Jimmie Don Aycock
| Jimmie Don Aycock, Sr. | |
 | |
| In office January 2007 – January 2017 | |
| Preceded by | Suzanna Hupp |
|---|---|
| Succeeded by | Scott Cosper |
| Born | October 4, 1946 Bell County, Texas, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Ellen Marie McKamie Aycock (married 1967) |
| Children | Jimmie Aycock, Jr. Michelle (married name missing) |
| Alma mater | Moody (Texas) High School Texas A&M University |
| Occupation | Veterinarian |
| Religion | Southern Baptist |
Jimmie Don Aycock, Sr. (born October 4, 1946), is a semi-retired veterinarian, rancher, and businessman in Killeen, Texas, who was from 2007 to 2017 a Republican state representative for District 54 in the central portion of his state.[1]
Background
He was born in Bell County and graduated in 1965 as the class valedictorian from Moody High School in rural Moody in McLennan County. In 1967, he married the former Ellen Marie McKamie. The Aycocks have a son, Jimmie, Jr., and a daughter, Michelle (last name unavailable), formerly a lobbyist for the non-profit education organization “Raise Your Hand," begun by former Texas Education Commissioner Mike Moses and former Lieutenant Governor William Roark "Bill" Ratliff, a Moderate Republican and the father of Robert Thomas Ratliff, a Microsoft lobbyist and a former member of the Texas State Board of Education. "Raise Your Hand" advocates "shared learning" as the key to successful public education.[2] Michelle is now an educator in Bastrop east of Austin.
In 1969, Aycock received his Bachelor of Science, with Phi Kappa Phi honors, from Texas A&M University in College Station and his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from TAMU in 1970. He was a captain in the United States Army from 1970 to 1972 during the Vietnam War and received the Army Commendation Medal.[1]
Legislative career
In 2006 in an election with a turnout of only 14.14 percent of registered voters in which the incumbent Republican, Suzanna Hupp, a conservative, did not seek reelection, Aycock polled 16,314 votes (60.4 percent), to 9,802 (36.3 percent) for Democrat Edward J. Lindsay (born 1939, a retiree from Killeen, and 873 (3.2 percent) for the Libertarian Nicolaas Jan Kramer (born 1947), self-employed in Copperas Cove. Fewer than 27,000 of the 191,000 registered voters bothered to cast a ballot.[3]
Aycock served on two House committees: Public Education and Appropriations.[1] As chairman of the House Education Committee, the Moderate Republican Aycock opposed school vouchers, a plan supported by many of the more conservative legislators. In 2015, Aycock authored a $3 billion bipartisan education bill in the House, but he did not push it to passage near the end of the legislative session because of opposition in the Senate. Aycock and a coalition of rural Republican legislators and Democrats repeatedly blocked vouchers from passage in the House.[4]
Aycock said "We think in terms of black kids and brown kids and white kids. We think of poor kids and rich kids, kids from small districts and kids from larger districts. And we each come here representing our subset of kids, and that's how the process works. What will it take to fix school finance? It'll take a common view of [the state's] 5.2 million children."[5]
Dr. Aycock did not seek a sixth term in the 2016 elections and was succeeded by Moderate Republican Scott Cosper, a former Killeen mayor who promptly lost the seat in 2018 to another veterinarian, Moderate Republican Brad Buckley.
Upon his death, Aycock will be interred at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.[6]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Jimmie Don Aycock. Texas Legislative Reference Library. Retrieved on January 18, 2020.
- ↑ Texas’ District of Innovation Initiative is not what you think. voicesempower.com. Retrieved on January 20, 2020.
- ↑ Texas Secretary of State, Election Returns, November 7, 2006.
- ↑ "School vouchers hit a snag in Legislature," Laredo Morning Times, May 18, 2015, p. 7A.
- ↑ Paying For America's Schools: Is There A Better Way?. National Public Radio (May 1, 2016). Retrieved on May 13, 2016.
- ↑ Jimmie Don Aycock. Texas State Cemetery. Retrieved on January 18, 2020.
