Robert Eckels
| Robert Allen Eckels | |
|---|---|
| Texas State Representative from District 133 (Houston) | |
|
In office January 11, 1983 – January 10, 1995 |
|
| Preceded by | New district following redistricting |
| Succeeded by | Joe Nixon |
| County Judge of Harris County, Texas | |
|
In office 1995 – March 6, 2007 |
|
| Preceded by | Jon Lindsay |
| Succeeded by | Ed Emmett |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
March 14, 1957 Houston, Texas, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Jet Winkley Eckels |
| Children | Daughter Kirby Eckels |
| Residence | Houston, Texas |
| Alma mater |
Houston Christian High School |
| Occupation | Lawyer and businessman |
Houston Christian High School
University of Houston
Robert Allen Eckels (born March 14, 1957) is a lawyer and businessman from his native Houston, Texas, who was from 1983 to 1995 a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives and from 1995 to 2007 the county judge of Harris County.
Eckels' father, Robert Young "Bob" Eckels, Jr., was a trustee of the Houston Independent School District who in 1972 was elected the Precinct 3 county commissioner, a position that he filled until shortly before his death on Christmas eve in 1989. As commissioner, the senior Eckels was accused of having tapped his office telephones, mail fraud, and theft of timber used on county bridge construction. In 1987, he pleaded no contest to charges that he had accepted from a county contractor the construction of a road on his farm in Austin County within the Houston metropolitan district. Eckels told The Houston Chronicle that his father "played the [political] game by their rules. The world has moved."
The senior Eckels had close political ties with Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush. In 1984, while his son was a first-term legislator, Commissioner Eckels turned the Harris County government into a virtual arm of the Reagan-Bush re-election campaign. He used county telephones, computers, and employees to establish an organization called the National Conference of Republican County Officials. An official in Roanoke County, Virginia, said that the conference was "a working arm for the White House and the national [Republican] Party." Eckels later said that he had used at least $20,000 of his own funds for Reagan-Bush mailings and did not report the expenditure to the Federal Election Commission. Eckels died less than a year after Bush became the U.S. President. The seventeen-year commissioner was convicted of theft and forced to resign. For a number of years his name was synonymous with political corruption in the Houston area.
...
Wikipedia