Don Huffines
Donald Blaine Huffines is an American politician and businessman from the state of Texas. Huffines co-owns and operates Huffines Communities, a real estate development company in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. A conservative, Tea Party Republican, Huffines represented District 16 in the Texas Senate from 2015 to 2019. He lost his re-election campaign in 2018. Remaining active in politics, Huffines ran an unsuccessful campaign for Governor of Texas in the 2022 Republican primary, challenging incumbent Greg Abbott. Background. Early life, education, and family. Don Huffines is a fifth-generation Texan born in Dallas on April 26 , 1958. He has two older brothers, James and Ray, and an identical twin brother, Phillip. In his childhood, his brothers and he spent time assisting at their grandfather’s car dealership. Don Huffines' grandfather, James Lecil "J.L." Huffines, started the Huffines Motor Company in Denton, Texas, in 1924. The company has grown into a large network of metroplex dealerships run by Don's brother, Ray Huffines. Huffines graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a B.B.A in finance. Huffines and his wife Mary Catherine have five children and four grandchildren. Real-estate career. Huffines and his brother Phillip  are the founders and co-owners of Huffines Communities, a real-estate company established in 1985 that is located in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Texas Senate. In 2014, Huffines ran for a seat in the Texas State Senate. He challenged the incumbent of Senate District 16, Senator John J. Carona, in the Republican primary. Huffines ran to the right of Carona, claiming Carona was not a true conservative, and ultimately won the primary against him on March 4, 2014. A combined total of $6.3 million was spent by both candidates in the primary race. In the November 4  general election, Huffines ran unopposed. Huffines campaigned on the themes of teaching creationism in public schools, term limits, school choice, funding highway construction, opposing new toll roads, and cutting taxes. Tenure. During his time in office, Huffines authored, but did not pass, many bills addressing Republican priorities. These bills included legislation on constitutional carry, term limits, and anti-abortion policy. Huffines consistently voted along his party line on conservative legislation; political science fellow Mark Jones named Huffines the fourth-most conservative member of the 2017 Texas Senate. In 2017, Huffines proposed a bill, which did not pass, that would have  required 30% voter turnout for any bond election in Texas to be successful. At the time, most such elections drew fewer than 10% of voters to the polls. The "San Antonio Express-News" claimed that were Huffines' bill to become law, it would make a successful bond election nearly impossible in Texas. On November 6, 2018, Huffines lost his re-election bid to Democrat Nathan M. Johnson, who was the first Democrat to win Senate District 16 in over three decades. Huffines received 45.9% of the vote. 2022 gubernatorial candidacy. Huffines remained politically active after losing his Senate re-election  campaign. He was critical of Governor Greg Abbott's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically lockdowns, and spoke at numerous far-right rallies calling for the reopening of the state. On May 10, 2021, Huffines announced that he would challenge Abbott in the 2022 Republican primary for governor of Texas. As a candidate, Huffines has warned of a Communist invasion of Californians moving to Texas and has advocated to bring prayer back to schools and dared "the Supreme Court to come to Texas to enforce the separation of church and state." In August 2021, Huffines accused Abbott of using tax  dollars to "advocate for transgender ideology". Huffines was referring to two pages on the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services' (DFPS) website that contained resources for LGBTQ youths, including a suicide hotline. The pages were removed from the site within hours. In January 2022, Huffines declined to fire a staffer who had previously worked for far-right conspiracy website InfoWars and who had ties to the white nationalist movement; in a statement, Huffines said that his campaign would not engage in "cancel culture". On March 1, 2022, Huffines lost the Republican primary, receiving only 12% of the vote against  Abbott, who won the primary by a large margin.