Sid Miller (politician)

Sid Miller
Agriculture Commissioner of Texas
Incumbent
Assumed office January 2, 2015
Governor	Greg Abbott
Preceded by	Todd Staples
Member of the Texas House of Representatives from the 59th district
In office January 2001 – January 8, 2013
Preceded by	David Lengefeld
Succeeded by	J. D. Sheffield
Personal details
Born	Sidney Carroll Miller September 6, 1955 De Leon, Texas, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Debra Joan Miller
Children	2
Alma mater	Cisco College Tarleton State University (BS)

Sidney Carroll Miller (born September 6, 1955) is an American politician from Stephenville in Erath County, Texas. He is the current state Agriculture Commissioner. He was elected to succeed the two-term commissioner Todd Staples in the general election held on November 4, 2014.

From 2001 to 2013, Miller served in the Texas House of Representatives for district 59 in Central Texas, being unseated in the Republican runoff election held on July 31, 2012, by osteopathic physician J. D. Sheffield of Gatesville in Coryell County.

Personal life

A native of De Leon, Texas, Miller graduated from De Leon High School. Thereafter, he graduated from Cisco Junior College in Cisco and Tarleton State University in Stephenville, from which he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Vocational Agriculture Education. He is a former school teacher and school board member.

Miller and his wife, Debra Joan Miller (also born 1955), reside in Stephenville, the county seat of Erath County, where Miller operates a plant nursery. The couple has two sons, Sidney Truett Miller and Joseph Miller, who along with Joseph's wife, Kelly, are also Tarleton State graduates. An educator, Mrs. Miller is the founder of Erath Excels Academy, with campuses in both Stephenville and Taft. The Millers are active members of the Erath County Cowboy Church, where he is an elder. He is a former Baptist.^[1]

An avid rodeo participant, Miller is a lifetime member of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. In 2004, the United States Calf Roping Association named him "World Champion of Calf Roping". He is a member of the Texas Vocational Agriculture Teachers Association, the Texas Cattle Feeders Association, and the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association in Fort Worth.^[2]

Texas House of Representatives

Miller was first elected to the House in 2000, when he unseated the Democratic incumbent David Lengefeld (born 1945) of Hamilton County, 18,566 (54.4 percent) to 15,561 (45.6 percent).^[3] He was the only Republican in Texas that year to unseat a Democratic lawmaker.^[1][4] and in 2003 and 2007, Miller introduced bills promoting the slaughter and export of horse meat for human consumption.^[5][6]

In 2011, Miller authored House Bill 15, the pro-life measure to require a woman to undergo a sonogram prior to procuring an abortion. Miller worked to keep the provision of the law from being weakened by the opponents in both chambers of the legislature. The idea behind the required sonogram is that if a woman witnesses the developing child, she might decide to give birth, rather than procure an abortion. As a legislator, Miller carried the support of the various pro-life organizations, including Texas Right to Life.^[1] He has twice received the "Fighter for Free Enterprise" Award from the Texas Association of Business. Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, operated in Texas by Cathie Adams, former state chairman of the Texas Republican Party, named Miller the "second most conservative" member of the legislature.^[1]

The conservative Miller was unseated in the Republican runoff election held on July 31, 2012, by osteopathic physician J. D. Sheffield of Gatesville in Coryell County. In 2013, two complaints filed against Miller with the Texas Ethics Commission alleged campaign finance irregularities and failure to disclose loan repayments from his campaign.^[7][8][9] In January 2014, the Ethics Commission investigated^[10] the complaint and subsequently issued a statement that it found no wrongdoing on Miller's part. Miller in turn alleges that the complaints were a tactic devised by his opponents to undermine his election prospects.^[11]

Texas Agriculture Commissioner

2014 election

With 411,560 (34.6 percent) of the ballots cast, Miller led a five-candidate field for agriculture commissioner in the Republican primary held on March 4, 2014. Tommy Merritt, Miller's former House colleague from Longview, finished second with 249,440 votes (21 percent). The three losing primary candidates, Eric Opiela, Joe Cotten, and Mayor J. Allen Carnes of Uvalde, held a combined 44 percent of the vote.^[12]In the runoff held on May 27, 2014, Miller defeated Merritt, 362,573 votes (53.1 percent) to 320,434 (46.9 percent).^[13] In the general election, Miller defeated the Democrat Jim Hogan, 2,693,466 (58.6 percent) to 1,694,059 (36.8 percent). Two other candidates held the remaining 4.6 percent of the ballots cast.^[14]

Tenure

Operation Maverick

As Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller has made the agency responsibility for consumer protection a priority. A legislated mandate of the agency is to register any scale used for commercial transactions in Texas, including everything from food scales to heavy-duty agricultural or livestock scales. In 2015, he launched Operation Maverick -- an agency-wide effort to round up businesses who had failed to register their scales with the agency. Since inception of the program, over 1,400 new locations have been registered, representing a 385% increase.^[15]

Local control in school nutrition

Miller took office on January 2, 2015. Six months later, he returned local control to Texas schools by reversing an eleven-year ban instituted in 2004 by then Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs on soft drinks and fried foods in public schools. Miller said that local school districts should have the freedom to make decisions regarding food choices for their schools. Several school districts, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Fort Bend County, Austin, and Laredo, rebuffed Miller and vowed to remain with nutritious foods and no available soft drinks.^[16]

Farm Fresh Initiative

Miller has worked to continue the Department's role as a nationally-recognized advocate for healthy meals for Texas schoolchildren. Shortly after taking office, he created the Farm Fresh Initiative -- including Farm Fresh Fridays -- as a major farm-to-table program exclusively for Texas schools. Accordingly, the number of kids exposed to local produce has doubled.^[17][18]

Agriculture department fee hikes

In an editorial, the San Antonio Express-News questioned why Miller as a state House member voted against increased appropriations for the agriculture department but as commissioner sought additional revenue for the department. When a $50 million budget request submitted by Miller was rejected by lawmakers in 2015, the commissioner proposed higher fees for department certifications, inspections, and registrations, a proposal rejected by a bipartisan group of state legislators as well as the American Farm Bureau Federation and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Representative John Otto of Dayton, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said that fee hikes could result in lost revenue to the department because farmers and ranchers may choose alternative services. The Express-News urged Miller to drop the fee increase and legislators to determine whether the department is underfunded.^[19] Miller has proposed spending more than $400,000 to fund bonuses for agriculture department employees. Though he calls himself "a fiscal hawk," Miller added, "The last thing I want to do is raise anybody's fees, but I'm out of options here. I'm pretty much as the saying goes, hog-tied."^[20]

"Jesus shot"

In February 2015, Miller submitted paperwork for state payment of a trip to Oklahoma, where he claimed he had been invited to visit with Oklahoma lawmakers and visit the Oklahoma National Stockyards. Later, Miller was accused of taking the trip to see a doctor in Oklahoma City to receive a "Jesus shot", consisting of Dexamethasone, Kenalog, and Vitamin B12, to treat Miller's chronic pain. Miller decided to repay the cost of the trip.^[21]After investigation by the Texas Rangers, the Travis County District Attorney's Office declined to pursue any charges against Miller, closing the issue for good. ^[22]

Other political activities

Role in Donald Trump's presidential campaign

In the 2016 presidential election, Sid Miller earned national recognition as a loyal advocate in Texas for Republican Donald J. Trump.^[23] A founding member of Trump's Agricultural Advisory Board,^[24] Miller was the only Texas statewide elected official to be asked to speak at Trump's rally in Austin, Texas.^[25] His multiple appearances on the Fox News Channel^[26][27] in his recognizable white cowboy hat earned repeated mentions by the Republican nominee in the closing days of the campaign. ^[28][29]

Potential role in the Trump Administration

After the November 2016 election, news organizations nationwide, including The New York Times, pegged Miller as a possible Trump choice for Secretary of Agriculture.^{[30][31][32][33][34]}

Controversial comments

In August 2015, Miller posted a cartoon on his Facebook page that suggested the United States should bomb the Middle East. The text read: "Japan has been at peace with the US since August 9, 1945. It's time we made peace with the Muslim world." The background was of a nuclear explosion. Miller received harsh criticism for the post and eventually removed it, but he termed the cartoon "thought provoking" and vowed not to apologize for his action.^[35][36][37]

On November 1, 2016, a third-party vendor working on Miller's official twitter account tweeted a North Carolina poll referring to Hillary Clinton as a "cunt" within the tweet, which caused immediate outrage from both Democrat and Republican representatives.^[38] Texas Governor Greg Abbott condemned the tweet, stating "No true Texas gentleman would ever talk this way." The tweet was promptly removed and attributed to a third-party vendor's mistake. Sid Miller repeatedly apologized for the tweet, both to the public and to his agency staff.^[39] Subsequent to the vulgar tweet, the third-party vendor was fired from the campaign and prevented from accessing Miller's social media platforms.^[40]

On December 3, 2016, The Texas Tribune reported that Miller posted several "completely fabricated or otherwise unsupported" news stories on Facebook and Twitter.^[41]

Electoral history

Texas House of Representatives 59th district election, 2000
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller	18,566	54.40
Democratic	David Lengefeld (inc.)	15,561	45.60

Texas House of Representatives 59th district election, 2002
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller (inc.)	16,186	56.75
Democratic	David Lengefeld	12,337	43.25

Texas House of Representatives 59th district election, 2004
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller (inc.)	27,621	63.90
Democratic	Rodney Nauert	15,603	36.10

Texas House of Representatives 59th district election, 2006
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller (inc.)	15,235	55.54
Democratic	Ernie Casbeer	12,198	44.46

Texas House of Representatives 59th district election, 2008
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller (inc.)	28,482	61.64
Democratic	Ernie Casbeer	16,546	35.81
Libertarian	Coy Reynolds	1,178	2.55

Texas House of Representatives 59th district Republican primary election, 2010
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller (inc.)	7,248	55.83
Republican	J. D. Sheffield	5,734	44.17

Texas House of Representatives 59th district election, 2010
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller (inc.)	19,985	74.87
Independent	Will Bratton	6,707	25.13

Texas House of Representatives 59th district Republican primary election, 2012
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller (inc.)	7,778	42.48
Republican	J. D. Sheffield	7,599	41.50
Republican	Mike Jones	2,932	16.01

Texas House of Representatives 59th district Republican primary runoff election, 2012
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	J. D. Sheffield	8,675	54.79
Republican	Sid Miller (inc.)	7,157	45.21

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Republican primary election, 2014
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller	411,560	34.56
Republican	Tommy Merritt	249,440	20.95
Republican	Eric Opiela	207,222	17.40
Republican	Joe Cotten	174,348	14.64
Republican	Allen Carnes	148,222	12.45

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Republican primary election runoff, 2014
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller	364,756	53.20
Republican	Tommy Merritt	320,835	46.80

Texas Agriculture Commissioner election, 2014
Party	Candidate	Votes	%
Republican	Sid Miller	2,699,508	58.60
Democratic	Jim Hogan	1,697,227	36.84
Libertarian	David "Rocky" Palmquist	132,518	2.88
Green	Kenneth Kendrick	77,557	1.68

References

1. "Sidney Carroll Miller" (PDF). Texas Legislative Reference Library. Retrieved February 21, 2014.
2. "Sid Miller Bio". The Texas Tribune. Retrieved February 21, 2014.
3. "2000 General election returns". sos.state.tx.us. Retrieved February 21, 2014.
4. Sullivan, Michael Quinn. "A basket of new taxes". Texas Public Policy Foundation. Retrieved May 22, 2014.
5. Martin, Brittney (April 22, 2014). "Rival faults Miller on bill to allow horse sale for slaughter". Dallas Morning News. Retrieved May 22, 2014.
6. Moran, Kevin (March 18, 2007). "Horse meat fight resumes in Texas". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved May 22, 2014.
7. Barer, David (December 16, 2013). "Miller facing ethics complaint". Dallas Morning News. Retrieved May 22, 2014.
8. Barer, David (January 12, 2014). "Miller shifted stocks from campaign account to personal use to pay off loans". Dallas Morning News. Retrieved May 22, 2014.
9. Martin, Brittney (May 22, 2014). "Texas ag commissioner candidate Sid Miller failed to disclose loan payments". Dallas Morning News. Retrieved May 22, 2014.
10. Satija, Neena (January 13, 2014). "Ethics Commission Investigating Sid Miller". Texas Tribune. Retrieved July 6, 2014.
11. "Response to Ethics Complaints by Merritt Campaign". Miller for Texas. May 19, 2014. Retrieved July 7, 2014.
12. "2014 Republican Party Primary Election: /4/2014". Texas Secretary of State. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
13. "2014 Republican Party Primary Runoff: Election Night Returns". Texas Secretary of State. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
14. "General election returns, November 4, 2014". Texas Secretary of State. Retrieved November 18, 2014.
15. "Ag Commissioner Takes on Weighty Issue". Texas Tribune. July 15, 2016.
16. Judith Rayo, "Banned foods won't be coming back", Laredo Morning Times, July 22, 2015, pp. 1, 7A
17. Bonner, Nikki (November 9, 2015). "Farm Fresh Fridays".
18. "Farm fresh Fridays: Kids eating healthier food in conjunction with Texas Department of Agriculture program".
19. "Fee hikes another bad Sid Miller idea", San Antonio Express-News, November 14, 2015, p. A14
20. Josh Brodesky, "For Sid Miller, 2015 was an incredible year", San Antonio Express-News, January 1, 2016, p. A15
21. "'Jesus Shot' at center of Miller's controversial, taxpayer-funded trip". Houston Chronicle.
22. "Sid Miller won't be charged for 'Jesus shot' trips".
23. "In home stretch, Sid Miller is Trump's Texas go-to guy". Texas Tribune. November 1, 2016.
24. "Trump names Texas ag commissioner of 'Jesus shot' fame to co-chair agriculture advisory team". Dallas Morning News. August 5, 2016.
25. Entertainment News Gaming (August 24, 2016). "Sid Miller Agriculture Commissioner at Donald Trump Rally in Austin, Texas [ AWSOME ]" – via YouTube.
26. "Sid Miller: We do not need to bring in these refugees". Fox News. September 14, 2016 – via YouTube.
27. 756 TBS (October 30, 2016). "SID MILLER ON FOX & FRIENDS OCT 30, 2016" – via YouTube.
28. "Even after vulgar tweet, Trump still digs Sid Miller and his hat".
29. Emily Daniels (November 4, 2016). "Donald Trump on Sid Miller, Atkinson, NH, 11/4/16" – via YouTube.
30. "Donald Trump Is Choosing His Cabinet. Here's the Latest List.". The New York Times. November 12, 2016.
31. "Meet Trump's Cabinet-in-waiting". politico.com.
32. "Trump reportedly is considering multiple Texans for Cabinet posts".
33. "Trump reportedly is considering multiple Texans for Cabinet posts".
34. Weber, Paul J. "Texas could leave clear footprint under Trump presidency". Associated Press.
35. "Texas official suggests bombing Muslims with nuclear weapons". Press TV. August 18, 2015. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
36. "Top Texas official endorses nuking 'the Muslim world,' blames staffers, won't apologize". The Week. August 18, 2015. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
37. Malewitz, Jim (August 18, 2015). "Miller spokesman: No apologies for atomic Facebook post". WFAA. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
38. Zelinkski, Andrew (November 1, 2016). "Sid Miller under fire for tweet calling Clinton the 'C-word'". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
39. Svitek, Patrick. "Tweet from Texas agriculture chief's account calls Clinton the c-word". Texas Tribune. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
40. TEGNA. "Texas ag chief says worker fired for offensive Clinton tweet".
41. "On Texas ag chief Sid Miller's Facebook, fake news flows freely". Texas Tribune. December 3, 2016.

External links

• Profile at Project Vote Smart