Robert Mosbacher, Jr

Houston businessman and civic figure

Mosbacher is currently Chairman of Mosbacher Energy Company (MEC), an independent oil and gas exploration and production company in Houston, Texas. From 1986 to 2005, Mosbacher was president and CEO. He was also vice chairman of Mosbacher Power Group, an independent electric power developer which operated from 1995 to 2003.

He has served as the chairman of the board of The Methodist Hospital, the Salvation Army, the Center for Houston's Future, Trust for an Early Education, Preschool for All, and the American Red Cross, all in Houston. He is founder and former co-chairman of Rebuilding Together Houston, which organizes volunteers to deliver free exterior home repairs. More than five thousand houses have been refurbished for qualified low-income elderly or disabled Houstonians. He has also served on the boards of South Texas College of Law, Chase Bank, and the Society for the Performing Arts in Houston. Mosbacher has also served as chairman of the board of the Greater Houston Partnership, a private, nonprofit association that serves as the city’s chamber of commerce. He also served as chairman of the Partnership’s Health Care Advisory Committee. He is also a member and former chairman of its Education and Workforce Advisory Committee.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Mosbacher worked for US Senator Howard Baker for over seven years. He helped launch the Reagan Administration’s Private Sector Initiatives Program, and was appointed by President Reagan to three successive Presidential Task Forces on Private Sector Initiatives during the 1980s.

Mosbacher currently serves on the Boards of Devon Energy, Calpine Corporation, Council of the Americas, and the Center for Global Development. He is Chairman of Board of the Initiative for Global Development and Global Communities. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Texas Republican candidate

Mosbacher ran unsuccessfully in the 1997 Houston mayoral election, losing to Lee Brown, a Democrat, in a nonpartisan election. He received 48 percent of the vote in the runoff election and raised a record-breaking $4 million, compared to Brown's $2.1 million. Mosbacher faced controversy in the campaign, as he had lived outside Houston in West University Place for eleven years and professed interest in federal and state issues, rather than local concerns.

He also ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1984, losing to Phil Gramm, and Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1990, losing to Democrat Bob Bullock by a total of 52% to 45%. During the 1990 campaign he became well known for a series of humorous ads in which people on the street mangled his name as "Moose Backer."

Author

In 1993, he wrote the book Deep In The Heart: A Remedy For An Ailing Texas, in which he offers various recommendations on how to improve his state.

Karl Rove incident

In a notable event, Karl Rove was fired from the 1992 George Herbert Walker Bush campaign for criticizing Mosbacher, who was then the head of the Texas Victory Committee and a Bush loyalist. This criticism of Mosbacher came in the form of a negative story that Rove planted with the columnist Robert Novak. In 1992, "Sources close to the former president George H.W. Bush say Karl Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted" (Esquire Magazine, January 2003). As Novak provided some evidence of Rove's motive in his column: "Also attending the session was political consultant Karl Rove, who had been shoved aside by Mosbacher". Mosbacher maintains that "Rove is the only one with a motive to leak this. We let him go. I still believe he did it."

Personal

Mosbacher Jr. is the son of Robert Mosbacher (1927–2010) and the former Jane Pennybacker, who died of cancer in 1970. He received his law degree from the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in Dallas. Earlier, he obtained his bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, as did his daughter Jane Mosbacher Morris, previously of the U.S. Department of State and is Founder and CEO of TO THE MARKET. His son, Peter, who graduated from Brown University and then the University of Chicago graduate school, currently works for NASA. His youngest daughter, Meredith, graduated from Brown University. She is a director, actor, and founder of the CorkScrew Theater Company. She currently works for The Daily Beast/Newsweek's Women in the World.