Michael Williams, a 57-year-old member of the Texas Railroad Commission, wants to be the first African-American Republican to serve in the US Senate since 1978. A Tea Party favorite and friend of the powerful South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, Williams is running to replace the retiring Kay Bailey Hutchinson in what is sure to be a crowded Republican primary.
Williams is known in Texas as a forceful, charismatic speaker. “He’s mindblowingly good at stump speeches,” said one Texas politico to Hot Air’s Allahpundit. It’s a skill he first learned as a teen reader at church in the late 1960s and perfected over decades as a public servant. After graduating from the University of Southern California he went to law school and became a prosecutor. During his time in Reagan’s Justice Department, he won the Attorney General’s Special Achievement Award for his successful prosecution of six Ku Klux Klan members on weapons charges.
When asked where he got his conservative political views, Williams tells TheDC there is “no doubt” it came from his parents. “My parents are conservative by nature even though they weren’t involved in politics. My parents are retired teachers. My mother is a retired High School guidance counselor. My dad’s a football coach. And I will say with a great deal of respect my dad is in the Texas High School Coaching Hall of Honor for his career, and what they taught was obviously strong faith.”
How often does Williams, a Catholic, go to Mass? “I would like to say I’m a weekly Mass attendent,” he says, laughing. “I would like to say that I can, as an elected official, evangelize public policy rather than the notion of religious principles, and that my faith of individual liberty and responsibility come from that. I would like to think that it is my faith that helped me, unlike our president, recognize the exceptionalism of America because the thing that makes us unique from every other country in the world is that we say that our rights come from God.”
Williams cites economists Arthur Laffer, Thomas Sowell, and Walter Williams as thinkers who have influenced his philosophy of limited government. “There’s no doubt we need an overhaul of the tax system,” he says.
His conservatism seems sincere, and he has the record to back it up. During his time at the Texas Railroad Commission, the agency that regulates the state’s oil and natural gas production, Williams has helped cut spending even as workflows increased. “We have 17 percent fewer employees today then when I walked in the door, even though we have 20 percent more oil and natural gas wells than when I came in,” he says.
In 2005, the Texas legislature approved a pay raise of $45,000 dollars per year for executive branch officials like Williams, but he says he refused to take more money. “I’ve never taken a penny of it. One single penny.” Why? “I was attempting to make the point to my staff and to others that not only can we cut the size of government, but that we as elected officials can lead by example.”
Williams will have no shortage of opponents in the Republican primary, including likely establishment candidate Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a billionaire currently leading in the polls. Regardless, Williams thinks he has what it takes to pull off an upset. “I think that people who know me and have seen me and understand my record know me as having a record as a consistent conservative,” he says. “They’re looking for a consistent conservative. They’re looking for somebody who’s a courageous conservative. They’re looking for somebody who can rally Americans around next generation solutions.”