Fiorina not only has Austin roots but a Texas Republican heritage

Fiorina

Though only in Austin through the age of 2, Ted Cruz' announced running mate and former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina has not only some deep-reaching Texas roots, but a noteworthy connection to Austin and a strong tie to GOP politics in a time when the Democrats had a solid lock on the Lone Star State.

You can read the Jonathan Tilove's excellent rundown of her Austin connections in the Austin American-Statesman. There's even a mention of a speech to the Travis Republican Women by her father about ending the one-party regime.

According to the article, Fiorina's father, Austin attorney Joseph T. Sneed, was a pioneer in the Texas Republican party with ambitions of one day being on the Supreme Court. He became the lone conservative dissenter on the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- arguably the nation's most liberal federal court. Justice Sneed's most recognizable moment came when he broke a tie and basically appointed Kenneth Starr to prosecute the Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings.

From the Statesman article:

From the time he was in Austin, Joseph Sneed was an active Republican. A brief in the Austin American in April 1955 advanced a noon luncheon of the Travis County Republican Women at Lung’s Chinese Kitchen at which Sneed would talk about “Why a Two-Party System in Texas,” the causes for the one-party system in Texas and the South, “and the prospects for eliminating these causes.”

The Sneed family apparently had a nice home in Tarrytown in the mid-'50s -- which earned a mention in the society pages and the first known appearance of Fiorina in print:

Fiorina first appeared in the pages of the Statesman on April 4, 1956, photographed seated, along with her sister, on either side of their mother on the sofa in their home on Meredith Street in Tarrytown, which was featured as a stop on the upcoming Tour of Homes sponsored by the Women’s Architectural League. 

“One of the most delightful aspects of the Joseph T. Sneed home is the interior’s outdoorsy atmosphere created through the architects’ extensive use of sliding glass panels and walls, a predominant feature of contemporary architecture,” Lois Hale Galvin wrote in the Statesman. 

Galvin also praised the free-standing round fireplace in the living room as “unique, attractive and practical. It permits friends to group around it, or Professor Sneed can enjoy its warmth while he works at his desk on one side of the room, and Mrs. Sneed and the children can enjoy its coziness while they watch television from the other side.” ... 

... The Austin house is gone, bulldozed in 2005 over the protests of neighbors, who, according to a report in the Austin Chronicle, “pleaded with the demolition crew and made frantic calls to the city’s historic preservation department and police. One bystander even offered to write a check on the spot for nearly $100,000 over the sale price of the home.”

Reaching back further, the article informs us that Fiorina can boast a connection to the Republic of Texas. Her ancestor Joseph Perkins Sneed was a circuit rider who arrived in East Texas in 1839, just two years into Texas' nationhood. Rev. Perkins planted a church in Calvert, where the Sneeds still have an estate and where Fiorina's father was later born.

It was the evangelistic fervor and holiness preaching of the Second Great Awakening that not only brought Sneed to a faith in Jesus Christ -- having been converted at a camp meeting in 1824 -- but propelled his ministry to the frontier. The Handbook of Texas History memorializes Rev. Sneed as one of "a small group of men who laid the foundations of Methodism in the Republic of Texas. He also devoted a decade of his ministry -- far more than any other white preacher during the development of Texas statehood -- to black slaves."


Note: This is not an endorsement of the Cruz-Fiorina ticket. If Trump picked a Travis County resident as his running mate we would also write about him or her.