Smith was first elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1944 and then to the Texas State Senate in 1956. He won the Senate seat by defeating in the primary the incumbent Kilmer B. Corbin, the father ofactorBarry Corbin. In 1962, Smith won the lieutenant governor's race, securing majorities in all but 16 of the 254 counties to defeat the Republican O.W. "Bill" Hayes. In 1968, Smith was elected governor, a position he held for two two-year terms. He succeeded the popular Democratic Governor John B. Connally, Jr., who later switched to the Republican Party in 1973. To win the governorship, Smith first defeated Don Yarborough in the 1968 Democratic runoff election. Several other candidates, including Dolph Briscoe, a large landholder from Uvalde in the Texas Hill Country, and former Texas Attorney GeneralWaggoner Carr, also of Lubbock, were eliminated in the primary. Smith's inauguration on January 21, 1969, had what was called "the flavor of the South Plains." The Texas Tech University marching band led the parade just behind the marshal and the color guard. A mounted masked Red Raider rode with the band. Governor and Mrs. Smith, both Tech graduates, followed in an open convertible. Other Smith family members rode in the parade, followed by the new lieutenant governor, Ben Barnes. The band of Lamesa High School, Smith's alma mater, was the first among the high school groups. Before the oath taking, the first to be televised in Texas history, Smith had been feted with a $25-per-place victory dinner in the Austin Municipal Auditorium, now the Long Center for the Performing Arts. Smith twice defeated Republican nominee Paul W. Eggers, a tax attorney from Wichita Falls and later Dallas, and a close friend of U.S. Senator John G. Tower. In the high-turnout general election of 1968, Smith received 1,662,019 ballots to Eggers' 1,254,333. In the general election of 1970, Smith, who had been unopposed in the Democratic primaries, received 1,197,726 votes to Eggers' 1,037,723 - still the highest midterm year turnout in past 50 years. The state switched to four-year terms in 1974, two years after Smith left office. In 1971 and 1972, Smith was embroiled in the Sharpstown scandal stock fraud scheme, which eventually led to his downfall. Smith lost his third-term bid for the governorship of Texas to Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde in the Democratic primary in 1972. He ran a distant fourth in the primary, behind Briscoe, women's activist Frances "Sissy" Farenthold of Corpus Christi, and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, formerly of Comanche County. Among his appointments, Smith in 1970 named Paul Pressler of Houston, a former state representative, as judge of the Texas 133rd District Court in Harris County. Pressler, who later switched to the Republican Party, subsequently became known as a prime leader in the Southern Baptist Convention Conservative Resurgence which began in Houston in 1979. He appointed former State SenatorGrady Hazlewood of Amarillo and Austin as a regent of Hazlewood's alma mater, West Texas A&M University in Canyon. In 1969, Smith named state Representative Randy Pendleton of Andrews to head the Office of State and Federal Relations in Washington, D.C.
Later life and attempted political comeback
In 1974, Smith joined banker Stanton Leon Koop, a native of Pampa, in forming the West Texas Savings Association in Lubbock. In 1986, Koop moved to Dallas, where he was affiliated with Great Western Mortgage Company, until his retirement in 1994. In 1978, at the age of sixty-six, Smith again entered the Democratic gubernatorial primary against his intraparty rival, Governor Briscoe. Both Smith and Briscoe lost in the primary to former Texas Supreme Court Chief JusticeJohn Hill, who in turn was narrowly defeated in the general election by Republican Bill Clements. Toward the end of his life, Smith worked as a political liaison officer for Texas Tech University. After his death in Lubbock, the airport was renamed in 2004 in his memory as Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport. in Austin, Texas Smith termed himself a "conservative Democrat"; although he was generally supportive of President Lyndon B. Johnson, he refused to support his party's nominees for president in 1980 and for governor in 1982. Instead of voting to reelect President Jimmy Carter and Mark White in the gubernatorial race, Smith cast his ballot for Ronald Reagan and Bill Clements, respectively. Smith died in Lubbock. He is interred with his wife, the former Ima Mae Smith, at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
