Stephen Peter Munisteri (born December 25, 1957) is an American attorney who served as the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas from 2010 to 2015. In 2017, Munisteri was appointed to the White House staff as deputy assistant to the president and principal deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison.
Munisteri was elected chairman at the state convention held in Dallas on June 13, 2010, when he unseated Cathie Adams, the wife of a Dallas chiropractor, who had held the position for only eight months. He is the first challenger in modern Texas Republican history to defeat a sitting incumbent for the position of state chairman. Early in his political career, Munisteri served as state chairman of the Texas Chapter of Young Americans for Freedom and founded the Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) in 1980.
Munisteri stepped down as party chairman to join U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky as a senior advisor to Paul's 2016 presidential campaign.
Background
Munisteri received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the UT Law School, completing both degrees in five, instead of seven, years. With his degrees in hand, Munisteri returned to Houston and worked at the law offices of Funderburk and Funderburk (now Funderburk Funderburk Courtois, L.L.P.) for fourteen months before deciding to open his solo law practice, which he continued in partnership with others, for twenty-seven years. Munisteri founded the firm on November 1, 1982, the day before the defeat of Bill Clements as the first Republican governor of Texas since 1873. The firm is now known as Sprott, Rigby, Newson, Robbins & Lunceford, P.C.
In addition to his legal practice, Munisteri was also involved in numerous other businesses in his professional career. He founded Munisteri Properties, a company with interests in commercial properties and whose primary asset was a Greenway Plaza-area building built in 1961 by Gerald D. Hines, which Munisteri redeveloped in 1993. Munisteri sold the Greenway Plaza Area building in 2007. However he still owns an interest in two shopping centers and a commercial building, as well as residential property. He also founded Munisteri Exploration in 1989, and has participated as a partner in the drilling of 60 oil and natural gas wells through 2014. As a side business, Munisteri managed dozens of professional boxers from 1989 to 2009, when he fully retired from the business.
Early political involvement
Munisteri was active in politics early in his teenage years, first working as a volunteer for the campaigns of Texas Republicans Hank Grover and John Tower in 1972, though the two were bitter intraparty rivals. Munisteri then formed a conservative club at Memorial High School in Houston. In 1976, he was elected State Vice Chairman for Texas Young Americans for Freedom, was an active volunteer for Ronald Reagan and attended the Republican National Convention. From 1977 to 1980, he served as state chairman for YAF and was also elected to YAF's national board of directors. In 1977, Texas YAF was named the most improved state organization at its 1977 national convention. Under Munisteri's chairmanship, YAF began the practice of issuing legislative rankings for members of the Texas House of Representatives.
In 1980, after experiencing dissatisfaction with the top-down leadership of the national YAF organization at its February 1980 convention, Munisteri proposed a new Texas-based conservative organization to the Texas YAF board. The board voted unanimously to create a new organization named Young Conservatives of Texas. The organization was founded on Texas Independence Day, March 2, 1980, at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas. Munisteri served as the first state chairman.