George Lavender

Who is George Lavender?

George E. Lavender is an American state politician and a departing Republican two-term member of the Texas House of Representatives, having been first elected on November 2, 2010.

Though he was reared in Texarkana, Arkansas, Lavender is a businessman in Texarkana in Bowie County, Texas, where he resides with his wife, the former Jan Timberlake. He graduated in 1973 from Arkansas High School in Miller County, Arkansas. He holds an undergraduate degree in management from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

Lavender was defeated, 45-55 percent in the 2008 general election by the Democratic incumbent, Representative Stephen James Frost of New Boston, also in Bowie County. However, in 2010, with 51.5 percent of the vote, Lavender unseated Frost. Earlier, in both 1994 and 1996, Lavender ran unsuccessfully for the District 1 seat in the Texas State Senate, first as a Democrat, then as a Republican.

In the 2011 House session, Lavender served on the Transportation and the Land and Resource Management committees. He worked for passage of legislation signed by Governor Rick Perry, which permits the manufacture of incandescent light bulbs in Texas.