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{{Infobox officeholder
|name=Ernest Angelo, Jr.
|nationality=[[United States|American]]
|office= [[Mayor]] of [[Midland]], [[Texas]]
|term_start=1972
|term_end=1980
|preceded=Edwin H. Magruder, Jr.
|succeeded=Gaylian Thane Akins
|office2=Texas [[Republican Party)|Republican]] National Committeeman
|term_start2=1976
|term_end2=1996
|preceded2=Fred Agnich
|succeeded2=Timothy Lambert
|birth_date=March 7, 1934
|birth_place=[[St. Paul]], [[Minnesota]]
|residence=Bogalusa, [[Louisiana]]<br>
Midland, Texas
|occupation=[[Oil]]man
|spouse= Betty Lou “Penny” Pendergraft Angelo
|children=Ernest Eugene Angelo<br>
Helen Marie Kisner<br>
Patricia Louise Angelo<br>
Clifford Angelo
|parents=Ernest, Sr., and Helen Marie Moran Angelo
|alma_mater=St. Paul's School (Covington, Louisiana)<br>
[[Louisiana State University]]
|religion=[[Roman Catholic]]}}
'''Ernest Angelo, Jr.,''' known as '''Ernie Angelo''' (born March 7, 1934), is an [[United States|American]] [[oil]]man and [[Republican Party|Republican]] [[politician]] who served from 1972 to 1980 as [[mayor]] of the West Texas city of [[Midland]] and was in 1976 the co-manager of the presidential primary]] campaign in [[Texas]] for [[Ronald W. Reagan]], who challenged sitting [[U.S. President]] [[Gerald Ford]].
With a 2–1 margin among voters in the state's first binding presidential primary, Reagan won all ninety-six delegate spots at stake. Coupled with a victory five weeks earlier in [[North Carolina]], the historic Texas upset revived Reagan's floundering campaign and made it possible for him to contest [[U.S. President]] [[Gerald Ford]], for their party's nomination, a selection made at the 1976 [[Republican National Convention]] held in [[Kansas City]], [[Missouri]]. Without the Texas triumph, which occurred on May 1, 1976, and follow-up victories on May 4 in [[Indiana]] and [[Georgia]], Reagan could have been forced out of the race for the nomination. And without Angelo and his two co-chairmen, Ray Barnhart of [[Houston, Texas|Houston]], later the director of the Federal Highway Administration,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/administration/rbarnhart.htm |title=United States Department of Transportation: Ray A. Barnhart, Federal Highway Administrator |publisher=[[Federal Highway Administration]] |accessdate=March 10, 2011 }}{{dead link|date=December 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> and Barbara Staff, chairman of the Council of Republican Women's Clubs of [[Dallas|Dallas County]],<ref>Ron Calhoun, "Reagan forces gearing for North Texas campaign," ''Dallas Times Herald'', December 21, 1975, p. F1.</ref> at the helm that year, Reagan might have become viewed as a non-entity with little credibility four years later, when he went on to win the presidency by a wide margin of [[electoral votes]] over the [[Democratic Party|Democrat]] [[Jimmy Carter]], who had unseated Ford in the 1976 election.<ref name="hathorn">Billy Hathorn, "Mayor Ernest Angelo, Jr., of Midland and the 96-0 Reagan Sweep of Texas, May 1, 1976," 'West Texas Historical Association Yearbook'' Vol. 86 (2010), pp. 77–89.</ref>
From 1976 to 1996, Angelo served as the [[Republican National Committee]]man for Texas, a position which made him an automatic member of the party's national committee]].<ref name="hathorn"/>
==Background==
Angelo was born in [[St. Paul]], [[Minnesota]], to Ernest Angelo, Sr. (1894–1971), and the former Helen Marie Moran (1895–2003). The senior Angelo was a college [[professor]] at [[West Virginia University]] in Morgantown]], [[West Virginia]] and the [[University of Minnesota]] in [[Minneapolis]]-St. Paul before he accepted a position with the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry]] in Bogalusa in n Washington Paish. The junior Angelo hence grew up in Bogalusa and in Covington in St. Tammany Parish in the [[New Orleans]] [[suburb]]s. He graduated in 1952 from the [[Roman Catholic]] St. Paul's School in Covington and then entered the [[petroleum engineering]] program at [[Louisiana State University]] in [[Baton Rouge]], from which he graduated in 1956. Thereafter, he served briefly in the [[United States Air Force]] followed by eight years in the Air Force Reserves.<ref name="hathorn"/>
After he graduated from LSU, Angelo took a position from 1956 to 1962 with [[Gulf Oil]] in Crane, Texas, south of [[Odessa, Texas|Odessa]]. He and his wife, the former Betty Lou "Penny" Pendergraft, who grew up in [[Galveston] and Houston, made their home in Midland, halfway between [[Fort Worth]] and [[El Paso]]. The couple has four children, Ernest Eugene Angelo of Carmel, [[Indiana]]; Helen Marie Kisner, married to Frank Kisner, a retired lieutenant general in the Air Force; Patricia Louise Angelo of Lewisville, Texas, and Clifford Angelo (born Father's Day weekend 1973), a consultant and entrepreneur.<ref name="hathorn"/>
From 1962 to 1964, Angelo was affiliated with Sohio Petroleum. In August 1964, Angelo began his own company, Discovery Exploration<ref name=thecb>{{cite web|url=http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/index.cfm?objectid=A369131D-0DED-4F4F-4E6BDEA9D0F8AC0C|title=Ernest Angelo, Jr.: Managing Partner, Discovery Exploration|publisher=thecb.state.tx.us|accessdate=March 10, 2011}}</ref> in Midland with partners Don L. Sparks and Charles Webb Farish.<ref name="hathorn"/>
==Midland's "Mr. Republican"==
Angelo joined the Young Republicans while a student at LSU. In Midland, he continued his association with the Republican Party. In 1968, Angelo made the first of two unsuccessful runs as a Republican candidate for the Texas State Senate, having lost to Democrat W. E. "Pete" Snelson, then of Midland. Snelson had unseated long-term Senator [[Dorsey B. Hardeman]] of [[San Angelo, Texas|San Angelo]] in the Democratic primary. In that same 1968 general election, [[Tom Craddick]] of Midland, was elected at the age of twenty-five to the Texas House of Representatives. In 2003, Craddick began a six-year stint as House Speaker, the first Republican speaker since [[Reconstruction]]. Craddick still serves as the senior member of the Texas House, but he was toppled as Speaker in 2009 by a combination of [[Moderate Republicans]] and Democrats, who were organized by the still-sitting Speaker, [[Joe Straus]] of [[San Antonio]]. Craddick and Angelo have been neighbors since the early 1970s. The two oilmen are godparents to the other's children.<ref name="hathorn"/>
The 96-0 Reagan landslide made impressive headlines and followed thereafter with four more at-large Reagan delegates chosen at the state convention. Angelo said the victory was possible because the party was allowed to write its own rules. Some 420,000 voted in the Republican primary in which Reagan polled 278,300 votes to Ford's 139,994. In the Democratic primary, two candidates easily outpolled Reagan, and a third nearly matched him. Jimmy Carter received 736,032 votes; U.S. Senator [[Lloyd Bentsen]], a favorite son for President and a candidate for senatorial reelection, polled 343,033 votes, and [[George Wallace]], the [[governor]] of [[Alabama]], drew 270,798 votes. Carter, Bentsen, and Wallace hence polled some three times as many votes as Reagan and Ford combined.<ref>[[Austin]]: Texas State Archives, 1976 Republican presidential primary returns.</ref> The 1976 primary was the first election in Texas in which counties with at least 5 percent [[Mexican American]] ethnicity were required to use bilingual ballots.<ref name="laredo">''Laredo Morning Times'', May 2, 1976.</ref>
While he co-managed the Reagan campaign, Mayor Angelo was chosen to be a national committeeman, a position that he retained for twenty years. After Reagan became president, Angelo tried again for the Midland-based state Senate seat, but he lost in 1982 to the Democrat William “Bill” Sims of San Angelo in Tom Green County, 52,868 (47.9 percent) to 57,522 (52.1 percent).<ref>State of Texas, Archives Division, General election returns for state Senate, November 2, 1982.</ref> This race occurred about a decade before the region between Midland and San Angelo moved strongly into the Republican camp. In that same year, [[Bill Clements]] of Dallas, the first Texas Republican governor of Texas] since 1873, and Houston oilman George Strake, Jr., the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor and later the state party chairman, were crushed in an avalanche of Democratic votes. It was the last year through at least 2018 that the Democrats in Texas would win all of the statewide races, including judgeships. Angelo noted that the poor Republican prospects in Texas in 1982 were attribted to a downturn in the national economy, as Democrats rebounded nationwide in President Reagan's first mid-term election.
Angelo said that his defeat by Sims was a “blessing” because he needed to work full-time after 1983 on his business, and his being a state senator would have been too time-consuming to protect his company during a slump. Angelo recalls Clements' defeat by [[Mark White]] in 1982 as his own most personally disappointing election loss. Only two years earlier, his most exhilarating victory had been that of Reagan over President Carter just four years after Angelo, Barnhart, and Staff had worked to resurrect Reagan in the Texas primary.<ref name="hathorn"/>
The political organization Americans for Prosperity] credits Angelo with "the courage to buck the Republican establishment and support Ronald Reagan. The rest is history. [Angelo should] write a book so we can know more of the details. Ernest Angelo had courage ... Had it not been for Ernest Angelo and Texas in 1976, Reagan may not have become President."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.americansforprosperity.org/022311-ernest-angelo-shaped-history-helped-launch-reagans-presidential-bid# |title=Ernest Angelo shaped history, helped launch Reagan's Presidential bid |publisher=americansforprosperity.org |accessdate=March 10, 2011 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110310001844/http://www.americansforprosperity.org/022311-ernest-angelo-shaped-history-helped-launch-reagans-presidential-bid |archivedate=March 10, 2011 |df= }}</ref>
==Election as mayor==
Angelo's entry into municipal politics was not the result of personal motivation but instead a plea from two friends and fellow businessmen, his neighbor Tom Craddick and Craddick's predecessor in the legislature, former Representative Frank Kell Cahoon, who had been the only Republican in the Texas House of Representatives in the 1965 legislative session. Mayor Edwin H. Magruder, Jr., who had an impressive [[World War II]] record, did not seek a third two-year term in 1972.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mywesttexas.com/top_stories/article_c89eb33c-102c-5ec1-a0ce-639df8965b95.html#user-comment-area|title=Shanna Sissom, "Magruder led a charmed life in peace and war", January 12, 2011|publisher=Mywesttexas.com|accessdate=March 8, 2011}}</ref>
Craddick believed that the leading candidate for mayor, Mayor Pro Tem [[Pat M. Baskin]], a former chairman of the Midland County Democratic Executive Committee, would use the office to try to unseat Craddick's bid for a third term in the House in the 1972 general election. Angelo agreed to run for mayor if Cahoon would seek one of the at-large city council seats. The deal was struck, and both ran and won. Angelo recalls his having defeated Baskin by 150 votes out of some 10,000 cast, a plurality of votes in a system that did not require a runoff election. Angelo considered his opponent to be on the left side of the Democratic Party, but later Baskin switched parties, as West Texas moved increasingly away from the Democrats. Baskin subsequently served as a Republican state court judge. Angelo recalls that Baskin was "a gentleman," popular by virtue of his friendly personality and his involvement in community theater.<ref name="hathorn"/>
==Municipal matters==
Mayor Angelo soon found himself involved in the details of municipal matters. He recalls that Midland was low on financial reserves with less than $300,000 in its unappropriated surplus general fund. He and the council hence called for a [[sales tax]] election coupled with a lowering of city [[property tax]]es even though such a measure had been rejected a year earlier in 1971. No funds were spent to advertise the tax measure. Angelo and the council took on the responsibility of informing voters of the fiscal problems facing the city. The measure passed easily, and Midland prevailed strongly economically throughout the 1970s.<ref name="hathorn"/>
Under Angelo, the city modernized Midland International Airport. Though it is used by neighboring Odessa, the airport is entirely the possession of the City of Midland. When the University of Texas of the Permian Basin became a four-year institution, plans had been to merge Midland and Odessa junior colleges on the Midland campus under a common community college district. Odessa voters, however, voted down the proposal, reflecting longstanding divisions between the two municipalities of common size and different focus in neighboring Midland and Ector counties. Angelo presided over the building of a new central fire station and Midland Center, a civic meeting facility which opened downtown with a large clientele. The first shopping mall, developed by the Simon Company of [[Indianapolis]], Indiana opened during Angelo's tenure. Federal block grants were employed to upgrade Midland streets and to pave the remaining dirt and gravel roads within the city. Angelo said that the city manager, the late James W. Brown, and his assistant, Fred Poe, carried most of the burden of administrative details and provided continuity during his years as mayor. There were some problems with planning and zoning, but the water and sewer infrastructure proved more than adequate.<ref name="hathorn"/>
Angelo worked with four at-large council members, and he had the power to break ties. Now, the Midland City Council has six single-member distric]s with the mayor able to vote on all matters though his vote might not usually be needed except to break a tie. Angelo said the decision by the U. S. courts to require single-member districts in legislative elections has not been productive, at least in Midland. In the single-member concept, council members tend to be focused only on the parochial nature of their districts, rather than the well-being of a city as a whole. Mayor Angelo won again in 1974, 1976, and 1978 with token or no opposition. He did not run in 1980 and was succeeded by Gaylian Thane Akins (1933–2005), also a petroleum engineer in Midland. Angelo jokes that he took office during a downturn in the West Texas oil industry and “my leadership and the Arab oil embargo got Midland booming”, as greater demand developed for drilling West Texas petroleum. Under the Angelo administration, Midland property taxes became the lowest among the twenty-five largest population centers in Texas. In later years, Texans found that tax rates themselves were less critical in calculating their payments than the rising assessed values of their properties.<ref name="hathorn"/>
==Political matters==
Angelo recalls a trip to Midland by [[U.S. Senator]] [[John Tower]] in 1975, when Angelo informed Tower that he would be working in the forthcoming campaign to draft and nominate Reagan. Angelo recalls Tower as having told him that supporting Reagan would be "a dumb thing to do."<ref name="hathorn"/> At the time, all Republican U.S. senators except [[Jesse Helms]] of North Carolina and [[Paul Laxalt]] of [[Nevada]] were committed to Ford.<ref name="hathorn"/> Tower blamed Ford's defeat in Texas on "Dixiecrats ... the Reagan organization, aided by former Wallace leaders, made a concerted and obviously successful effort to get the Wallace vote in the Republican primary. In addition some section of Ford’s defense and foreign policy alienated some voters who may otherwise have cast their ballot for the president.”<ref name="laredo"/>
None of the Ford supporters from Texas were delegates to the national convention in Kansas City. Angelo recalls Tower as having "begged" him to allocate a delegate slot for the Senator. Angelo said that Tower could be a delegate if he were committed to supporting Reagan, an impossible condition for Tower because of his longstanding commitment to President Ford. Tower hence was not a delegate to the 1976 convention because Angelo was mindful that a close convention contest could have been decided by a handful of delegate votes. Angelo said that he always personally liked and admired Tower though they disagreed on some issues: "John was the best extemporaneous speaker and solid as a rock on most issues."<ref name="hathorn"/> As time passed though, Tower alienated the conservative wing of his party with his support for [[abortion]] and opposition to Reagan's [[Strategic Defense Initiative]].<ref>[[John Tower]], ''Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir'' ([[Boston, Massachusetts]]: Little Brown and Company, 1991), pp. 42, 118–119.</ref> Tower did not seek a fifth term in 1984 and was succeeded by [[Phil Gramm]], a former [[economics]] [[professor]] at [[Texas A&M University]] in College Station.<ref name="hathorn"/>
Angelo recalls having attempted to mediate a political dispute between Tower and his 1972 intraparty rival, state Senator [[Henry Grover]] of Houston, the party's gubernatorial nominee against Democrat [[Dolph Briscoe]] of Uvalde. Grover wanted to install Angelo as state party chairman to replace the Tower partisan, George Williford of Austin. Angelo arranged a meeting in a Houston hotel between Tower and Grover, and the two got into a shouting match and nearly came to blows. "Hank was his own worst enemy. He couldn't get along, let personal things interfere in the political realm," recalls Angelo. In retrospect, Angelo theorizes that the 1972 division within the Texas GOP delayed the election of the first Republican governor, Bill Clements in 1978, beyond what otherwismay have been possible.<ref name="hathorn"/>
Angelo's tenure as mayor corresponded partly with that of [[Jim Reese]] in Odessa. When veteran Democratic U.S. Representative [[George H. Mahon]] of [[Lubbock]] retired, an open election developed for the seat in 1978. Reese entered the Republican primary; so did 31-year-old [[George W. Bush]], son [[George Herbert Walker Bush]], the man would become vice president two years later. Bush won the primary and then lost the general election to then Democrat (later Republican) Kent Hance, subsequently a Texas railroad commissioner, the chancellor of [[Texas Tech University]], and a particularly successful [[lobbyist]] but never a governor or U.S. senator. Angelo stayed out of the Reese-Bush primary, for he had developed good relations with both men.<ref name="hathorn"/>
In the 1980 Republican presidential campaign, Angelo again worked for Reagan, having been the deputy Reagan-Bush chairman under Governor Clements as well as campaign manager of the 1980 general election campaign in Texas. At the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Angelo was chairman of the National Advisory Board for Reagan-Bush. He was chairman of the Texas delegation in 1980 and 1984.<ref name=potash>{{cite web|url=http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=46661932&ticker=ICP:CN&previousCapId=45248855&previousTitle=IC%20POTASH%20CORP|title=Ernest Angelo, Jr., B.Sc.|publisher=investing.businessweek.com|accessdate=March 10, 2011}}</ref>
In 1996, Angelo stepped down as national committeeman and was succeeded by Timothy Lambert of Lubbock, a social conservative active in the homeschooling movement. Angelo remains committed to Republican affairs as an insider with comparatively little public attention focused upon him. He has been a fund-raiser for former Railroad Commissioner Michael Lawrence Williams, a conservative [[African American]] originally from Midland, who in 2012 lost a Republican primary for the [[United States House of Representatives]] for Texas' 25th congressional district, after previously indicating that he would seek the U.S. Senate seat vacaated by the retiring [[Kay Bailey Hutchison]].<ref>"The Leadership Committee: Michael Williams for U.S. Senate", williamsfortexas.com, accessed October 18, 2010.</ref>
==Angelo today==
Angelo is affiliated with the Texas Society of Professional Engineers as both the Permian Basin president and the state director. In 1973, he was named "Permian Basin Engineer of the Year." In 1981, he was appointed to the National Petroleum Council by then [[United States Secretary of Energy]] James B. Edwards, a Republican former governor of [[South Carolina]]. He served on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board<ref name=thecb/> under Governor Clements, on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission under Governor George W. Bush,<ref name=thecb/> and as chairman of the Texas Public Safety Commission under Governor [[Rick Perry]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://governor.state.tx.us/news/appointment/2746/|title=Gov. Perry Appoints Angelo to Texas Public Safety Commission, January 10, 2005|publisher=governor.state.tx.us|accessdate=March 10, 2011}}</ref>
n 2008, Angelo garnered the John Ben Shepperd Award for Outstanding Texas Leadership, an honor named for the former state attorney general who called both Gladewater and Odessa home.<ref name="hathorn"/><ref>"Midland's Ernie Angelo named Shepperd Institute's outstanding "Leader of the Year", ''Midland Reporter-Telegram'', September 26, 2008.</ref> Angelo that same year became a member and director of the Trigon Uranium and the Intercontinental Potash corporations.<ref name=potash/>
Angelo has been a steadfast supporter of Governor Rick Perry, who turned back a determined intra-party challenge on March 2, 2010 from U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison before he defeated the Democratic nominee, former Houston Mayor William Henry "Bill" White. Angelo said that many in the oil industry in Midland supported Perry "to ensure the pro-business climate continues. Midland has a reputation of being a conservative pro-business community."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mywesttexas.com/top_stories/article_581aa538-3a4c-5657-893f-5e18bc08a4a6.html|title=Kathleen Thurber, "Gov. Perry raises more than White in Midland, statewide," October 5, 2010|publisher=''Midland Reporter-Telegram|accessdate=March 20, 2011}}</ref>
Angelo is still active as an oilman in Midland.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.manta.com/c/mm2fpgn/ernest-angelo-office|title=Ernest Angelo office|publisher=manta.com|accessdate=March 10, 2011}}</ref>Hhe and his wife reside in the same house on Stanolind Avenue that they bought c. 1970. The Minnesota native who was reared in Louisiana is an adopted West Texan describes Midland as "a very open community ... where people can excel in any endeavor." He attributes the political climate in Midland and West Texas to the oil and [[natural gas]] industries: "These are people with a can-do entrepreneurial independence who suiespport a conservative philosophy of government."<ref name="hathorn"/>
In 2012, Angelo was a leading supporter of [[Christi Craddick]], his neighbor Tom Craddick's daughter, who won election to the Texas Railroad Commission.
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Angelo, Ernest}}
[[Category:Texas]]
[[Category:Louisiana People]]
]]Category:Business People]]
[[Category:Politicians]]
[[Category:Mayors]]
[[Category:Republicans]]
[[Category:Conservatives]]
[[Category:United States Air Force]]
[[Category:Catholics]]
|name=Ernest Angelo, Jr.
|nationality=[[United States|American]]
|office= [[Mayor]] of [[Midland]], [[Texas]]
|term_start=1972
|term_end=1980
|preceded=Edwin H. Magruder, Jr.
|succeeded=Gaylian Thane Akins
|office2=Texas [[Republican Party)|Republican]] National Committeeman
|term_start2=1976
|term_end2=1996
|preceded2=Fred Agnich
|succeeded2=Timothy Lambert
|birth_date=March 7, 1934
|birth_place=[[St. Paul]], [[Minnesota]]
|residence=Bogalusa, [[Louisiana]]<br>
Midland, Texas
|occupation=[[Oil]]man
|spouse= Betty Lou “Penny” Pendergraft Angelo
|children=Ernest Eugene Angelo<br>
Helen Marie Kisner<br>
Patricia Louise Angelo<br>
Clifford Angelo
|parents=Ernest, Sr., and Helen Marie Moran Angelo
|alma_mater=St. Paul's School (Covington, Louisiana)<br>
[[Louisiana State University]]
|religion=[[Roman Catholic]]}}
'''Ernest Angelo, Jr.,''' known as '''Ernie Angelo''' (born March 7, 1934), is an [[United States|American]] [[oil]]man and [[Republican Party|Republican]] [[politician]] who served from 1972 to 1980 as [[mayor]] of the West Texas city of [[Midland]] and was in 1976 the co-manager of the presidential primary]] campaign in [[Texas]] for [[Ronald W. Reagan]], who challenged sitting [[U.S. President]] [[Gerald Ford]].
With a 2–1 margin among voters in the state's first binding presidential primary, Reagan won all ninety-six delegate spots at stake. Coupled with a victory five weeks earlier in [[North Carolina]], the historic Texas upset revived Reagan's floundering campaign and made it possible for him to contest [[U.S. President]] [[Gerald Ford]], for their party's nomination, a selection made at the 1976 [[Republican National Convention]] held in [[Kansas City]], [[Missouri]]. Without the Texas triumph, which occurred on May 1, 1976, and follow-up victories on May 4 in [[Indiana]] and [[Georgia]], Reagan could have been forced out of the race for the nomination. And without Angelo and his two co-chairmen, Ray Barnhart of [[Houston, Texas|Houston]], later the director of the Federal Highway Administration,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/administration/rbarnhart.htm |title=United States Department of Transportation: Ray A. Barnhart, Federal Highway Administrator |publisher=[[Federal Highway Administration]] |accessdate=March 10, 2011 }}{{dead link|date=December 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> and Barbara Staff, chairman of the Council of Republican Women's Clubs of [[Dallas|Dallas County]],<ref>Ron Calhoun, "Reagan forces gearing for North Texas campaign," ''Dallas Times Herald'', December 21, 1975, p. F1.</ref> at the helm that year, Reagan might have become viewed as a non-entity with little credibility four years later, when he went on to win the presidency by a wide margin of [[electoral votes]] over the [[Democratic Party|Democrat]] [[Jimmy Carter]], who had unseated Ford in the 1976 election.<ref name="hathorn">Billy Hathorn, "Mayor Ernest Angelo, Jr., of Midland and the 96-0 Reagan Sweep of Texas, May 1, 1976," 'West Texas Historical Association Yearbook'' Vol. 86 (2010), pp. 77–89.</ref>
From 1976 to 1996, Angelo served as the [[Republican National Committee]]man for Texas, a position which made him an automatic member of the party's national committee]].<ref name="hathorn"/>
==Background==
Angelo was born in [[St. Paul]], [[Minnesota]], to Ernest Angelo, Sr. (1894–1971), and the former Helen Marie Moran (1895–2003). The senior Angelo was a college [[professor]] at [[West Virginia University]] in Morgantown]], [[West Virginia]] and the [[University of Minnesota]] in [[Minneapolis]]-St. Paul before he accepted a position with the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry]] in Bogalusa in n Washington Paish. The junior Angelo hence grew up in Bogalusa and in Covington in St. Tammany Parish in the [[New Orleans]] [[suburb]]s. He graduated in 1952 from the [[Roman Catholic]] St. Paul's School in Covington and then entered the [[petroleum engineering]] program at [[Louisiana State University]] in [[Baton Rouge]], from which he graduated in 1956. Thereafter, he served briefly in the [[United States Air Force]] followed by eight years in the Air Force Reserves.<ref name="hathorn"/>
After he graduated from LSU, Angelo took a position from 1956 to 1962 with [[Gulf Oil]] in Crane, Texas, south of [[Odessa, Texas|Odessa]]. He and his wife, the former Betty Lou "Penny" Pendergraft, who grew up in [[Galveston] and Houston, made their home in Midland, halfway between [[Fort Worth]] and [[El Paso]]. The couple has four children, Ernest Eugene Angelo of Carmel, [[Indiana]]; Helen Marie Kisner, married to Frank Kisner, a retired lieutenant general in the Air Force; Patricia Louise Angelo of Lewisville, Texas, and Clifford Angelo (born Father's Day weekend 1973), a consultant and entrepreneur.<ref name="hathorn"/>
From 1962 to 1964, Angelo was affiliated with Sohio Petroleum. In August 1964, Angelo began his own company, Discovery Exploration<ref name=thecb>{{cite web|url=http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/index.cfm?objectid=A369131D-0DED-4F4F-4E6BDEA9D0F8AC0C|title=Ernest Angelo, Jr.: Managing Partner, Discovery Exploration|publisher=thecb.state.tx.us|accessdate=March 10, 2011}}</ref> in Midland with partners Don L. Sparks and Charles Webb Farish.<ref name="hathorn"/>
==Midland's "Mr. Republican"==
Angelo joined the Young Republicans while a student at LSU. In Midland, he continued his association with the Republican Party. In 1968, Angelo made the first of two unsuccessful runs as a Republican candidate for the Texas State Senate, having lost to Democrat W. E. "Pete" Snelson, then of Midland. Snelson had unseated long-term Senator [[Dorsey B. Hardeman]] of [[San Angelo, Texas|San Angelo]] in the Democratic primary. In that same 1968 general election, [[Tom Craddick]] of Midland, was elected at the age of twenty-five to the Texas House of Representatives. In 2003, Craddick began a six-year stint as House Speaker, the first Republican speaker since [[Reconstruction]]. Craddick still serves as the senior member of the Texas House, but he was toppled as Speaker in 2009 by a combination of [[Moderate Republicans]] and Democrats, who were organized by the still-sitting Speaker, [[Joe Straus]] of [[San Antonio]]. Craddick and Angelo have been neighbors since the early 1970s. The two oilmen are godparents to the other's children.<ref name="hathorn"/>
The 96-0 Reagan landslide made impressive headlines and followed thereafter with four more at-large Reagan delegates chosen at the state convention. Angelo said the victory was possible because the party was allowed to write its own rules. Some 420,000 voted in the Republican primary in which Reagan polled 278,300 votes to Ford's 139,994. In the Democratic primary, two candidates easily outpolled Reagan, and a third nearly matched him. Jimmy Carter received 736,032 votes; U.S. Senator [[Lloyd Bentsen]], a favorite son for President and a candidate for senatorial reelection, polled 343,033 votes, and [[George Wallace]], the [[governor]] of [[Alabama]], drew 270,798 votes. Carter, Bentsen, and Wallace hence polled some three times as many votes as Reagan and Ford combined.<ref>[[Austin]]: Texas State Archives, 1976 Republican presidential primary returns.</ref> The 1976 primary was the first election in Texas in which counties with at least 5 percent [[Mexican American]] ethnicity were required to use bilingual ballots.<ref name="laredo">''Laredo Morning Times'', May 2, 1976.</ref>
While he co-managed the Reagan campaign, Mayor Angelo was chosen to be a national committeeman, a position that he retained for twenty years. After Reagan became president, Angelo tried again for the Midland-based state Senate seat, but he lost in 1982 to the Democrat William “Bill” Sims of San Angelo in Tom Green County, 52,868 (47.9 percent) to 57,522 (52.1 percent).<ref>State of Texas, Archives Division, General election returns for state Senate, November 2, 1982.</ref> This race occurred about a decade before the region between Midland and San Angelo moved strongly into the Republican camp. In that same year, [[Bill Clements]] of Dallas, the first Texas Republican governor of Texas] since 1873, and Houston oilman George Strake, Jr., the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor and later the state party chairman, were crushed in an avalanche of Democratic votes. It was the last year through at least 2018 that the Democrats in Texas would win all of the statewide races, including judgeships. Angelo noted that the poor Republican prospects in Texas in 1982 were attribted to a downturn in the national economy, as Democrats rebounded nationwide in President Reagan's first mid-term election.
Angelo said that his defeat by Sims was a “blessing” because he needed to work full-time after 1983 on his business, and his being a state senator would have been too time-consuming to protect his company during a slump. Angelo recalls Clements' defeat by [[Mark White]] in 1982 as his own most personally disappointing election loss. Only two years earlier, his most exhilarating victory had been that of Reagan over President Carter just four years after Angelo, Barnhart, and Staff had worked to resurrect Reagan in the Texas primary.<ref name="hathorn"/>
The political organization Americans for Prosperity] credits Angelo with "the courage to buck the Republican establishment and support Ronald Reagan. The rest is history. [Angelo should] write a book so we can know more of the details. Ernest Angelo had courage ... Had it not been for Ernest Angelo and Texas in 1976, Reagan may not have become President."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.americansforprosperity.org/022311-ernest-angelo-shaped-history-helped-launch-reagans-presidential-bid# |title=Ernest Angelo shaped history, helped launch Reagan's Presidential bid |publisher=americansforprosperity.org |accessdate=March 10, 2011 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110310001844/http://www.americansforprosperity.org/022311-ernest-angelo-shaped-history-helped-launch-reagans-presidential-bid |archivedate=March 10, 2011 |df= }}</ref>
==Election as mayor==
Angelo's entry into municipal politics was not the result of personal motivation but instead a plea from two friends and fellow businessmen, his neighbor Tom Craddick and Craddick's predecessor in the legislature, former Representative Frank Kell Cahoon, who had been the only Republican in the Texas House of Representatives in the 1965 legislative session. Mayor Edwin H. Magruder, Jr., who had an impressive [[World War II]] record, did not seek a third two-year term in 1972.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mywesttexas.com/top_stories/article_c89eb33c-102c-5ec1-a0ce-639df8965b95.html#user-comment-area|title=Shanna Sissom, "Magruder led a charmed life in peace and war", January 12, 2011|publisher=Mywesttexas.com|accessdate=March 8, 2011}}</ref>
Craddick believed that the leading candidate for mayor, Mayor Pro Tem [[Pat M. Baskin]], a former chairman of the Midland County Democratic Executive Committee, would use the office to try to unseat Craddick's bid for a third term in the House in the 1972 general election. Angelo agreed to run for mayor if Cahoon would seek one of the at-large city council seats. The deal was struck, and both ran and won. Angelo recalls his having defeated Baskin by 150 votes out of some 10,000 cast, a plurality of votes in a system that did not require a runoff election. Angelo considered his opponent to be on the left side of the Democratic Party, but later Baskin switched parties, as West Texas moved increasingly away from the Democrats. Baskin subsequently served as a Republican state court judge. Angelo recalls that Baskin was "a gentleman," popular by virtue of his friendly personality and his involvement in community theater.<ref name="hathorn"/>
==Municipal matters==
Mayor Angelo soon found himself involved in the details of municipal matters. He recalls that Midland was low on financial reserves with less than $300,000 in its unappropriated surplus general fund. He and the council hence called for a [[sales tax]] election coupled with a lowering of city [[property tax]]es even though such a measure had been rejected a year earlier in 1971. No funds were spent to advertise the tax measure. Angelo and the council took on the responsibility of informing voters of the fiscal problems facing the city. The measure passed easily, and Midland prevailed strongly economically throughout the 1970s.<ref name="hathorn"/>
Under Angelo, the city modernized Midland International Airport. Though it is used by neighboring Odessa, the airport is entirely the possession of the City of Midland. When the University of Texas of the Permian Basin became a four-year institution, plans had been to merge Midland and Odessa junior colleges on the Midland campus under a common community college district. Odessa voters, however, voted down the proposal, reflecting longstanding divisions between the two municipalities of common size and different focus in neighboring Midland and Ector counties. Angelo presided over the building of a new central fire station and Midland Center, a civic meeting facility which opened downtown with a large clientele. The first shopping mall, developed by the Simon Company of [[Indianapolis]], Indiana opened during Angelo's tenure. Federal block grants were employed to upgrade Midland streets and to pave the remaining dirt and gravel roads within the city. Angelo said that the city manager, the late James W. Brown, and his assistant, Fred Poe, carried most of the burden of administrative details and provided continuity during his years as mayor. There were some problems with planning and zoning, but the water and sewer infrastructure proved more than adequate.<ref name="hathorn"/>
Angelo worked with four at-large council members, and he had the power to break ties. Now, the Midland City Council has six single-member distric]s with the mayor able to vote on all matters though his vote might not usually be needed except to break a tie. Angelo said the decision by the U. S. courts to require single-member districts in legislative elections has not been productive, at least in Midland. In the single-member concept, council members tend to be focused only on the parochial nature of their districts, rather than the well-being of a city as a whole. Mayor Angelo won again in 1974, 1976, and 1978 with token or no opposition. He did not run in 1980 and was succeeded by Gaylian Thane Akins (1933–2005), also a petroleum engineer in Midland. Angelo jokes that he took office during a downturn in the West Texas oil industry and “my leadership and the Arab oil embargo got Midland booming”, as greater demand developed for drilling West Texas petroleum. Under the Angelo administration, Midland property taxes became the lowest among the twenty-five largest population centers in Texas. In later years, Texans found that tax rates themselves were less critical in calculating their payments than the rising assessed values of their properties.<ref name="hathorn"/>
==Political matters==
Angelo recalls a trip to Midland by [[U.S. Senator]] [[John Tower]] in 1975, when Angelo informed Tower that he would be working in the forthcoming campaign to draft and nominate Reagan. Angelo recalls Tower as having told him that supporting Reagan would be "a dumb thing to do."<ref name="hathorn"/> At the time, all Republican U.S. senators except [[Jesse Helms]] of North Carolina and [[Paul Laxalt]] of [[Nevada]] were committed to Ford.<ref name="hathorn"/> Tower blamed Ford's defeat in Texas on "Dixiecrats ... the Reagan organization, aided by former Wallace leaders, made a concerted and obviously successful effort to get the Wallace vote in the Republican primary. In addition some section of Ford’s defense and foreign policy alienated some voters who may otherwise have cast their ballot for the president.”<ref name="laredo"/>
None of the Ford supporters from Texas were delegates to the national convention in Kansas City. Angelo recalls Tower as having "begged" him to allocate a delegate slot for the Senator. Angelo said that Tower could be a delegate if he were committed to supporting Reagan, an impossible condition for Tower because of his longstanding commitment to President Ford. Tower hence was not a delegate to the 1976 convention because Angelo was mindful that a close convention contest could have been decided by a handful of delegate votes. Angelo said that he always personally liked and admired Tower though they disagreed on some issues: "John was the best extemporaneous speaker and solid as a rock on most issues."<ref name="hathorn"/> As time passed though, Tower alienated the conservative wing of his party with his support for [[abortion]] and opposition to Reagan's [[Strategic Defense Initiative]].<ref>[[John Tower]], ''Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir'' ([[Boston, Massachusetts]]: Little Brown and Company, 1991), pp. 42, 118–119.</ref> Tower did not seek a fifth term in 1984 and was succeeded by [[Phil Gramm]], a former [[economics]] [[professor]] at [[Texas A&M University]] in College Station.<ref name="hathorn"/>
Angelo recalls having attempted to mediate a political dispute between Tower and his 1972 intraparty rival, state Senator [[Henry Grover]] of Houston, the party's gubernatorial nominee against Democrat [[Dolph Briscoe]] of Uvalde. Grover wanted to install Angelo as state party chairman to replace the Tower partisan, George Williford of Austin. Angelo arranged a meeting in a Houston hotel between Tower and Grover, and the two got into a shouting match and nearly came to blows. "Hank was his own worst enemy. He couldn't get along, let personal things interfere in the political realm," recalls Angelo. In retrospect, Angelo theorizes that the 1972 division within the Texas GOP delayed the election of the first Republican governor, Bill Clements in 1978, beyond what otherwismay have been possible.<ref name="hathorn"/>
Angelo's tenure as mayor corresponded partly with that of [[Jim Reese]] in Odessa. When veteran Democratic U.S. Representative [[George H. Mahon]] of [[Lubbock]] retired, an open election developed for the seat in 1978. Reese entered the Republican primary; so did 31-year-old [[George W. Bush]], son [[George Herbert Walker Bush]], the man would become vice president two years later. Bush won the primary and then lost the general election to then Democrat (later Republican) Kent Hance, subsequently a Texas railroad commissioner, the chancellor of [[Texas Tech University]], and a particularly successful [[lobbyist]] but never a governor or U.S. senator. Angelo stayed out of the Reese-Bush primary, for he had developed good relations with both men.<ref name="hathorn"/>
In the 1980 Republican presidential campaign, Angelo again worked for Reagan, having been the deputy Reagan-Bush chairman under Governor Clements as well as campaign manager of the 1980 general election campaign in Texas. At the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Angelo was chairman of the National Advisory Board for Reagan-Bush. He was chairman of the Texas delegation in 1980 and 1984.<ref name=potash>{{cite web|url=http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=46661932&ticker=ICP:CN&previousCapId=45248855&previousTitle=IC%20POTASH%20CORP|title=Ernest Angelo, Jr., B.Sc.|publisher=investing.businessweek.com|accessdate=March 10, 2011}}</ref>
In 1996, Angelo stepped down as national committeeman and was succeeded by Timothy Lambert of Lubbock, a social conservative active in the homeschooling movement. Angelo remains committed to Republican affairs as an insider with comparatively little public attention focused upon him. He has been a fund-raiser for former Railroad Commissioner Michael Lawrence Williams, a conservative [[African American]] originally from Midland, who in 2012 lost a Republican primary for the [[United States House of Representatives]] for Texas' 25th congressional district, after previously indicating that he would seek the U.S. Senate seat vacaated by the retiring [[Kay Bailey Hutchison]].<ref>"The Leadership Committee: Michael Williams for U.S. Senate", williamsfortexas.com, accessed October 18, 2010.</ref>
==Angelo today==
Angelo is affiliated with the Texas Society of Professional Engineers as both the Permian Basin president and the state director. In 1973, he was named "Permian Basin Engineer of the Year." In 1981, he was appointed to the National Petroleum Council by then [[United States Secretary of Energy]] James B. Edwards, a Republican former governor of [[South Carolina]]. He served on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board<ref name=thecb/> under Governor Clements, on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission under Governor George W. Bush,<ref name=thecb/> and as chairman of the Texas Public Safety Commission under Governor [[Rick Perry]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://governor.state.tx.us/news/appointment/2746/|title=Gov. Perry Appoints Angelo to Texas Public Safety Commission, January 10, 2005|publisher=governor.state.tx.us|accessdate=March 10, 2011}}</ref>
n 2008, Angelo garnered the John Ben Shepperd Award for Outstanding Texas Leadership, an honor named for the former state attorney general who called both Gladewater and Odessa home.<ref name="hathorn"/><ref>"Midland's Ernie Angelo named Shepperd Institute's outstanding "Leader of the Year", ''Midland Reporter-Telegram'', September 26, 2008.</ref> Angelo that same year became a member and director of the Trigon Uranium and the Intercontinental Potash corporations.<ref name=potash/>
Angelo has been a steadfast supporter of Governor Rick Perry, who turned back a determined intra-party challenge on March 2, 2010 from U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison before he defeated the Democratic nominee, former Houston Mayor William Henry "Bill" White. Angelo said that many in the oil industry in Midland supported Perry "to ensure the pro-business climate continues. Midland has a reputation of being a conservative pro-business community."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mywesttexas.com/top_stories/article_581aa538-3a4c-5657-893f-5e18bc08a4a6.html|title=Kathleen Thurber, "Gov. Perry raises more than White in Midland, statewide," October 5, 2010|publisher=''Midland Reporter-Telegram|accessdate=March 20, 2011}}</ref>
Angelo is still active as an oilman in Midland.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.manta.com/c/mm2fpgn/ernest-angelo-office|title=Ernest Angelo office|publisher=manta.com|accessdate=March 10, 2011}}</ref>Hhe and his wife reside in the same house on Stanolind Avenue that they bought c. 1970. The Minnesota native who was reared in Louisiana is an adopted West Texan describes Midland as "a very open community ... where people can excel in any endeavor." He attributes the political climate in Midland and West Texas to the oil and [[natural gas]] industries: "These are people with a can-do entrepreneurial independence who suiespport a conservative philosophy of government."<ref name="hathorn"/>
In 2012, Angelo was a leading supporter of [[Christi Craddick]], his neighbor Tom Craddick's daughter, who won election to the Texas Railroad Commission.
==References==
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