Lois Kolkhorst

Lois Winkelmann Kolkhorst (born November 4, 1964)^[1] is an American businesswoman and politician. She is a Republican member of the Texas State Senate.

She was first elected to the state Senate from the 18th District in a special election held on December 6, 2014,^[2] to choose a successor to Glenn Hegar who resigned in order to become Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

Early years

Kolkhorst is a 1988 graduate of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, at which she studied advertising and public relations and played on the women's golf team.^[1]

Political life

In 2013, she worked closely with Texas Governor Rick Perry and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz to reject a push by members of the Texas Legislature to expand Medicaid in Texas. She was named one of the "Worst Legislators" in Texas by Texas Monthly magazine in 2017.^[3]

Kolkhorst's Texas Privacy Act

In 2017, with the encouragement of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Kolkhorst introduced legislation in the state Senate, like that adopted in 2016 in North Carolina, to forbid cities and counties from enacting ordinances that prohibit businesses from establishing policies regarding bathrooms and dressing rooms open to the public. The bill would require transgender persons to use the rest rooms corresponding with their documented sex at birth.^[4]

On March 8, 2017, Judith Zaffirini, Kolkhorst's Democratic colleague from Laredo, cast the only dissenting vote among the members of the Senate State Affairs Committee, which approved Kolkhorst's bill, eight-to-one. Strongly opposed by business and sports interests, the measure won easy approval before the full Senate.^[5] Opponents of the measure put their hopes in Moderate Republican Joe Straus of San Antonio, the House Speaker who was known to oppose the measure and could prevent a House roll call vote on the bill.^[6]

In a speech before a Faith and Family Day rally on the Texas State Capitol steps on March 16, Kolkhorst revealed that she had received a death threat during Senate debate on the bathroom bill: "I will tell you that I, from what is supposedly called a tolerant left and anti-bullying left, I have received emails that I would not let my children read, no matter what. My staff even withheld yesterday until the end of the day a threat on my life."^[7]

In May 2017, the group Conservative Republicans of Texas, led by Dr. Steven F. Hotze and former Harris County Republican chairman Jared Woodfill, placed a statewide call for conservative Christian candidates to run for state representative in the primary elections scheduled for March 6, 2018, against intra-party opponents of the Kolkhorst bill, on which the House has still refused to permit a roll call. Hotze called Republican opponents of the bill "spineless, yellow-belly Texas Republican state representatives who have not had the courage to ... protect the privacy and safety of their mothers, wives, daughters, and granddaughters. ... If a man does not have the courage to protect women and girls and keep them from harm’s way, then he is as worthless as chaff that the wind drives away ..." Hotze questioned the extent of Republican opposition to the bill, which he claims has the support of 84 percent of Texas Republicans in a recent survey.^[8]

The May 8 deadline for House bills to be approved by House committees passed without Speaker Straus permitting a House vote to consider Kolkhorst's bathroom bill, effectively killing the legislation for the 2017 session.^[9]

On August 3, 2017, about one hundred persons joined members of the clergy in a rally at the state Capitol in support of Kolkhorst's legislation. Pastor Ericka McCrutcheon of Houston, said that "men should not have access to the showers, locker rooms, changing rooms of women and girls. It's not decent, and it does not make sense."^[10] Pastor Bill Owens, who marched for civil rights in the 1960s, said that he "marched to be able to go to the school of my choice, to get a job [for which] I was qualified. I did not march one foot, one yard, one mile for men to go in women's restrooms."^[10] Kolkhorst, however, said that she has not spoken with Speaker Straus about bringing up her bill for a vote by the full House.^[10]

Personal life

Kolkhorst and her husband, James Darren "Jim" Kolkhorst, have two children.^[1] Though they reside in Brenham, the couple owns and operates Kolkhorst Petroleum in Navasota in Grimes County.^[11] The company was founded by Jim Kolkhorst's father, James Henry "Bubba" Kolkhorst.

She is a member of the St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Brenham.^[12]

References