Background
Combest, Larry Ed was born on March 20, 1945 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Son of Lawrence Nelson and Callie (Gunter) Combest.
United States representative politician
Combest, Larry Ed was born on March 20, 1945 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Son of Lawrence Nelson and Callie (Gunter) Combest.
Bachelor of Business Administration, W. Texas State University, 1969. Postgraduate, Lubbock Christian University.
In 1969, he earned his bachelor of business administration degree from West Texas State University in Canyon. His family operated a farm for four generations. In 1971, he served briefly as director of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service of the United States. Department of Agriculture.
From 1978 until his election to Congress six years later, Combest was in private business.
In 1984, Democratic Congressman Kent Hance did not run for a fourth term but instead ran unsuccessfully for his party"s nomination for the United States Senate. Combest was elected in November amid Ronald Reagan"s landslide reelection victory that year.
Democratic presidential nominee Walter F. Mondale barely managed 20 percent of the vote in much of the district. Combest received 102,805 votes (581 percent) to 74,044 (419 percent) for the Democrat Don R. Richards, a former Hance aide.
Combest was only the third person to represent the 19th District since its creation in 1934.
He was also the first Republican. Combest was thus one of six freshmen Republican congressmen elected from Texas in 1984 known as the Texas Six Pack. He was reelected nine times with no substantive Democratic opposition.
He ran unopposed in 1990 and 1994 and with no major-party opposition in 2000 and 2002.
Combest served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in the 104th Congress (1995–1997) and chairman of the House Agriculture Committee in the 106th and 107th Congresses (1999–2003). They certainly caused us to rearrange our priorities and we want to spend as much time together while we have our life and health." He resigned from the House on May 31, 2003.
In 2006, lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People discovered that Combest was one of six Republican congressional leaders who secretly requested an Internal Revenue Service investigation into the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People"s tax-exempt status after National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chairman Julian Bond called Bush"s policies racially divisive. One of Combest"s interns, Morgan Meyer, was in 2014 elected as a Republican to the Texas House of Representatives from District 108 in Dallas County.
Member of Rotary, Lions.
Married Sharon McCurry, September 10, 1981. Children— Tonya Lee, Haydn Cudd.