1. Stephen Peter Munisteri was born on December 25,1957 and is an American attorney who served as the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas from 2010 to 2015.
56 Facts About Steve Munisteri
1. 2.
In 2017, Steve Munisteri was appointed to the White House staff as deputy assistant to the president and principal deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison.
3.
Steve Munisteri was elected chairman at the state convention held in Dallas on June 13,2010, when he unseated Cathie Adams, the wife of a Dallas chiropractor, who had held the position for only eight months.
4.
Steve Munisteri is the first challenger in modern Texas Republican history to defeat a sitting incumbent for the position of state chairman.
5.
Early in his political career, Steve Munisteri served as state chairman of the Texas Chapter of Young Americans for Freedom and founded the Young Conservatives of Texas in 1980.
6.
Steve Munisteri stepped down as party chairman to join US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky as a senior advisor to Paul's 2016 presidential campaign.
7.
Steve Munisteri received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the UT Law School, completing both degrees in five, instead of seven, years.
8.
Steve Munisteri founded the firm on November 1,1982, the day before the defeat of Bill Clements as the first Republican governor of Texas since 1873.
9.
Steve Munisteri founded Munisteri Properties, a company with interests in commercial properties and whose primary asset was a Greenway Plaza-area building built in 1961 by Gerald D Hines, which Munisteri redeveloped in 1993.
10.
Steve Munisteri founded Munisteri Exploration in 1989, and has participated as a partner in the drilling of 60 oil and natural gas wells through 2014.
11.
Steve Munisteri was active in politics early in his teenage years, first working as a volunteer for the campaigns of Texas Republicans Hank Grover and John Tower in 1972, though the two were bitter intraparty rivals.
12.
Steve Munisteri then formed a conservative club at Memorial High School in Houston.
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In 1980, after experiencing dissatisfaction with the top-down leadership of the national YAF organization at its February 1980 convention, Steve Munisteri proposed a new Texas-based conservative organization to the Texas YAF board.
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Steve Munisteri served as state chairman of Young Texans for Reagan in 1980 under Reagan Texas Chair Ernie Angelo.
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Steve Munisteri continued his Republican Party activism as a precinct chairman of precincts 213 and 133 in Harris County in the 1980s, and was elected to the State Republican Executive Committee for Senate District 17.
16.
Steve Munisteri has worked in over 50 campaigns in a volunteer capacity.
17.
Steve Munisteri traveled to New Hampshire, Iowa, Florida and South Carolina on behalf of the Alexander campaign in 1996.
18.
In 1999, Munisteri spent a month in Iowa to assist the George W Bush presidential campaign in the Iowa straw poll, and then spent a month in California running a Bush campaign office in San Fernando.
19.
In 2004, Steve Munisteri was part of the Bush legal response team in Ohio during that year's presidential race.
20.
That same year, Steve Munisteri went on to South Carolina to volunteer on behalf of Thompson, and then later spent two months in Iowa assisting John McCain Iowa director Charlie Liebschutz.
21.
On January 22,2010, Steve Munisteri announced his candidacy for state chairman, citing a desire to make the RPT a "more effective organization" by using his "strong business administrative skills".
22.
Steve Munisteri was the second declared challenger in the race, as former SREC member Tom Mechler of Amarillo, had announced his candidacy the previous summer.
23.
Steve Munisteri's election marked the first time in modern history that a challenger defeated a sitting incumbent at the state convention.
24.
When Steve Munisteri stepped down early in 2015, Mechler was elected his successor on the third secret ballot by the 62-member Republican State Executive Committee.
25.
Steve Munisteri won 13 districts, Adams won 12 districts, and Mechler won 6 districts.
26.
Steve Munisteri added, "there's no question we have to get rid of that man in the White House," a reference to US President Barack Obama.
27.
Steve Munisteri has issued a monthly "Chairman's Update" email to Texas Republicans with information regarding his activities as chairman.
28.
In December 2010, Steve Munisteri announced that the RPT had fully retired its crippling debt and would end 2010 with zero debt, all bills paid, a record net worth, and a record positive cash balance in its accounts.
29.
In December 2011, Steve Munisteri announced that for the first time in a decade, the state party had successfully recruited Republican county chairmen for the 2012 election cycle in all 254 Texas counties.
30.
In 2012, Steve Munisteri served as a presidential elector for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.
31.
In June 2013, Steve Munisteri announced a partnership with the RNC to establish Victory Centers that will operate on a year-round basis and that the party would be hiring significant number of new field staff for these offices, including staffers assigned specifically to outreach to the Hispanic, African American, and Asian American communities.
32.
At the March 2014 meeting of the State Republican Executive Committee, Steve Munisteri announced that he would seek re-election at the request of the successful Republican gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott.
33.
Steve Munisteri reported at that meeting the party had brought in approximately $17 million in revenues during his tenure as chairman.
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Steve Munisteri indicated that the party was in excellent financial health and has been completely debt free since November 2010.
35.
Steve Munisteri indicated that cash reserves had never fallen below $500,000 during that time.
36.
Steve Munisteri reported at that meeting that the outreach and Victory efforts continued to be expanded to include 10 full-time engagement and field staffers, include a full-time director of youth engagement, director of African American engagement, director of Hispanic engagement, and a full-time director of Asian American engagement.
37.
In 2014, Steve Munisteri was an active member of the RNC's Commission on Convention Planning which presented its final report to the RNC in Memphis during the second week of May Steve Munisteri was a member of the Rules Committee for the RNC and was appointed to a subcommittee that dealt with the Presidential Primary Process.
38.
Steve Munisteri was an active supporter of reforming the process which included wrestling control of the debate process away from the media and giving it to the RNC.
39.
Steve Munisteri supported efforts to ensure that other states do not jump in front of Texas's March 1 primary date so Texas can be a major player in the 2016 presidential primary process.
40.
At the 2014 State Convention, Steve Munisteri was re-elected as chairman with only four votes against him out of approximately 7,000 delegates and alternates in attendance.
41.
When Steve Munisteri was elected to office, Republicans held 2,470 offices.
42.
At the final quarterly meeting of the SREC, Steve Munisteri announced that he had secured funding to maintain permanent Victory centers and staff across the state.
43.
In 2015, Steve Munisteri announced he would be joining Senator Rand Paul's team of senior advisors.
44.
Steve Munisteri said he's supporting Paul, in part because of the Kentucky Republican's strategy to court nontraditional GOP voters, like African-Americans and young people.
45.
On March 7,2015, Steve Munisteri presided over his last meeting of the SREC and provided a final report as to the condition of the party during his term.
46.
Steve Munisteri provided a more detailed report in writing to supporters of the party.
47.
Steve Munisteri reported that he was turning over the chairmanship with $959,514 cash on hand plus $148,175 in pledges coming in.
48.
Steve Munisteri reported that all liabilities were paid to $0.
49.
Steve Munisteri reported that during his tenure as chairman, the RPT collected $22,839,611 including $7,798,117 in 2014 alone.
50.
Steve Munisteri provided a summary of the party's Victory and field operations.
51.
Steve Munisteri reported that during his tenure, the RPT sent out 10,201,811 pieces of mail and made 8,622,336 phone calls.
52.
Steve Munisteri noted that during his term, Republicans set the record for the most number of Republicans in the State House at 102, tied the record for most number of state senators at 20, and set the record for the most Republican congressmen at 25.
53.
Steve Munisteri was an at-large delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention from Texas.
54.
Steve Munisteri was one of 48 delegates from Texas bound by state party rules to support Donald Trump at the convention.
55.
Steve Munisteri left the Trump administration in 2019 to help run the 2020 re-election campaign of Texas senator John Cornyn.
56.
In December 2020, Steve Munisteri joined the office of Governor Greg Abbott as senior adviser and policy director.