Roger Williams Will Run for Congress 鈥� in CD-25

Texas

Roger Williams Will Run for Congress 鈥� in CD-25

KUT 90.5 | By Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune

Published March 8, 2012 at 3:20 PM CST

Republican car dealer and former Secretary of State Roger Williams in Dallas on October 3, 2011 at the construction site of the Bush Presidential Library on the SMU campus.

Former Texas Secretary of State will join the Republican primary for a congressional seat that stretches 200 miles from the southern edge of Tarrant County to Hays County, south of Austin.

"We're excited and ready to get going," Williams told the Tribune Thursday morning, as he was preparing to file with the state GOP.

Williams initially set out to run for U.S. Senate, but switched to a race for Congress after the Legislature drew new maps. But those maps died in court, and the Weatherford Republican ended up in a district, CD-12, with an incumbent 鈥� , R-Fort Worth 鈥� that he didn't want to challenge.

Now he's jumping into CD-25, where the incumbent 鈥� Democrat of Austin 鈥� has decided to move into a neighboring district where a Democrat has a better chance. Williams, a car dealer and former Texas Secretary of State, would join a pack of other candidates that includes former Texas Railroad Commissioner (no relation), businessman , former GOP consultant and several others.

The district comprises all or part of 13 counties; the biggest population centers are in AG真人百家乐 and Johnson counties. And on paper, it appears to be a reliably Republican district.

Williams, who has never run for office, lives in Parker County, but he told the Tribune that he and his wife will be looking for a house in Austin this weekend.

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Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune

Ross Ramsey is managing editor of The Texas Tribune and continues as editor of Texas Weekly, the premier newsletter on government and politics in the Lone Star State, a role he's had since September 1998. Texas Weekly was a print-only journal when he took the reins in 1998; he switched it to a subscription-based, internet-only journal by the end of 2004 without a significant loss in subscribers. As Texas Weekly's primary writer for 11 years, he turned out roughly 2 million words in more than 500 editions, added an online library of resources and documents and items of interest to insiders, and a daily news clipping service that links to stories from papers across Texas. Before joining Texas Weekly in September 1998, Ramsey was associate deputy comptroller for policy with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, also working as the agency's director of communications. Prior to that 28-month stint in government, Ramsey spent 17 years in journalism, reporting for the Houston Chronicle from its Austin bureau and for the Dallas Times Herald, first on the business desk in Dallas and later as the paper's Austin bureau chief. Prior to that, as a Dallas-based freelance business writer, he wrote for regional and national magazines and newspapers. Ramsey got his start in journalism in broadcasting, working for almost seven years covering news for radio stations in Denton and Dallas.

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