J. E. "Buster" Brown

Who is J. E. "Buster" Brown?

James Eugene Brown, known as J. E. "Buster" Brown, is an attorney and lobbyist in Austin, Texas, who served from 1981 to 2002 as a Republican member of the Texas State Senate from District 17, based in Brazoria, Fort Bend, and part of Harris counties, south and west of Houston. At his retirement, Brown was the senior Republican in the Senate, having sponsored 633 bills which became law.

In 1990, Brown waged an unsuccessful bid to succeed Jim Mattox as Attorney General of Texas. Then residing in Lake Jackson, Brown was the GOP nominee but lost to the Democrat Dan Morales of San Antonio. Morales prevailed, 1,729,735 votes to Brown's 1,509,553 votes, with a Libertarian candidate holding the remaining share of the vote.

Brown was running on the ticket headed by U.S. Senator Phil Gramm, a Republican who secured a second term that year, and Clayton W. Williams, Jr., the Midland businessman who lost the race for governor to Democrat Ann W. Richards, the second woman in Texas to hold that position. Two other candidates on the Williams ticket with Brown, Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison, were narrowly elected as agriculture commissioner and state treasurer, respectively. Twenty years later, they would run against each other for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.