Clymer Wright

Clymer Lewis Wright Jr. (July 24, 1932 – January 24, 2011) was a Texas conservative political activist and journalist. He brought term limits to Houston municipal government and encouraged Ronald Reagan to run for president.

Personal life A veteran of the United States Army in the Korean War, Wright was active in the Baptist Church and in the alumni association of his alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Wright later published a second conservative newspaper, the Houston Tribune.

Barbara Staff, the Texas Reagan co-chairman from Dallas, said, "You may just see a big apathetic heartbreak take over. I would say at this point most people here are not going to work for Ford."

On February 6, 2011, thirteen days after Wright's death, Baker was invited by Nancy Davis Reagan to deliver one of the principal addresses from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, to commemorate Reagan's 100th birthday.

Term limits

In the early 1990s, Wright formed the interest group, "Citizens for Term Limitations", which worked successfully in passing the initiative that established term limits of three two-year terms in the nation's fourth largest city. San Antonio also enacted term limits about this time. When Houston officeholders knocked on doors to oppose the term limits initiative in 1991, Wright urged backers of term limits to "Sick your dogs on 'em."

Later years In 2000, he served as the national finance chairman for presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, the former Republican who ran as the Reform Party's nominee. In 2008, Wright supported U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas, an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. When the GOP nominated U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, Wright contributed to the Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin, a Baptist pastor in Pensacola, Florida, who has since relocated to Montana.

Though Wright did not support McCain for President with any contributions, he was finance chairman in 2007–2008 for the Republican congressional candidate Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, who failed in her second bid for the position, having lost in 2006 to the Democrat Nick Lampson. Then Gibbs lost the 2008 Republican primary to Pete Olson as the representative from Texas's 22nd congressional district, a position once held by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Fort Bend County. Wright declared that Gibbs, a physician, was "exactly the type of principled, conservative leader we need in TX-22, and I'm proud to give her my support."

Wright's greatest political success lay with the Houston term limits. While numerous politicians have floated trial balloons to rescind the term limits, they nevertheless remain in place. The seat was ultimately won by Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, who unseated the appointed incumbent Robert Krueger in a runoff election.

For the eighteen years prior to his death, Wright had been an executive with Aflac Insurance, after his early career in journalism and, subsequently, in real estate.

Family and death

While studying journalism in college, he met Sandra, his first wife. They had three children together. In 1990, Wright married the former Mary Katherine Sheftall (January 5, 1943– November 11, 2010), a Houston native. Mary Wright attended Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and worked for both the Whitehall Hotel and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston before joining Clymer Wright at Aflac Insurance. She had a daughter from a previous marriage. Mary Wright died of heart failure in a Houston hospital at the age of 67.

Wright was found dead, apparently of natural causes, by a housekeeper. He was sitting in a chair, wearing pajamas, and the morning newspaper was nearby. His daughter said he had not been ill.