Kenny Marchant

Kenny Marchant
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 24th district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2005
Preceded by	Martin Frost
Personal details
Born	Kenny Ewell Marchant (1951-02-23) February 23, 1951 Bonham, Texas, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Donna Marchant
Alma mater	Southern Nazarene University Nazarene Theological Seminary
Religion	Church of the Nazarene

Kenny Ewell Marchant (born February 23, 1951) is the U.S. Representative for Texas's 24th congressional district, serving since 2005. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district includes several areas around Dallas and Fort Worth.

Early life, education and career

Marchant was born February 23, 1951 in Bonham, Texas, but grew up in Carrollton, a Dallas suburb. He graduated from R.L. Turner High School in Carrollton and attended college at Southern Nazarene University (SNU) in Bethany, Oklahoma, graduating with a business degree. He worked as a real estate developer and he owned a homebuilding company prior to entering politics.

Marchant served on the Carrollton City Council from 1980 to 1984, and was mayor of Carrollton from 1984 to 1986.

Texas House of Representatives

He was a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1987 to 2004. During three of his nine terms in the Texas House, Marchant served as chairman of the Committee on Financial Institutions. He pushed for legislation that reorganized the Texas Banking Code. In 2002, he was chosen as Chairman of the Texas House Republican Caucus. In 2004, he was named a Top Ten Legislator by Texas Monthly and Legislator of the Year by the Texas Municipal League.^[1]

U.S. House of Representatives

Committee assignments

• Committee on Ways and Means
  • Subcommittee on Oversight
  • Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures
• Committee on Ethics
• Republican Study Committee
• Tea Party Caucus

In the 110th Congress, Marchant served on the United States House Committee on Financial Services, Committee on Education and Labor, and Oversight and Government Reform Committee.^[2]

Political positions

Marchant worked closely with Bush when he was governor of Texas, and bills himself as a staunch conservative. However, he has occasionally broken ranks with the GOP, as he did to increase the minimum wage.^[3] He has said that his top priority on Capitol Hill will be cutting the federal deficit with fiscal conservative policies. The Sunlight Foundation wrote that among the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008, Marchant has the fifth-highest amount of investment in oil stocks.^[4]

Political campaigns

Marchant had planned to run for Congress two years earlier in a bid to represent the newly created 32nd district in suburban Dallas, but fellow Republican Pete Sessions, an incumbent, chose to run there instead. During the 2003 Texas redistricting, Marchant, in his position on the Texas House's Redistricting Committee, was ideally positioned to help draw Texas districts. As part of this effort, the 24th District, represented by 13-term Democrat Martin Frost, was reconfigured from a heavily Democratic district with a sizable Latino population into a heavily Republican district that was over 73 percent white. While Al Gore easily carried the old 24th in the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush would have won the new 24th with a staggering 68 percent of the vote. Marchant was elected to Congress in 2004, and was reelected in 2006 (with 60% of the ballots cast) and 2008 (with 56% of the ballots cast).

Personal life

Marchant is married to Donna Marchant and has four children as well as four grandchildren.^[5] They live in Coppell, a Dallas suburb. Marchant's son Matthew Marchant is the current mayor of Carrollton, Texas.

References

External links

• Congressman Kenny Marchant official U.S. House site
• Kenny Marchant for Congress
• Kenny Marchant at DMOZ
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Profile at Project Vote Smart
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Legislation sponsored at The Library of Congress