Cathie Adams

Election as interim chairman

By a vote of 36–25, Adams defeated Melinda Fredricks of Conroe, north of Houston, to succeed former chairman Tina Benkiser, a Houston attorney who stepped down on September 26 to join the reelection campaign of Governor Rick Perry. Adams' election as interim party chairman extended until the next Republican state convention on June 11–12, 2010. She indicated from the start that she would seek a full term at the state convention.

Under party rules, the chairman must be neutral during primary campaigns. Perry defeated sitting U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and two other contenders in the primary election held on March 2, 2010. Adams had earlier endorsed Perry prior to her election as chairman. She indicated that she could not in conscience withdraw the endorsement but would be impartial in her role as chairman during the campaign. She also urged Senator Hutchison to clarify when she will resign her Senate seat, which she declined to do thereafter, to campaign full-time for governor. The uncertainty of an exit time has made it difficult for Senate candidates to plan strategy and to conduct fund raising, Adams said. Hutchison subsequently changed her mind about resignation and remained in the seat until January 3, 2013.

Conservative politics

Adams has long been active in her party’s more conservative wing. She started as a GOP election judge and has been a member of district, state, and national resolutions or platform committees. Since 1988, Adams has been a delegate to each state senatorial convention and each state party convention held the first weekend of June in even years. She was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions held in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008. At the 2008 state convention, she was named Republican national committeewoman from Texas. As state party chairman, she was automatically a member of the RNC.Robin Armstrong, an African American physician from Galveston County, continued as vice chairman of the RPT under Adams' leadership. He was succeeded as vice chairman on June 12, 2010, by Melinda Fredricks.

Staunchly opposed to abortion, Adams was the director of a crisis pregnancy center in Plano in Collin County, Texas, before she joined the board of the Dallas Eagle Forum in the middle 1980s. Adams was the president of her Eagle Forum organization for five years until 1993, when she was named Texas state president by Phyllis Schlafly, the founder of the national organization based in St. Louis, Missouri. In 2005, as the Eagle Forum president, Adams questioned what she determined to be a lack of conservative state legislators even within the Republican Party. "Of the 181 elected Texas legislators [House and Senate] serving during the [79th] legislative session and special-called sessions in Austin, only eleven legislators were commended for their conservative voting record."

She sits on the advisory board of the Young Conservatives of Texas, a nonpartisan youth organization committed to the preservation of individual liberties and freedom.

Adams has contributed financially to various Republican U.S. representatives in her area, including Joe Barton and Sam Johnson. In 1995, she supported then U.S. Senator Phil Gramm of Texas in his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination. The nomination went to Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, who was then defeated by Bill Clinton.

Shortly before she became state chairman, Adams said in an interview that she opposes divisive Republican primary fights: "I try and forget them as soon as I can, because they are so wrong. I don't like [personal attacks] at all and I don't think there’s a need in doing that...."

Adams was a Texas delegate to all Republican National Conventions since 1992, when the party met in Houston to renominate the George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayleticket.

Activities as state GOP chairman

On November 2, 2009, Adams announced that she would spearhead opposition in Texas to the health care proposals advanced by U.S. President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Adams urged demonstrations at the offices of presumed undecided Democratic U.S. Representatives Ciro Rodriguez in San Antonio, Chet Edwards in Bryan, and Solomon Ortiz in Corpus Christi, all of whom were defeated for reelection in 2010. Adams stated that "extremists in their party ... are trying to take over one-sixth of the American economy." She maintained that the Democratic package will "cost $1.3 trillion, or $500 million per page [2,000 total pages in the legislation], financed through massive debt and tax hikes; raise taxes 13 different ways, including forcing Americans to buy ... health insurance; increase insurance premiums and decrease access to health care; cost Texas at least 15,000 jobs by forcing doctor-owned hospitals to close, and provide for taxpayer-funded abortions."

Adams spoke strongly in her own defense at the convention about her 30-year fight against abortion, same-sex marriage, the United Nations, and for maintaining a Christian nation. Adams had angered some Republican voters by refusing to release financial information about the party. More recently, she said, "I'm saying 'no' to Barack Hussein Obama," but she fell far short of victory for a full term as chairman.

Munisteri received support from 59 percent of the seven thousand convention delegates. His grass roots work in the party began in 1972, when he was a young organizer for gubernatorial nominee, the late State Senator Henry C. Grover of Houston. Munisteri's partisan counterpart was then Democratic state chairman Boyd Richie of Graham in Young County, west of Fort Worth.

Melinda Fredericks, Adams's 2009 rival, meanwhile, was named state Republican vice chairman.

In 2014, Adams issued a large number of political endorsements but sidestepped the U.S. Senate primary in which two-term incumbent John Cornyn defeated seven challengers, including U.S. Representative Steve Stockman and Cleveland businessman and school board member Dwayne Stovall. Among those receiving her support were Greg Abbott for governor and state Senator Ken Paxton to succeed Abbott as state attorney general. She also backed David L. Watts, intraparty challenger of George P. Bush for commissioner of the Texas General Land Office.

The break with Schlafly

In April 2016, Adams broke with Phyllis Schlafly over Schlafly's endorsement on March 11 of Donald Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Adams instead supported U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Trump's principal challenger whom Adams considers a more conservative choice.

Adams lost the race for vice-chairman in 2016 to Amy Clark of Floresville, south of San Antonio. Incumbent chairman Tom Mechler of Amarillo retained his post after opponent Jared Woodfill of Houston withdrew before final balloting. In 2017, Mechler resigned as chairman.