Clay Smothers

In 1972, Smothers surfaced to national attention as an alternate delegate for then Governor George Wallace at the Democratic National Convention.[6] Without any expectation of success, Smothers nominated himself for vice president to run with nominee George McGovern but polled support from only seventy-four delegates, a number still more than twice that received by Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, the 1976 Democratic presidential nominee who was not an announced candidate for vice-president.[7]

Smothers warned the national Democrats meeting in Miami Beach, Florida, that Wallace, who had been the victim of an assassination attempt in Maryland several weeks earlier, held the allegiance of 20 million voters and had to be recognized. Smothers did not endorse either McGovern or Republican Richard M. Nixon but instead supported the 1972 American Independent Party ticket of U.S. Representative John G. Schmitz of California and Thomas J. Anderson of Tennessee. AIP had been Wallace's party in the 1968 presidential election. Schmitz and Anderson polled more than 1 million popular votes but carried no state. The liberal author Hunter S. Thompson ridiculed Smothers as "some black Stepin Fetchit-style Wallace delegate from Texas."[8]

Smothers lost the runoff election for Dallas City Council Place 8 to Lucy Patterson in 1973.[9] The large number of Black voters at the polls are partially credited for Patterson's win, especially in South Dallas and Southeast Oak Cliff. Officials speculated that Black voters were responding to Smothers longstanding anti-busing position.[10]

Smothers was elected to the first of his two terms in the Texas legislature in 1976, when Jimmy Carter became the thus far last Democrat to win the electoral votes of Texas. After some four months in office, the Austin American-Statesman reported on May 20, 1977, that Smothers had been named "Freshman of the Year" of the 65th legislative session by his colleagues. However, that same year Texas Monthly magazine named him to its "Ten Worst List" of legislators.[2]

In his first House term, Smothers spoke against ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as gay rights and abortion at a 1977 pro-family rally held in Houston in opposition to feminist causes. Rejecting the argument equating gay rights to civil rights, he emphatically declared, "I have had enough civil rights to choke a hungry goat! I ask for victory over the perverts in this country! I want the right to segregate my family from these misfits and perverts," Smothers told the large gathering in the Astrodome.[11]

In 1977, Smothers was one of eight House members named to the select committee Child Pornography: Its Related Causes and Control. Three non-legislators were also appointed, including later Houston Mayor Bob Lanier and Margaret Formby of Hereford, the founder of the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth.[12] In his second term, Smothers served on the House Elections Committee with Tom DeLay. of Sugar Land, later a high-ranking Republican member of the United States House of Representatives.[13] He was vice chairman in that same session of the House Liquor Regulation Committee.[14] In 1977, Smothers proposed without success a state constitutional amendment to double the length of House terms from two to four years.[15]

In 1979, Smothers opposed the bill to create Juneteenth as a Texas state holiday observing the end of slavery in the state. Smothers belittled the observance as mere "ceremoniously grinning and bursting watermelons on the Capitol grounds" and "a fraudulent holiday".[16]

In 1978, Smothers was awarded the American Patriots Medal by Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. He was selected from several thousand nominees by a panel of thirty persons, one-third of whom were justices of state supreme courts. The previous winner of the medal had been the western singer, actor, and businessman Gene Autry.[5]

Smothers supported Jonas Savimbi of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola in the Angolan Civil War in the middle 1970s and accused the Communist Cuban forces, which fought on the side of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola government against Savimbi, of atrocities.[5]

In 1980, Smothers ran as a Republican on the Reagan-Bush ticket for the United States House of Representatives in Texas's 24th congressional district, but he lost to the Democratic incumbent Martin Frost. Smothers ran as an opponent of abortion and polled nearly 39 percent of the vote in the district, since reconfigured through redistricting.[17][18]