Tom Loeffler

Loeffler was a legislative assistant to U.S. President Gerald Ford, from 1975 to 1977. He successfully ran for Congress in 1978 against the Democrat Nelson Wolff, now the county judge of Bexar County. The two-term Democratic incumbent, Bob Krueger, gave up the seat to make an unsuccessful run for the Senate. Loeffler polled 57 percent of the ballots cast in the campaign against Wolff–a sharp turnabout from 1976, in which Krueger took 71 percent of the vote. However, the district had been moving away from its Democratic roots for some time.

Loeffler was a delegate to all three Republican National Conventions during the 1980s. He would never face another contest nearly as close as his first one, and was reelected three more times by over 70 percent of the vote.

After four terms in the House, he stepped down to run for governor of Texas but lost a hard-fought Republican primary election to the eventual winner, Bill Clements. Another losing contender was former U.S. Representative Kent Hance, who had defeated George W. Bush for Congress in 1978 in the Lubbock-based district. After his congressional career, Loeffler was appointed to the Office of Legislative Affairs as the coordinator for Central American policies.

In 1989, Loeffler became a University of Texas administrator. Loeffler currently works in Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist with Gray Loeffler LLC representing clients including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Like Loeffler, Clements also is active in the McCain presidential campaign.

Loeffler is the father of former Minnesota Vikings long snapper Cullen Loeffler. His other son, Lance Loeffler, is currently an oil and gas executive with Halliburton in Houston, TX.[1] Lance previously worked in investment banking, holding senior level positions with both Deutsche Bank in their energy practice and UBS in their energy and healthcare practices.[2]