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Monday, July 28, 1997

Susan Weddington has inside track to state GOP chair

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Susan Weddington, vice chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party since 1994, appears poised to succeed Tom Pauken this week in the state GOP's top job.

The 46-year-old Christian conservative activist from San Antonio believes her scheduled election as Texas Republican Party chairwoman demonstrates that women have more opportunities in the GOP than in the Democratic Party.

"It's a powerful statement," she told the San Antonio Express-News.

Dick Weinhold, chairman of the Texas Christian Coalition, told the newspaper that Weddington will bring excitement to the party.

"I certainly count her as one of our friends," he said. "She'll work very hard to get Republicans elected up and down the ballot."

Top Texas Democrats are not impressed. They say Weddington's rise reaffirms that what they call the "radical right" retains control over the Republican Party and nudges it further out of the political mainstream.

"So long as she continues to support the type of extreme views that she does, the Republican Party as an organization will lose the support of mainstream Texans," Democratic Party Chairman Bill White told the Houston Chronicle.

The State Republican Executive Committee is expected to elect Weddington Saturday to succeed Pauken, the party chairman from Dallas who resigned to run for attorney general.

It's a milestone in a political career that began when she joined the conservative Concerned Women for America in the late 1980s.

She later was active in Texans for Better Health, a conservative AIDS policy group.

In the early 1990s, Weddington worked for the Texas Conservative Coalition and later for state Rep. Frank Corte Jr., R-San Antonio. She later became involved with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative San Antonio think tank.

While social issues including support for school vouchers gave rise to her political activism, Weddington says she now is a broad-agenda conservative pushing social and economic issues. Her goal is to make the Republicans the majority party in Texas, she says.

"If I have been narrowly defined, it's because people have chosen for their own purposes to narrowly define me," she told the Chronicle. "I consider myself a Republican ... I'm just Susan."

During Pauken's tenure as party chairman, he often criticized Republican Gov. George W. Bush.

Although Weddington had criticized Bush last year for attending a fund raiser for Democratic House Speaker Pete Laney, she says now that she won't have an ax to grind. She said she will work hard to strengthen Republican grass-roots efforts and build coalitions.

"She's conservative, but I don't think she will fit the description of any of the terms they like to use," said Fred Meyer of Dallas, Pauken's predecessor as state party chairman. "She's reasonable, and she understands what the party's purpose is."

Traditional foes of Christian conservatives reacted predictably.

"Her election as chair reaffirms the religious right's control of the leadership of the Republican Party of Texas. Her politics are even farther to the right than her predecessor's," said Debbie Frank, spokeswoman for the Texas Freedom Network, which opposes religious conservatives in government. Send a Letter to the Editor about This Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
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