Sid Miller (politician)

Sidney Carroll Miller (born September 6, 1955) is an American politician from Stephenville in Erath County, Texas. He is the current state Agriculture Commissioner. He was elected to succeed the two-term commissioner Todd Staples in the general election held on November 4, 2014.

From 2001 to 2013, Miller served in the Texas House of Representatives for district 59 in Central Texas, being unseated in the Republican runoff election held on July 31, 2012, by osteopathic physician J. D. Sheffield of Gatesville in Coryell County.

Personal life

A native of De Leon, Texas, Miller graduated from De Leon High School. Thereafter, he graduated from Cisco Junior College in Cisco and Tarleton State University in Stephenville, from which he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Vocational Agriculture Education. He is a former school teacher and school board member.

Miller and his wife, Debra Joan Miller (also born 1955), reside in Stephenville, the county seat of Erath County, where Miller operates a plant nursery. The couple has two sons, Sidney Truett Miller and Joseph Miller, who along with Joseph's wife, Kelly, are also Tarleton State graduates. An educator, Mrs. Miller is the founder of Erath Excels Academy, with campuses in both Stephenville and Taft. The Millers are active members of the Erath County Cowboy Church, where he is an elder. He is a former Baptist.^[1]

An avid rodeo participant, Miller is a lifetime member of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. In 2004, the United States Calf Roping Association named him "World Champion of Calf Roping". He is a member of the Texas Vocational Agriculture Teachers Association, the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, and the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association in Fort Worth.^[2]

Texas House of Representatives

Miller was first elected to the House in 2000, when he unseated the Democratic incumbent David Lengefeld (born 1945) of Hamilton County, 18,566 (54.4 percent) to 15,561 (45.6 percent).^[3] He was the only Republican in Texas that year to unseat a Democratic lawmaker.^[1][4] and in 2003 and 2007, Miller introduced bills promoting the slaughter and export of horse meat for human consumption.^[5][6]

In 2011, Miller authored House Bill 15, the pro-life measure to require a woman to undergo a sonogram prior to procuring an abortion. Miller worked to keep the provision of the law from being weakened by the opponents in both chambers of the legislature. The idea behind the required sonogram is that if a woman witnesses the developing child, she might decide to give birth, rather than procure an abortion. As a legislator, Miller carried the support of the various pro-life organizations, including Texas Right to Life.^[1] He has twice received the "Fighter for Free Enterprise" Award from the Texas Association of Business. Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, operated in Texas by Cathie Adams, former state chairman of the Texas Republican Party, named Miller the "second most conservative" member of the legislature.^[1]

The conservative Miller was unseated in the Republican runoff election held on July 31, 2012, by osteopathic physician J. D. Sheffield of Gatesville in Coryell County. In 2013, two complaints filed against Miller with the Texas Ethics Commission alleged campaign finance irregularities and failure to disclose loan repayments from his campaign.^[7][8][9] In January 2014, the Ethics Commission investigated^[10] the complaint and subsequently issued a statement that it found no wrongdoing on Miller's part. Miller in turn alleges that the complaints were a tactic devised by his opponents to undermine his election prospects.^[11]

Texas Agriculture Commissioner

2014 election

With 411,560 (34.6 percent) of the ballots cast, Miller led a five-candidate field for agriculture commissioner in the Republican primary held on March 4, 2014. Tommy Merritt, Miller's former House colleague from Longview, finished second with 249,440 votes (21 percent). The three losing primary candidates, Eric Opiela, Joe Cotten, and Mayor J. Allen Carnes of Uvalde, held a combined 44 percent of the vote.^[12]In the runoff held on May 27, 2014, Miller defeated Merritt, 362,573 votes (53.1 percent) to 320,434 (46.9 percent).^[13] In the general election, Miller defeated the Democrat Jim Hogan, 2,693,466 (58.6 percent) to 1,694,059 (36.8 percent). Two other candidates held the remaining 4.6 percent of the ballots cast.^[14]

Tenure

Operation Maverick

As Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller has made the agency responsibility for consumer protection a priority. A legislated mandate of the agency is to register any scale used for commercial transactions in Texas, including everything from food scales to heavy-duty agricultural or livestock scales. In 2015, he launched Operation Maverick -- an agency-wide effort to round up businesses who had failed to register their scales with the agency. Since inception of the program, over 1,400 new locations have been registered, representing a 385% increase.^[15]

Local control in school nutrition

Miller took office on January 2, 2015. Six months later, he returned local control to Texas schools by reversing an eleven-year ban instituted in 2004 by then Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs on soft drinks and fried foods in public schools. Miller said that local school districts should have the freedom to make decisions regarding food choices for their schools. Several school districts, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Fort Bend County, Austin, and Laredo, rebuffed Miller and vowed to remain with nutritious foods and no available soft drinks.^[16]

Farm Fresh Initiative

Miller has worked to continue the Department's role as a nationally-recognized advocate for healthy meals for Texas schoolchildren. Shortly after taking office, he created the Farm Fresh Initiative -- including Farm Fresh Fridays -- as a major farm-to-table program exclusively for Texas schools. Accordingly, the number of kids exposed to local produce has doubled.^[17][18]

Agriculture department fee hikes

In an editorial, the San Antonio Express-News questioned why Miller as a state House member voted against increased appropriations for the agriculture department but as commissioner sought additional revenue for the department. When a $50 million budget request submitted by Miller was rejected by lawmakers in 2015, the commissioner proposed higher fees for department certifications, inspections, and registrations, a proposal rejected by a bipartisan group of state legislators as well as the American Farm Bureau Federation and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Representative John Otto of Dayton, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said that fee hikes could result in lost revenue to the department because farmers and ranchers may choose alternative services. The Express-News urged Miller to drop the fee increase and legislators to determine whether the department is underfunded.^[19] Miller has proposed spending more than $400,000 to fund bonuses for agriculture department employees. Though he calls himself "a fiscal hawk," Miller added, "The last thing I want to do is raise anybody's fees, but I'm out of options here. I'm pretty much as the saying goes, hog-tied."^[20]

"Jesus shot"

In February 2015, Miller submitted paperwork for state payment of a trip to Oklahoma, where he claimed he had been invited to visit with Oklahoma lawmakers and visit the Oklahoma National Stockyards. Later, Miller was accused of taking the trip to see a doctor in Oklahoma City to receive a "Jesus shot", consisting of Dexamethasone, Kenalog, and Vitamin B12, to treat Miller's chronic pain. Miller decided to repay the cost of the trip.^[21]After investigation by the Texas Rangers, the Travis County District Attorney's Office declined to pursue any charges against Miller, closing the issue for good. ^[22]

Other political activities

Role in Donald Trump's presidential campaign

In the 2016 presidential election, Sid Miller earned national recognition as a loyal advocate in Texas for Republican Donald J. Trump.^[23] A founding member of Trump's Agricultural Advisory Board,^[24] Miller was the only Texas statewide elected official to be asked to speak at Trump's rally in Austin, Texas.^[25] His multiple appearances on the Fox News Channel^[26][27] in his recognizable white cowboy hat earned repeated mentions by the Republican nominee in the closing days of the campaign. ^[28][29]

Potential role in the Trump Administration

After the November 2016 election, news organizations nationwide, including The New York Times, pegged Miller as a possible Trump choice for Secretary of Agriculture.^{[30][31][32][33][34]}

Controversial comments

In August 2015, Miller posted a cartoon on his Facebook page that suggested the United States should bomb the Middle East. The text read: "Japan has been at peace with the US since August 9, 1945. It's time we made peace with the Muslim world." The background was of a nuclear explosion. Miller received harsh criticism for the post and eventually removed it, but he termed the cartoon "thought provoking" and vowed not to apologize for his action.^[35][36][37]

On November 1, 2016, a third-party vendor working on Miller's official twitter account tweeted a North Carolina poll referring to Hillary Clinton as a "cunt" within the tweet, which caused immediate outrage from both Democrat and Republican representatives.^[38] Texas Governor Greg Abbott condemned the tweet, stating "No true Texas gentleman would ever talk this way." The tweet was promptly removed and attributed to a third-party vendor's mistake. Sid Miller repeatedly apologized for the tweet, both to the public and to his agency staff.^[39] Subsequent to the vulgar tweet, the third-party vendor was fired from the campaign and prevented from accessing Miller's social media platforms.^[40]

On December 3, 2016, The Texas Tribune reported that Miller posted several "completely fabricated or otherwise unsupported" news stories on Facebook and Twitter.^[41]

Electoral history

References

External links

• Profile at Project Vote Smart

Current statewide political officials of Texas
U.S. Senators	John Cornyn Ted Cruz
State government	Greg Abbott, Governor Dan Patrick, Lieutenant Governor & President of the Senate Carlos Cascos, Secretary of State (appointed) Ken Paxton, Attorney General Glenn Hegar, Comptroller (Treasurer equivalent) George P. Bush, Land Commissioner Sid Miller, Agriculture Commissioner Christi Craddick, Ryan Sitton, David J. Porter, Railroad Commissioners
Senate	Juan Hinojosa, President pro tempore In the Texas Senate, there are no majority or minority leaders.
House	Joe Straus, Speaker Dennis Bonnen, Speaker pro tempore In the Texas House, there are no majority or minority leaders.
Supreme Court (civil)	Nathan Hecht, Chief Justice Don Willett Debra Lehrmann John P. Devine Paul W. Green Jeff Brown Jeffrey S. Boyd Phil Johnson Eva Guzman
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	Sharon Keller, Presiding Justice Lawrence E. Meyers Bert Richardson Kevin Patrick Yeary Cheryl Johnson Michael Keasler Barbara Hervey Elsa Alcala David Newell