Kay Bailey Hutchison

Kay Bailey Hutchison (born July 22, 1943, Galveston, Texas, U.S.) is an American businesswoman and politician who was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas, serving from 1993 to 2013.

Bailey was born in Galveston, Texas, to Allan Bailey and Ella Kathryn Sharp Bailey. Her family had long ties to the state; her great-great-grandfather was Charles S. Taylor, one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. Bailey grew up in La Marque, a small town just outside Galveston. After earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1962, she graduated from the University of Texas law school in 1967. She soon found, however, that law firms were reluctant to hire women. Instead, she turned to journalism, reporting on state politics for a Houston television station.

In 1971 Bailey made the decision to run for a seat in the state legislature in the next year’s election. Also that year, she briefly worked as the press secretary for Anne Armstrong, who was the Republican National Committee cochair at the time. Bailey won election to the Texas House of Representatives in 1972, becoming its first Republican woman member. She was reelected twice before leaving to serve as vice chair of the National Transportation Safety Board in 1976. In 1978 she married Texas legislator Ray Hutchison (her first marriage having ended years earlier), becoming a stepmother to his two children from his previous marriage. Other than a failed bid in 1982 to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, for the next several years Hutchison primarily focused on business and financial endeavours, owning a candy manufacturing company and serving as senior vice president and general counsel of Republic Bank Corporation. She was also a cofounder of Fidelity National Bank of Dallas.

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Hutchison returned to politics in 1990, when she was elected Texas state treasurer—the first Republican woman elected to a statewide office in Texas—serving in that position until 1993. That year, Hutchison had run in a special election to fill a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate. She won with more than two-thirds of the vote in a June runoff election, securing a Senate seat that had been filled by Democrats for more than a century. Later that year, however, Hutchison was indicted and charged with misuse of state funds and resources and tampering with evidence while serving as state treasurer. She was acquitted of the charges shortly after her trial began in February 1994. The prosecution, fearing that important evidence would not be admissible in the trial, refused to present their case, and the judge then instructed the jury to acquit Hutchison. She was reelected to the Senate in 1994, 2000, and 2006 by large margins of victory. Meanwhile, in 2001 Hutchison and her husband adopted a daughter, Bailey, and a son, Houston.

As a senator, Hutchison generally favoured conservative measures, including reducing government spending and cutting taxes. She was a staunch supporter of the military and a vocal advocate of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush’s war on terrorism. Hutchison sponsored laws to protect people from stalkers, to allow homemakers to set up individual retirement accounts (IRAs), and to aid women who had suffered from domestic violence. In 2000 she was elected by her Republican colleagues to serve as vice chair of the Senate Republican Conference, as position she held until 2007. She chaired the Republican Policy Committee from 2007 until 2009.

In 2010 Hutchison ran for the Republican nomination for governor of Texas. She lost in the primary, coming in second to the incumbent Texas governor, Rick Perry. The next year she announced that she would not stand for reelection as senator in 2012. After her last term as senator ended, she joined the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm as senior counsel in February 2013. Hutchinson was named U.S. permanent representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2017, a position she held until 2021.

In addition to her career in politics, Hutchison wrote books celebrating the achievements of American women. Her works include American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country (2004), Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers (2007), and Unflinching Courage: Pioneering Women Who Shaped Texas (2014).

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