Rick Green (Texas politician)


Richard Arlin Green, known as Rick Green, is an attorney and politician from Dripping Springs in Hays County, Texas, who is a Republican former member of the Texas House of Representatives. He unsuccessfully sought a seat on the Texas Supreme Court in 2010, having been defeated in the Republican runoff election by Judge Debra Lehrmann.
Green graduated from high school in 1989 in Wylie in Collin County, Texas, north of Dallas. He graduated from Angelo State University and the University of Texas Law School, and then became a lawyer in private practice.

Legislative Elections

Green won his first term in the legislature by thirty-six votes over the incumbent Democrat Alec Rhodes. He served from 1999 to 2003 in District 45, which comprises Blanco, Caldwell, and Hays counties in Central Texas. In the 2001 session, he sponsored "Celebrate Freedom Week", with emphasis on the teaching of the United States Declaration of Independence.
Green was defeated for a third two-year term in 2002 by Democrat Patrick Rose, who received 48.81 percent of the vote to Green's 47.93 percent. Green Party nominee John D. Schmidt received the remaining 3.24 percent.
Green is associated with WallBuilders, an organization founded by David Barton that promotes the view that the "Founding Fathers intended for the United States to be a Christian nation."
Green produced the 1994 video The Legacy of President Ronald Reagan: The Truth About the Eighties, developed in the aftermath of the 1992 presidential election.

Supreme Court election

In the six-candidate Republican primary election held on March 2, 2010, Green led with 18.95% of the vote, compared to received Debra Lehrmann's 18.22%, Jim Moseley's 18.14%, Rebecca Simmons's 18.04%, Jeff Brown's 16.75%, and Rick Strange's 9.89%. In the April 2010 runoff primary, however, Green was defeated, receiving 161,644 votes to Lehrmann's 174,023 votes. Lehrmann went on to defeat Democrat Jim Sharp, a First Court of Appeals judge from Houston, in the November 2010 general election.
In his race for the state Supreme Court, Green carried the support of former Justice Scott Brister of Austin as well as former Judge Paul Pressler of Houston. On April 5, Green won the backing of Gary M. Polland's Texas Conservative Review, the former Harris County Republican chairman. He also procured endorsements from actor Chuck Norris, Mathew Staver of Liberty Counsel and Liberty University School of Law, and Kelly Shackelford of the Liberty Legal Institute, as well as numerous conservative state legislators, including Warren Chisum and Dan Flynn.
In 2016, Green again sought to win election to the Texas Supreme Court, this time in Place 5. However, he was defeated in his intraparty challenge to incumbent Justice Paul W. Green, who was first elected in 2004, when he unseated the Republican former Justice Steven Wayne Smith. Rick Green received 991,785 votes to Justice Paul Green's 1,077,507. In the 2016 campaign, Rick Green carried the backing of several conservative figures, including former state Representative Ken Mercer of San Antonio, a member of the Texas State Board of Education.