Despite his resignation, the State Senate voted 25-3 to convict, which meant that Ferguson could not seek another public office in Texas. Bruce Rutherford, The Impeachment of Jim Ferguson (Austin: Eakin Press, 1983). He was elected governor in 1914, his first election. He was impeached in 1917 and removed from office. In 1930 he conducted the unsuccessful campaign of his wife for the governorship, and in 1932 he conducted her successful campaign for the same office. 4. The Texas Senate reduced the charges to 10, half of which dealt with the transfer of the $5,600. Only two Texas public officials have been impeached in the state's history. James Ferguson is the only governor to be impeached and convicted. As a result it was impossible for the convention to eliminate him and obviously unwise to divide the vote by naming a rival candidate. Impeachment is the equivalent of an indictment. KVUE is looking back at the history of some past Texas governors. StrongJanuary 29, 202010:48 amArts & Culture, Stories From Texas, Bain News Service /Wikimedia Commons [Public domain]. The first and only Texas governor to be impeached is Governor James "Pa" Ferguson. Democrat James "Pa" Ferguson Jr. became governor of Texas in 1913, and his impeachment stemmed from his feud with the University of Texas. He had been an opponent of Ferguson for the Democratic party's nomination for governor in 1914.[11]. He tapped Reverend Allan Ferguson Cunningham to serve as State Librarian, despite his lack of training or experience in the field. Texas History Minute: Jim Ferguson only Texas governor to be impeached, removed. Your donation keeps our trusted reporting free and accessible for all Texans and during a legislative session when lawmakers are set to tackle issues from school choice for K-12 students to school safety improvements to changes in property taxes, its critical that Texans know what lawmakers decisions mean for their futures. Millions of Texans have rare diseases. Some legislators justified the impeachment on the grounds that Hall did not disclose several lawsuits that he was involved in when he originally completed his Regent background check. He told Vinson that he fought him on this he was in for the biggest bear fight in Texas history. That fairly summarized his attitude about his power. Low 54F. In 1917, barely into his second term as governor of Texas, James E. Ferguson was impeached, convicted, and removed from office. Its hard not to like the down-home folksy style that made Texas Gov. He was elected governor in 1914, his first election. In the United States legal tradition, impeachment is comparable to an indictment in a criminal court. Needed buildings were provided at other eleemosynary institutions. When Vinson refused to fire the professors, Ferguson went after the Board of Regents to get them to do his bidding. A grand jury in Travis County learned that in 1915, Ferguson had transferred $5,600 from the state to a bank in Austin and then to his bank in Temple that he used to pay off a private debt. Barred from state office, he ran for president in 1920 on the American Party ticket. The report concluded that Hall had a legitimate reason for having the documents in question. Only 17 federal officers have been impeached since 1776. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. 2-stem governor fro 1921-1924 . There are 150 members of the Texas State House. James Ferguson is the only governor to be impeached and convicted. Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Three others dealt with the veto of university funding as an abuse of power and official oppression. Though as of this writing, three presidents have been impeached, none have ever been removed from office. There is no regularly scheduled session until 2015. Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. Oklahoma has impeached and removed two governors, and West Virginia impeached four members of its State Supreme Court at the same time in 2018. James E. Ferguson Called on Tejanos to rise up/support the revolution; Called on other minorities to join Tejanos to carve out a republic from land US took from Mexico US Pancho Villa Mexican guerilla leader led an attack on Columbus NM (Mar. Johnson Roofing built a business on topping off buildings, but when it comes to its legacy, Bill Johnson and daughter Sherri focus on the foundation. He was by this time an old man. James Edward Ferguson Jr. (August 31, 1871 - September 21, 1944), known as Pa Ferguson, was an American Democratic politician and the 26th Governor of Texas, in office from 1915 to 1917. In 1917, James E. Ferguson, nicknamed "Pa Ferguson," was impeached and removed from the governorship of Texas. James Ferguson died on September 21, 1944, and was buried in the State Cemetery in Austin. James Ferguson. An overview by John R. Lundberg offers a comprehensive survey of the impeachment process. In 1928, for the first time since 1914, Ferguson was not an active participant in a political campaign, but even then he took some interest in the race for the governorship and gave his support to Louis J. Wardlaw. ii) During the period between World Wars I and II, James and Miriam Ferguson were the most powerful couple in Texas. Thats how she likes it. He gave a speech in his own defense and blamed the charges on that N-word loving senator from the north, Senator Johnson. Not Lyndon. Three new normal schools were authorized. An argument over spending tax dollars, an attempt to silence political opponents, and charges of a kangaroo court.. The fact is that he had parked state funds in his bank for personal gain and he had run his bank as a one-man Ponzi scheme. Jessica Brannon-Wranosky concludes with an assessment of the historical memory of Fergusons impeachment throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. When he was four years old, his father died. Amplify your impact and donate now. If Hall is impeached, he would bethe third person in Texas history to be in that situation. Rachel M. Gunter further places the Ferguson impeachment in the context of the suffrage movement. Encyclopedia.com. resigning his office and being barred by the legislature to ever serve a state office again. He left home at sixteen and wandered for two years through the states of the Far West, where he lived by accepting any employment offered. Impeachment is the power of a legislative body to address charges of impropriety or criminality by a government official, such as a governor or lieutenant governor. Ferguson, had a stormy two-term reign and was impeached in 1917 over charges of misappropriation of funds regarding the University of Texas as well as embezzlement. Though no Texas official has been impeached and removed from office at the state level since Ferguson, Texas politics has hardly been scandal-free. The Senate removed Ferguson from office by a vote of 25-3. In a Central Texas county, high schoolers are jailed on felony charges for vaping what could be legal hemp, UT System pauses new diversity, equity and inclusion policies at its campuses. In 1924, unable to run under his own name, he ran his wife's campaign for the governorship against Judge Felix Robertson, the candidate endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. Five concerned the misapplication of public funds, three related to his quarrel with the university, one declared that he had failed properly to respect and enforce the banking laws of the state, and one charged that he had received $156,500 ($2.9 million in todays dollars) from a source he refused to reveal. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than two dozen books, most recently Anti-Black Violence in Twentieth-Century Texas. After an unsuccessful campaign for president in 1920, Ferguson ran the gubernatorial campaign of his wife, Miriam Ma Ferguson, in 1924. Ferguson was first elected in 1914, and was reelected in 1916. He said the governor served the people, but he used the power of the office to reward his friends and crush not just his political enemies, but good servants of the state whose only offense was not voting for him. In 1918 he sought the Democratic party nomination for the governorship but was defeated by William P. Hobby. if(document.getElementsByClassName("reference").length==0) if(document.getElementById('Footnotes')!==null) document.getElementById('Footnotes').parentNode.style.display = 'none'; What's on my ballot? Almost a century later, the Ferguson impeachment presents both striking similarities and key differences to. In 1916 Ferguson's reelection seemed certain. The Fergusons beat Robertson and went to the Governor's Mansion for a third time. Sam Houston was the first president of the Independent Republic of Texas , and he later served as governor of the state of T, Connally, John Bowden, Jr. Eight governors have been removed from office through impeachment. Similarly, the Texas constitution gives the lower house of the legislature power to impeach judges, the governor, and statewide elected officials. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Apply today! Early in his second term the governor became involved in a serious quarrel with the University of Texas. He started his own newspaper that fall, Ferguson Forum, to promote his views that the impeachment was illegitimate. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Hall updated Governor Rick Perry's office in April 2013 with the full list. The second had to do with his utilization of the Temple Bank he had controlling interest in as his personal slush fund. The landholdings of the prison system were greatly increased, and because of the rising price of farm commodities, the system became self-sustaining; during the years of war prosperity, it showed a profit. Jessica Brannon-Wranosky and Bruce A. Glasrud, eds. After a trial, the Senate voted him out of office by a vote of 25-3 and banned him from holding any state office. Ouida Ferguson Nalle, The Fergusons of Texas, or "Two Governors for the Price of One": A Biography of James Edward Ferguson and His Wife (San Antonio: Naylor, 1946). The Legislature then came back into session to consider impeachment, an attempt Ferguson immediately condemned. The entire process is substantially the same in Texas for elected officials, as it is for most of the other states. The state was blue, then really indigo. The Legislature is aghast at the meddling with the flagship state university. he was accused of misuse of public funds following his call for a special legislative session When a governor is removed from office, resigns, or dies or becomes incapacitated while in office, who becomes governor? Ferguson won the nomination by a majority of about 40,000 votes. You are currently viewing a legacy feature of the Texas Politics Project website. The House immediately turned its attention to the numerous charges against the governor and, after a lengthy investigation, prepared twenty-one articles of impeachment. The regents refused. I dont care who you are.. The framers considered impeachment an important check on the power of the presidency and against corruption. W. V. Howerton, ed., Facts on Ferguson: A Review of the Impeachment and a Reply to Charges Made by Ex-Governor Ferguson (Austin, 1918).
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