Barry Smitherman

Barry Thomas Smitherman (born c. 1957) is the chairman, and one of three current members, of the Texas Railroad Commission. A Republican, he was appointed to the commission on July 8, 2011 by Governor Rick Perry to fill a vacant post, and on February 28, 2012 he was elected chairman of the commission, which regulates not railroads but the Texas oil and gas industry.

Background
Smitherman was reared in Highlands, Texas, on the east side of Houston. Smitherman graduated from Ross S. Sterling High School in Baytown, Texas. He then received a Bachelor of Business Administration from Texas A&M University at College Station. Thereafter, he obtained his Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, while he worked at the state capitol for a state senator, Lindon Williams, a Democrat. Smitherman further received a Master of Public Administration degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. There he was awarded the first Joel Leff Fellowship in Political Economy.

Smitherman began a career in banking, and rose to become the head of Bank One's national municipal finance group before he was fired in April 2002. Bank One's stated reason for the termination was that Smitherman had failed to get company approval before he co-authored an opinion column in the Houston Chronicle with two Houston city council members, in which the authors discussed how the city could improve its credit rating. In January 2003, Smitherman became a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s office, and in May 2003 Perry named him to the board of the Texas Public Finance Authority.

In April 2004, Governor Perry named Smitherman to the Texas Public Utility Commission. He became the chairman of that body in November 2007.

Railroad Commission
After seven years at the PUC, where Smitherman was seen as an advocate of deregulation, he left in July 2011 when Perry appointed him to the Railroad Commission to fill the position vacated by Republican Michael L. Williams, a candidate for the United States House of Representatives. He was elected as chairman of the commission on February 28, 2012, after the departure of Elizabeth Ames Jones to run for the state senate.

He currently serves on the commission with two other Republicans, David J. Porter of Lee County, who unseated former commissioner Victor G. Carrillo in the Republican primary in 2010, and Buddy Garcia of Austin, an interim commissioner whose term expires at the end of 2012. Garcia was appointed in April 2012, after Elizabeth Ames Jones resigned to wage an unsuccessful intraparty challenge to State Senator Jeff Wentworth in the 2012 Republican primary.

2012 election
Smitherman is a candidate in the Republican runoff election scheduled for July 31, 2012, for the two years remaining in Williams' unexpired term on the panel, which regulates not railroads but the oil and natural gas industries. In the upcoming primary runoff, Smitherman faces a challenge from his fellow conservative Greg Parker, a Comal County commissioner and an African American. In the primary, Smitherman had led Parker, 44 to 28 percent, but failed to win the required outright majority for nomination. The winner of the Smitherman-Parker runoff faces the Libertarian Jaime Perez in the November 6 general election. If he is elected this year, Smitherman must run again for the seat for a full six-year term in 2014.

Personal life
Smitherman and his wife reside in Austin. They have four children, two of whom were attending Texas A&M in 2012. The Smithermans are active members of Lake Hills Church.