Gus Franklin Mutscher

Gus Mutscher (on left) with Governor Preston Smith, former president Lyndon B. Johnson and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes in Brenham, August 17, 1970.

Gus Franklin Mutscher (born November 19, 1932)^[1] is a former Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, having served from 1969-1972. He was one of several Texas politicians indicted in the Sharpstown bank stock fraud scandal. He was convicted and sentenced to five years probation for conspiring to accept a bribe.^[2] Mutscher, however, was later cleared on appeal.

Mutscher's opponents, many within his own Democratic Party, were known as the "Dirty 30"; their ranks included Joseph Hugh Allen of Baytown, Carlos Truan of Corpus Christi, and Robert Gammage of Houston.

Mutscher was born in the community of William Penn in Washington County. He attended the William Penn Common School and graduated from Brenham High School in Brenham. He attended Blinn College, the community college of Washington County in Brenham, on a baseball scholarship, he graduated with an Associate of Arts degree. Mutscher then enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin, from which he procured a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1956 and a reserve commission in the United States Army.

While working for the Borden Company, Mutscher was first elected in 1960, at the age of twenty-eight, to the Texas House in 1960, when the Kennedy/Johnson slate narrowly won in Texas.

Mutscher married a former Miss America, Donna Axum of El Dorado, Arkansas; the marriage ended in divorce; she remarried and resides with her third husband in Fort Worth.^[3]

After his legislative service, Mutscher was first appointed and then elected as the administrative county judge of his native Washington County. He resides in the county seat of Brenham.

Notes

2. "Former Rep. Bob Gammage was part of 'Dirty 30'", Laredo Morning Times, September 11, 2012, p. 9A
3. Kinch, p. 68.

References

• Kinch, Jr., Sam; Procter, Ben (1972). Texas Under a Cloud: Story of the Texas Stock Fraud Scandal. Jenkins.