Early years and election to Congress
Hance obtained his Bachelor of Business Administration degree in finance from the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University in 1965 where he was also a member of Delta Tau Delta, which he served as president. [2] He also served as the Student Government Association Vice-president and was a member of the Saddle Tramps. [3]
He later attended the University of Texas School of Law. During his time as a law student, he was the Student Bar Association President and chosen as recipient of the Counsel Award. After law school, he was admitted to the Texas bar and in 1968 became a practicing attorney in Lubbock, Texas. During this period, he was also a law professor at Texas Tech from 1968 until 1973.
In 1974, Hance ran for the Texas Senate and defeated incumbent H.J. "Doc" Blanchard in the 1974 primary. His campaign at the beginning seemed doomed to failure, but Hance quickly made connection with voters in the sprawling West Texas district.
1978 election vs. George W. Bush
He served in the state senate from 1975 to 1979. After winning the 1978 Democratic primary nomination for the Lubbock-based 19th Congressional District, he defeated the Republican nominee George W. Bush of Midland. The seat, which was based in Lubbock, had been held since inception by popular Democrat George H. Mahon, long-time chairman of the House Appropriations Committee (the 19th included most of the Permian Basin at the time). Bush won the Republican nomination in a hard-fought but low-turnout runoff primary against the 1976 party nominee, Jim Reese of Odessa.
The 19th had long been one of the more conservative areas of Texas. It was one of the first areas of Texas to move away from its Democratic roots; it hadn't supported a Democrat for president since 1964. However, at the time, conservative Democrats continued to represent much of the region at the state and local levels, and would do so well into the 1990s. Hance claimed Bush was "not a real Texan" because of his privileged upbringing and Yale education. Hance won by seven points—the only time that the future 43rd President of the United States was ever defeated in an election.
Run for Senate
He did not run for a fourth term in 1984, opting instead to seek the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring John Tower. Hance announced within hours of Tower's withdrawal that he would run for the Senate. No candidate received a majority vote in the primary, so Hance, along with State Senator Lloyd Doggett of Austin, advanced to a run-off. He was defeated by only 1,345 votes by Doggett, who lost the general election for Senate but later served many years in the House.
Hance endorsed one of his aides, Don R. Richards, in the Democratic primary for his congressional seat. Richards won the nomination, but was defeated in the general election by a young Republican, Larry Combest, a former aide to Tower. Proving just how Republican this district had become at the national level, Richards only tallied 41.9 percent of the vote—one of only two times since Hance left office that a Democrat has cleared 40 percent of the vote.
Hance donated money to his former opponent George W. Bush's campaign for Governor of Texas in 1994. [4]
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