Four Price

Walter Thomas Price, IV, (born 1968), known as Four Price because he is the fourth generation in his family to bear the name Walter Thomas Price, is an attorney from Amarillo, Texas, who has been since November 2010 a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives. He holds the District 87 seat vacated on August 31, 2010, by fellow Republican David Swinford of Dumas in Moore County.

Background

Price graduated in 1986 from Tascosa High School in Amarillo. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctor from St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio. He and his wife, the former Karen Diane Mayfield (born ca. 1964), have four children, Brooke, Cody, Abby, and Curry, ranging in ages (as of 2010) from nineteen to eleven, respectively.

Price advocates the placing of government "on a diet. It doesn't tax too little -- it just spends too much." If elected, he vows to bring the "voice of the Panhandle" to state government. His familial roots in the Texas Panhandle date to 1917, when his maternal great-grandfather, Jesse Benjamin Latham, settled his young family in Carson County before relocating to Amarillo.

Price practices business and probate law with the Amarillo firm Irwin, Merritt, Hogue, Price & Carthel, P.C. He previously practiced with Mullin, Hoard & Brown LLP in Amarillo and with Fulbright & Jaworski in San Antonio. Price is a director of the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation, president of the Amarillo Area Bar Association, and a director of Cal Farley's Boys Ranch Foundation. He is a member and former deacon of the First Presbyterian Church of Amarillo. A former director of the Don and Sybil Harrington Cancer Center, he is also a life member of the University of Texas Ex-Students Association. Price is an avid outdoorsman.

Election history

District 87 encompasses part of Potter as well as Carson, Sherman, and Moore counties.

Campaigning for the March 2 primary, Price ran what he called "grass-roots efforts, we knocked on a lot of doors and focused on what is important to the people."He defeated Victor E. Leal (born March 22, 1962), an Amarillo/Canyon businessman and the owner of Leal's Mexican Restaurants. Leal is also an appointee of Governor Rick Perry to the Texas Economic Development Corporation and the former mayor of Muleshoe in Bailey County, where the restaurant chain was originated by his father, the late Jesse Leal. Price received 6,355 votes (55.2 percent) to Leal's 5,166 (44.8 percent).There were questions about Leal's residency, but the restauranteur carried the support of retiring Representative Swinford and former U.S. Representative Larry Combest. Leal said that the legislature needed more businesspeople like himself, instead of more lawyers like Price. However, Price retorted, "To say there's too many lawyers in the legislature is like saying there's too many doctors in a hospital."

In the general election held on November 2, 2010, Price handily defeated the Democrat Abel G. Bosquez (born September 13, 1958) of Amarillo, a technician for Pantex, who was unopposed for his party's nomination in the primary election. Bosquez received 881 votes, whereas the Republican primary turnout was 11,521 ballots. There is also a Libertarian Party candidate, James Hudspeth of Dumas.

Price serves with Republican colleague Representative John T. Smithee, also of Amarillo, who visited Price's home on the night of the primary election to offer support in the general election. "We had two outstanding candidates in this race, and I think either one of them would have done a super job. And you know Four has a good temperament and he has a hard work ethic, and he's really as honest as you can be."Leal also offered his support for Price in the fall campaign.Price also won the special election held simultaneously with the general election for the remaining weeks of Swinford's term.