leon Koop (1937 - 2008), a native of Pampa, in forming the West Texas Savings Association in Lubbock. In 1986, Koop moved to Dallas, where he was affiliated with Great Western Mortgage Company, until his retirement in 1994.

In 1978, at the age of sixty-six, Smith again entered the Democratic gubernatorial primary against his intraparty rival, Governor Briscoe. Both Smith and Briscoe lost in the primary to former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice John Luke Hill, who in turn was narrowly defeated in the general election by Republican William Perry ''Bill'' Clements, Jr.

Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport

Toward the end of his life, Smith worked as a political liaison officer for Texas Tech University. After his death in Lubbock, the airport was renamed in 2004 in his memory as Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport.

Smith died in Lubbock on October 18, 2003 and is interred at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.