Harry Whittington, a pioneering Texas Republican and prominent Austin lawyer who found himself thrust into the national spotlight in 2006 when he was accidentally shot by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, has died. He was 95.
Before the hunting accident, first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, part of the USA TODAY Network, to the dismay of the White House press corps, Whittington had been an inside player in the emergence of the Republican Party when Texas was dominated by Democrats. He managed the successful U.S. Senate campaign for John Tower in 1961 when the Republican won the seat vacated by Lyndon Johnson's ascension to the vice presidency.
It was the first statewide victory by a Texas Republican since Reconstruction. Whittington, native of Henderson in east Texas, was appointed to chair the board that oversees state prisons by then-Gov. William Clements and later was tapped by George W. Bush to lead the panel that oversees the Texas funeral industry.
In 2000, Whittington brought legal action against the city of Austin over land he owned that had been condemned for the city's convention center. The protracted proceedings ended some 13 years later with a court ordering the cityWhittington, who was 78 at the time of the hunting accident and 91 when he was interviewed in his law office about the biopic, said the wounds he suffered did not slow him down even as the years piled up.
"I’m able to navigate and get around. I still have a lot of ‘quiet pellets,’ but some of them had to be lifted and removed," he said. “When I go to the doctors, they all want to look at my pellets I still have. Usually everybody in the clinic wants to come look. I get a lot of questions and discussions about it.John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA TODAY Network in Austin.
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