William Perry Clements Jr. (April 13, 1917 – May 29, 2011) was an American businessman and Republican Party politician who served two non-consecutive terms as the governor of Texas between 1979 and 1991. His terms bookended the sole term served by Mark Wells White, a Democrat who defeated Clements in the 1982 election only to lose his campaign for re-election in 1986.
When Clements was first sworn in during 1979, he became the first Republican to have served as governor of Texas since Reconstruction. When Clements left office for good at the end of his second term in 1991, his eight years in office were the most served by any Texas governor until Rick Perry surpassed his total in 2009. Clements was the first governor to be elected to multiple terms since Texas changed its constitution in 1972 to extend their governor's term of office to four years. Since then, George W. Bush, Rick Perry and Greg Abbott, also Republicans, have all won multiple terms.
Before he became Governor of Texas, Clements made his fortune in crude oil and served as United States Deputy Secretary of Defense for President Richard Nixon. After his first gubernatorial term ended, Clements joined the administrative staff at Southern Methodist University where he served as chairman of the Board of Governors; while there, he presided over a massive pay-to-play system in the school's football program that resulted in catastrophic consequences for the team and the end of his political career.
Early life and career
Born in Dallas, Texas, Clements graduated from Highland Park High School in the Dallas suburb of University Park in 1934. Although Clements was an all-state offensive guard on the Highland Park football team, after his father lost his job due to the Great Depression, Clements worked as an oil driller in South Texas after graduating from high school. In the late 1930s, Clements studied engineering at Southern Methodist University before returning to the oil industry. During World War II, Clements served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
In 1947, Clements founded the offshore drilling business Southeastern Drilling Company (SEDCO), which would expand to 20 countries and grow into the top drilling contracting company in the world before being sold to Schlumberger in 1984. Clements had a personal wealth worth nearly $30 million by 1978, the year he first ran for Texas governor.
From 1973 to 1977, Clements served as United States Deputy Secretary of Defense under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. For 39 days in 1973, Clements served as acting Secretary of Defense.
Among the Secretaries of Defense he served under was Donald Rumsfeld, during the latter's first tenure in the office. The two men did not get along, yet when Rumsfeld was appointed Clements resisted efforts to be moved to another department, even going so far as to threaten if removed from his office to hold a press conference and label his dismissal a "power play." Though Clements remained as deputy secretary, Clements later termed his time under Rumsfeld "very unpleasant."
First Term As Governor of Texas (1979-1983)
On January 16, 1979, Clements succeeded Democrat Dolph Briscoe as governor of Texas. To win the position, he first defeated State Representative Ray Hutchison in the Republican primary by a lopsided vote of 115,345 to 38,268. He won the general election held on November 8, 1978, by having narrowly defeated Democratic former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice John Luke Hill, who had also served six years as state attorney general. Clements polled 1,183,828 votes (49.96 percent) to Hill's 1,166,919 votes (49.24 percent).
His first term was marked by SEDCO's involvement in the largest oil blowout in history, the Ixtoc I oil spill, which caused extensive environmental damage. Clements faced heavily Democratic state legislatures during his tenure. In 1979, the legislature overrode one of his vetoes, the last time that Texas lawmakers have completed an override. In 1980, Clements commuted the death sentence of Randall Dale Adams to life in prison. Adams, the subject of The Thin Blue Line, an Errol Morris documentary film, was exonerated in 1989 after serving twelve years in prison. Clements was also governor at the time of the execution of Carlos DeLuna, who was put to death in 1989; evidence questioning the findings of facts that underlay DeLuna's conviction was published in 2012.