John Connally

John Bowden Connally Jr. was born near Floresville, Texas, in 1917 and earned undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Texas. He began working for Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson before finishing law school and became a major organizer in Johnson's political network. During World War II Connally served as a Navy officer and fighter director aboard aircraft carriers in the Pacific. He later returned to politics and business and briefly served as secretary of the Navy in the Kennedy administration before resigning to run for governor of Texas.

Connally served as governor from January 1963 to January 1969. He emphasized higher education, state-government modernization, tourism and cultural institutions. On November 22, 1963, he was riding in President John F. Kennedy's limousine in Dallas and was seriously wounded in the same gunfire that killed the president. After leaving the governorship, Connally became secretary of the Treasury under Richard Nixon in 1971, helped organize Democrats for Nixon in 1972 and changed his own party affiliation to Republican in 1973. He later ran unsuccessfully for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, experienced severe financial reversals during the Texas real-estate collapse and remained a prominent public figure until his death in 1993.

Connally's public memory is often dominated by the Dallas assassination because he was one of its surviving victims. That event, however, should not eclipse his broader influence on Texas government, especially his emphasis on higher education, tourism, historical institutions and a more activist state administration during the 1960s.

His later Treasury service and party switch also place him at the intersection of the Democratic Texas establishment that produced Lyndon Johnson and the state's later movement toward Republican dominance. Financial collapse in the 1980s further complicated the image of Connally as a symbol of Texas political and business confidence.