William Perry Clements Jr. (April 13, 1917 – May 29, 2011) was an American businessman and
Republican Party politician who served two nonconsecutive terms as the
governor of Texas between 1979 and 1991. His terms bookended the sole term served by
Mark Wells White, a
Democrat who defeated Clements in the 1982 election only to lose his campaign for reelection in 1986.
When Clements was first sworn in 1979, he became the first Republican to have served as governor of Texas since
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...
. When Clements left office for good at the end of his second term in 1991, his eight years in office were the most served by any Texas governor until
Rick Perry
James Richard Perry (born March 4, 1950) is an American politician who served as the 14th United States secretary of energy from 2017 to 2019 in the first administration of Donald Trump. He previously served as the 47th governor of Texas fr ...
surpassed his total in 2009. Clements was the first governor to be elected to multiple terms since Texas changed its
constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
When these pri ...
in 1972 to extend its governor's term of office to four years. Since then,
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...
, Rick Perry, and
Greg Abbott
Gregory Wayne Abbott ( ; born November 13, 1957) is an American politician, attorney, and jurist who has served since 2015 as the 48th governor of Texas. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served from 2002 to ...
, also Republicans, have all won multiple terms.
Before he became Governor of Texas, Clements made his fortune in
crude oil
Petroleum, also known as crude oil or simply oil, is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid chemical mixture found in geological formations, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. The term ''petroleum'' refers both to naturally occurring u ...
and served as
United States Deputy Secretary of Defense for President
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...
. After his first gubernatorial term ended, Clements joined the administrative staff at
Southern Methodist University
Southern Methodist University (SMU) is a Private university, private research university in Dallas, Texas, United States, with a satellite campus in Taos County, New Mexico. SMU was founded on April 17, 1911, by the Methodist Episcopal Church, ...
where he served as chairman of the Board of Governors. While there, he presided over a
massive pay-to-play system in the school's football program that resulted in catastrophic consequences for the team and the end of his political career.
Early life and career
Born in
Dallas, Texas
Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
, Clements graduated from
Highland Park High School in the Dallas suburb of
University Park in 1934.
Although Clements was an all-state
offensive guard
Offensive may refer to:
* Offensive (military), type of military operation
* Offensive, the former name of the Dutch political party Socialist Alternative (Netherlands), Socialist Alternative
* Fighting words, spoken words which would have a tende ...
on the Highland Park football team, after his father lost his job due to the
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
, Clements worked as an oil driller in
South Texas after graduating from high school.
In the late 1930s, Clements studied engineering at
Southern Methodist University
Southern Methodist University (SMU) is a Private university, private research university in Dallas, Texas, United States, with a satellite campus in Taos County, New Mexico. SMU was founded on April 17, 1911, by the Methodist Episcopal Church, ...
before dropping out and returning to the oil industry.
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Clements served in the
United States Army Corps of Engineers
The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: Engineer Regiment, military construction, and civil wo ...
.
In 1947, Clements founded the offshore drilling business Southeastern Drilling Company (SEDCO), which would expand to 20 countries and grow into the top drilling contracting company in the world before being sold to
Schlumberger
Schlumberger (), doing business as SLB, is a global multinational oilfield services company. Founded in France in 1926, the company is now incorporated as Schlumberger NV in Willemstad, Curaçao, with principal executive offices in Houston ...
in 1984.
Clements had a personal wealth worth nearly $30 million by 1978, the year he first ran for Texas governor.
From 1973 to 1977, Clements served as
United States Deputy Secretary of Defense under Presidents
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...
and
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was the 38th president of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, Ford assumed the p ...
.
For 39 days in 1973, Clements served as acting Secretary of Defense.
Among the Secretaries of Defense he served under was
Donald Rumsfeld, during the latter's first tenure in the office. The two men did not get along, yet when Rumsfeld was appointed, Clements resisted efforts to be moved to another department, even going so far as to threaten, if removed from his office, to hold a press conference and label his dismissal a "power play." Though Clements remained as deputy secretary, Clements later termed his time under Rumsfeld "very unpleasant."
First Term as Governor of Texas (1979–1983)
On January 16, 1979, Clements succeeded
Democrat Dolph Briscoe as governor of Texas. To win the position, he first defeated
state Representative Ray Hutchison in the Republican primary by a lopsided vote of 115,345 to 38,268. He won the general election held on November 7, 1978, by narrowly defeating Democratic former
Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice
John Luke Hill, who had also served six years as
state attorney general
The state attorney general in each of the 50 U.S. states, of the District of Columbia, federal district, or of any of the Territories of the United States, territories is the chief legal advisor to the State governments of the United States, sta ...
. Clements polled 1,183,828 votes (49.96 percent) to Hill's 1,166,919 votes (49.24 percent).
His first term was marked by SEDCO's involvement in the largest oil blowout in history, the
Ixtoc I oil spill
Ixtoc 1 was an exploratory oil well being drilled by the semi-submersible drilling rig ''Sedco 135'' in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, about northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in waters deep. On 3 June 1979, the well suffe ...
, which caused extensive environmental damage. Clements faced heavily Democratic state legislatures during his tenure. In 1979, the legislature overrode one of his vetoes, the last time that Texas lawmakers had completed an override. In 1980, Clements commuted the death sentence of
Randall Dale Adams to life in prison. Adams, the subject of ''
The Thin Blue Line'', an
Errol Morris documentary film, was exonerated in 1989 after serving twelve years in prison. Clements was also governor at the time of the execution of
Carlos DeLuna, who was put to death in 1989; evidence questioning the findings of the facts that underlie DeLuna's conviction was published in 2012.
Clements ran for reelection in 1982 but was defeated by Democratic Attorney General
Mark Wells White by more than 327,000 votes because of sagging economic indicators and weak support from minority voters, who historically support Democratic candidates. Clements was also damaged politically by the
Ixtoc I oil spill
Ixtoc 1 was an exploratory oil well being drilled by the semi-submersible drilling rig ''Sedco 135'' in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, about northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in waters deep. On 3 June 1979, the well suffe ...
disaster; the rig that failed was owned by SEDCO, but leased to Permargo (a Mexican drilling firm), which had an exploration contract with
Pemex
Pemex (a portmanteau of Petróleos Mexicanos, which translates to ''Mexican Petroleum'' in English; ) is the Mexico, Mexican State ownership, state-owned Petroleum industry, petroleum corporation managed and operated by the government of Mexico, ...
, despite his shares in SEDCO, being held in blind trust at the time. His opponent, White, as attorney general, led the state's lawsuit against SEDCO. White received 1,697,870 votes (53.2 percent) to Clements's 1,465,537 (45.9 percent).
Staging the 1986 comeback
In between his two terms as governor, Clements was chairman of the board of governors of
Southern Methodist University
Southern Methodist University (SMU) is a Private university, private research university in Dallas, Texas, United States, with a satellite campus in Taos County, New Mexico. SMU was founded on April 17, 1911, by the Methodist Episcopal Church, ...
in Dallas. He ran again in 1986 and won a contested GOP primary against
U.S. Representative Thomas Loeffler of
New Braunfels, the seat of
Comal County, and former Democratic-turned-Republican Congressman
Kent Hance of
Lubbock. In the fall, Clements unseated Governor White, who was hurt by the unpopularity of the "no pass/no play" policy involving high school athletics and proposed teacher competency testing. In gaining his second term, Clements polled 1,813,779 ballots (52.7 percent) to White's 1,584,512 (46.1 percent). Clements had turned the tables on White in a near mathematical reversal of the 1982 results and was inaugurated for a second nonconsecutive term on January 20, 1987, just after White came "struggling up to Clements in the Capitol rotunda" and extended a hand for a handshake with congratulations, and Clements simply shook it without comment and turned away.
Second term as Governor of Texas (1987–1991)
Clements's second term was marred by a startling revelation he made two months after taking office. On March 3, 1987, Clements admitted that he and the other members of the SMU board of governors had approved a secret plan to
continue payments to 13 football players from a
slush fund provided by a booster. Clements said that the board agreed to "phase out" the slush fund at the end of the 1986 season but that it felt duty-bound to honour prior commitments to the players. The decision to continue the payments ultimately led to the
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...
shutting down the football program for the 1987 season—the so-called "
death penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...
." SMU then opted not to field a team in 1988 either, claiming it could not put together a competitive squad. The shutdown and other sanctions left the once-proud Mustang football program in ruin; SMU would not procure another bowl bid until 2009, and it would also be another ten years before they would be ranked in the top 25 in the
Amway Coaches Poll by
USA Today
''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...
. A few months later, the College of Bishops of the
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant Christian denomination, denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was ...
released a report detailing an investigation of its own into the scandal. It revealed that Clements had met with athletic director Bob Hitch, and the two agreed that the payments had to continue because the football program had "a payroll to meet."
[Wangrin, Mark.]
20 years after SMU's football scandal
. ''San Antonio Express-News
The ''San Antonio Express-News'' is a daily newspaper in San Antonio, Texas, founded in 1865. It is owned by the Hearst Corporation and has offices in San Antonio and Austin, Texas. The ''Express-News'' is the third largest newspaper in the sta ...
'', March 3, 2007.
According to the report, in late 1985, then SMU President
L. Donald Shields and board of trustees chairman Edwin L. Cox wanted to stop the payments completely, in opposition to Clements and Hitch. The four held a "most important meeting" in August 1985 in Shields's office in the SMU administration building, Perkins Hall. Shields and Cox noted that although earlier in the year a phase-out of the payments had been agreed upon by SMU leadership, the NCAA had just enacted the "death penalty" for repeat violators (of which SMU was one, having been cited six times to that point by the organization and twice in the last five years) for violations occurring on or after September 1 of that year, and thus the situation had changed. But Clements, admitting his way would be "taking a chance," argued that if the payments were stopped immediately, star players receiving them would be sure to leave SMU and publicly announce why. Nothing was formally decided at the meeting, but afterwards, Clements and Hitch talked for about fifteen minutes in the Perkins Hall parking lot. Hitch remembered Clements asking him if the payments could be continued and, upon hearing that they could, telling him in no uncertain terms to "do it." And the payments continued (on at least two occasions starting in 1983, after President Shields expressed outrage over the payments and said they had to stop, Clements, an SMU dropout, told the PhD holder Shields to "stay out of it" and to "go run the university").
A week later, Clements apologised for his role in continuing the payments. He said that he had learned about the slush fund in 1984, and an investigation by the board of governors revealed that players had been paid to play since the mid-1970s. Clements said that rather than shutting down the payments immediately, the board "reluctantly and uncomfortably" decided to continue paying players who had already been guaranteed payments. However, he said, in hindsight, the board "should have stopped (the payments) immediately," rather than merely phase them out.
Clements faced calls for his
impeachment
Impeachment is a process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements.
In Eur ...
as a result of these statements; two state legislators argued that he would have never been elected had he honestly addressed his role in the scandal. Under the circumstances, he opted not to run for a third term as governor and was succeeded on January 15, 1991, by Democratic State Treasurer
Ann Richards.
During his second term, Clements worked to reduce crime, improve education, boost the Texas economy, and foster better relations with Mexico, especially on issues important to the mutual borders, such as immigration and the
War on Drugs. However, he did not push as pledged for the
initiative and
referendum
A referendum, plebiscite, or ballot measure is a Direct democracy, direct vote by the Constituency, electorate (rather than their Representative democracy, representatives) on a proposal, law, or political issue. A referendum may be either bin ...
reforms advocated by
State Senator
A state senator is a member of a State legislature (United States), state's senate in the bicameral legislature of 49 U.S. states, or a member of the unicameral Nebraska Legislature.
History
There are typically fewer state senators than there ...
Walter Mengden of
Houston
Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...
, based on the principle of
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
's
Proposition 13.
Post-political life

In June 2009, Clements donated $100 million to
UT Southwestern Medical Center
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern or UTSW) is a Public university, public Academic health science centre, academic health science center in Dallas, Texas. With approximately 23,000 employees, more than 3,000 ...
, the largest civic donation in Dallas history. On April 13, 2012,
Daniel K. Podolsky, President of UT Southwestern Medical Center announced that the UT System Board of Regents had approved the naming of the new UT Southwestern University Hospital in honor of Clements. On February 16, 2010, Clements and his wife both endorsed Governor
Rick Perry
James Richard Perry (born March 4, 1950) is an American politician who served as the 14th United States secretary of energy from 2017 to 2019 in the first administration of Donald Trump. He previously served as the 47th governor of Texas fr ...
's re-election campaign in the 2010 Texas Republican gubernatorial primary against
Kay Bailey Hutchison
Kay Bailey Hutchison (born Kathryn Ann Bailey; July 22, 1943) is an American attorney, television correspondent, politician, diplomat, and was the 22nd United States Permanent Representative to NATO from 2017 until 2021. A member of the Republic ...
. Clements, incidentally, won the Republican nomination that ultimately led to his first term as governor by defeating Hutchison's husband, Ray, in the 1978 GOP primary.
In October 2010, Clements's son, B. Gill Clements, was murdered at the age of 69 near his ranch in
Athens
Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...
in
Henderson County, east Texas. An investor, Clements was also a graduate of Southern Methodist University, married, and the father of three children. He was predeceased by his mother, Pauline Allen Gill Clements, Bill Clements's first wife.
Death
On May 29, 2011, Clements died at age 94 in a Dallas-area hospital from natural causes.
He is buried at Grove Hill Memorial Park in Dallas.
Electoral history
1978
1982
1986
See also
*
Southern Methodist University football scandal
The Southern Methodist University football scandal occurred in 1987 when the SMU Mustangs football program was investigated and penalized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Southern Methodist University (SMU), located in subu ...
*
Clements Center for National Security
References
Further reading
* Bridges, Kenneth William. "The Twilight of the Texas Democrats: The 1978 Governor's Race," Ph.D. dissertation,
University of North Texas
The University of North Texas (UNT) is a public university, public research university located in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Its main campus is in Denton, Texas, Denton, with a satellite campus in Frisco, Texas, Frisco. It serves as the ...
, 2003, 281 pages; AAT 3117260 in
ProQuest
ProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based global information-content and technology company, founded in 1938 as University Microfilms by Eugene Power.
ProQuest is known for its applications and information services for l ...
* Cunningham, Sean P. ''Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right'' (2010)
External links
Papers of Governor William P. Clements at Texas A&M University*
*
James C. McKinley Jr., ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', May 30, 2011
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clements, Bill
1917 births
2011 deaths
Highland Park High School (University Park, Texas) alumni
Southern Methodist University alumni
American energy industry businesspeople
Businesspeople from Texas
Republican Party governors of Texas
Politicians from Dallas
United States deputy secretaries of defense
United States Army Corps of Engineers personnel
United States secretaries of defense
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American Episcopalians
20th-century American philanthropists