John Shields (Texas politician)
Encyclopedia
John Howard Shields is an attorney in San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...

, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, who is a Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 former member of the Texas House of Representatives
Texas House of Representatives
The Texas House of Representatives is the lower house of the Texas Legislature. The House is composed of 150 members elected from single-member districts across the state. The average district has about 150,000 people. Representatives are elected to two-year terms with no term limits...

 from Bexar County
Bexar County, Texas
As of the census of 2000, there were 1,392,931 people, 488,942 households, and 345,681 families residing in the county. The population density was 1,117 people per square mile . There were 521,359 housing units at an average density of 418 per square mile...

. Shields is also an investor in Retama Park racetrack in San Antonio. His father-in-law is powerful San Antonio businessman B. J. "Red" McCombs
Red McCombs
Billy Joe "Red" McCombs is the founder of the Red McCombs Automotive Group, a co-founder of Clear Channel Communications, a former owner of the San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, and the Minnesota Vikings, and the namesake of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin...

. Marsha McCombs Shields is Red McCombs's youngest daughter.

Background

Shields received a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 from Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

 in Durham
Durham, North Carolina
Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County and also extends into Wake County. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 228,330 residents as of the 2010 United States census...

, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

, and a Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 from Trinity University
Trinity University (Texas)
Trinity University is a private, independent, primarily undergraduate, university in San Antonio, Texas. Its campus is located in the Monte Vista Historic District and adjacent to Brackenridge Park....

 in San Antonio. In 1988, Shields received the Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...

 degree from St. Mary's University School of Law
St. Mary's University School of Law
St. Mary's University School of Law is one of the professional graduate schools of St. Mary's University. The law school is located in San Antonio, Texas, and is the oldest Catholic law school in the American Southwest. The University is a private Catholic university...

 in San Antonio. In addition to his law practice, Shields is a lecturer in the Department of Management at the University of Texas at San Antonio
University of Texas at San Antonio
The University of Texas at San Antonio, commonly referred to as UTSA, is a state university in San Antonio, Texas. With an enrollment of more than 30,000 students, it is the third-largest of nine universities and six health institutions in the University of Texas System and the eighth-largest in...

.

Political career

From 1993 to 2003, Shields held the District 22 seat in the House. In his first election in 1992, Shields won the Republican primary outright by a margin of .4 of 1 percent over two opponents, William E. "Bill" Harrison and Lonnie Wulfe. Shields polled 5,203 votes (50.4 percent) to Wulfe's 3,286 (31.8 percent) and Harrison's 1,833 (17.8 percent). In the general election, when Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

 was elected as U.S. President, Shields faced no Democrat
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 but defeated the Libertarian
Libertarian Party (United States)
The Libertarian Party is the third largest and fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects its brand of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated, laissez-faire markets, strong civil liberties, minimally regulated migration...

 choice, Phil E. Sanford, 38,838 votes (88.5 percent) to 5,024 (11.5 percent). In his last successful election in November 2000, Shields again scored a lop-sided victory over a Libertarian nominee.

In 1999, Shields, along with fellow Representative Will Hartnett of Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...

, opposed hate crimes legislation in the Texas House, taking the view that some victims should not have greater protection of the law than others in regard to age or race.

After five two-year terms in the House, the conservative Shields in 2002 challenged the San Antonio Republican State Senator Jeff Wentworth
Jeff Wentworth
Earl Jeffrey "Jeff" Wentworth is a Republican member of the Texas Senate since 1993. He succeeded Republican Cyndi Taylor Krier , who instead became the Bexar County judge...

 in District 25
Texas Senate, District 25
District 25 of the Texas Senate is a senatorial district that currently serves all of Comal, Guadalupe, Hays and Kendall counties, and portions of Bexar and Travis counties in the U.S. state of Texas...

. A conservative political action committee
Political action committee
In the United States, a political action committee, or PAC, is the name commonly given to a private group, regardless of size, organized to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation. Legally, what constitutes a "PAC" for purposes of regulation is a...

 known as FreePAC, dispatched mailing branding Wentworth as "pro-gay, pro-assisted suicide, and pro-abortion." Shields denied personal involvement with the FreePAC mailings. However, Shields's campaign literature quoted a supporter, pastor John Hagee
John Hagee
John Charles Hagee is an American founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, a non-denominational charismatic megachurch with more than 19,000 active members...

 of San Antonio's large fundamentalist Cornerstone Church, located at the intersection of Anderson Loop 1604 and Stone Oak Parkway, which dubbed Wentworth "the most pro-abortion" legislator in Austin
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

. Wentworth in turn charged that Red McCombs was trying to "buy" his son-in-law a seat in the state Senate. McCombs served as Shields's campaign treasurer. Then state Republican chairman Susan Weddington, herself from San Antonio, broke the tradition of neutrality in primaries and endorsed the conservative Shields. By contrast former state senator and Bexar county judge Cyndi Taylor Krier
Cyndi Taylor Krier
Cynthia Taylor Krier, known as Cyndi Taylor Krier , is an attorney, lobbyist, and former Republican politician in San Antonio, Texas. She served in the Texas State Senate from District 26 from 1985 to 1993 and as the administrative judge of Bexar County from 1993 to 2001...

, a moderate Republican, cut commercials for Wentworth, her Senate successor, who not only prevailed but still holds the District 25 seat.

Final returns showed Shields with 25,265 votes (48.8 percent) to Wentworth's 26,481 votes (51.2 percent).
Shields was succeeded in House District 122 by the Republican Frank Corte, Jr.
Frank Corte, Jr.
Frank Julius Corte, Jr. , is a real estate businessman in San Antonio, Texas, who served as a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives from Bexar County between 1993 and 2011....

, who had represented District 123 prior to the 2001 round of House redistricting.

District 122 is now represented by the Republican Lyle Larson, a former member of the San Antonio City Council and the Bexar County Commission.
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