Christi Craddick

Craddick won election to a six-year term on the Railroad Commission in November 2012; Gov. Rick Perry appointed her to the commission in December 2012 so she could begin her work a month early. In 1991, Craddick served on the staff of U.S. Rep. Joe Barton. She clerked at the law firms of Scott Douglass & McConnico in Austin and Cotton, Bledsoe, Tighe & Dawson in Midland in 1993, and in 1994, she worked in the legal department of the state Railroad Commission and at the 3rd Court of Appeals. From 1994 to 1995, Craddick clerked at the law firm of Jackson Walker — formerly Small, Craig & Werkinthin — where she specialized in agricultural and environmental law, electric deregulation and tax issues. Between 1995 and 2002, and briefly in 2009, Craddick was a registered lobbyist, working on behalf of dozens of clients. She served as president of Direct Contacts Inc., a grassroots advocacy firm. She served as the chief political and legal adviser to her father, state Rep. Tom Craddick, from 2002 to 2011 — including the six years he served as House speaker. Residence in Austin valued at $871,035. She owns mineral interests in Midland, as well as in Dimmit and Webb counties. In 2003 the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on allegations that Tom Craddick pushed legislation designed to get his daughter, Christi, on state health insurance under a program that fewer than 100 people qualified for as of 2002. Though the executive director of the Employees Retirement System at the time told the paper that the elder Craddick had initiated the measure, which allowed his daughter, then a 26-year-old lobbyist, to stay on state health insurance, a Craddick representative denied it. The Texas Observer reported in 2009 that from 1995 until 2002, Christi Craddick billed 28 lobbying clients a total of up to $665,000. The Observer also reported that in 2009, Craddick was slated to be paid up to $25,000 to lobby for Scythian Ltd., a Midland-based energy company. Midland-based Cap Rock Electric Cooperative, one of Craddick's former lobby clients, credited Craddick and her father with passing a 1999 bill giving the company the power to set its own rates, plus protection from would-be competitors. When the details of the deal made headlines in 2002, Tom Craddick, who was vying for House speaker, wrote members of the lower chamber, telling them Christi Craddick was dropping out of the lobby, and praising her "professional sacrifice to dispel any appearance of a lack of integrity in my speakership."