John Steen

John Thomas Steen Jr. (born c. 1949), is a lawyer from San Antonio, Texas, who served as the Texas Secretary of State from 2012 to 2014. Steen was appointed by Governor Rick Perry on November 27, 2012, after Esperanza Andrade resigned four days earlier from the position that she had held for more than four years. Steen is Texas' 108th Secretary of State and one of six officials to have formed the Executive Department of state government.

After just over a year in the position, Steen resigned and was succeeded on January 7, 2014, by another Perry appointee, Nandita Berry, an Indian native and naturalized American citizen from Houston.

Background

Steen is one of five children born to John Steen Sr. (1922–2003), a native of Yoakum in southeast Texas, who owned insurance companies and also held ranching interests in surrounding counties. His mother was the former Nell Donnell, who predeceased her husband. The senior Steen was the last chairman of the San Antonio Good Government League and was active in the 1976 United States Bicentennial and in the National Conference of Christians and Jews. For twenty years, the senior Steen was an elected member of the Alamo Community College District. He served two terms on the San Antonio City Council and was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor in 1981 to succeed Lila Cockrell, but Henry Cisneros was instead elected to the first of four two-year terms in the position.

Steen is married to the former Ida Louise Clement, a past member of the Texas State Preservation Board in Austin, the panel which oversees the management of the State Capitol, the governor's mansion, and the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. She is a former regent of the Texas A&M University System. Mrs. Steen is a descendant of Richard King, the steamboat captain who in 1853 established the King Ranch, still owned by her family. Her father, James H. Clement, was the president and chief executive of King Ranch. Her paternal grandfather, Martin W. Clement, was the president and chairman of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Her maternal grandfather, John A. Larkin, was a founder and the vice chairman of the Celanese Corporation of America, now based in Dallas.

The Steens have three children, John Steen III, James Higbie Clement "Jamey" Steen, and Ida "Illa" Louise Larkin Steen Gaunt, who is married to William Hartley Gaunt of Houston, who has roots in Indiana and Kansas. The Gaunts were wed at the King Ranch in 2012.