“Texas Can Do Better!”

Steve Russell is a native East Texas, having grown up in Hughes Springs in Cass County, the son of two professional educators. He earned a BA degree from SFASU in 1975 and a masters degree in pastoral ministries in 1980. He was a church pastor briefly after graduate school but decided to spend more time on the congregation’s side of the pulpit than behind it. He then pursued what would turn out to be forty years in the life insurance business before retiring his license in 2021.

True to his parents’ legacy Steve has always enjoyed teaching. After a few years in insurance sales, Steve turned his knowledge of insurance into a sole proprietor business of teaching insurance agents continuing professional education courses that expanded into multi-certified courses for accountants, lawyers, and funeral service professionals over four states. Scattered throughout his insurance career Steve occasionally taught in Texas public schools, enjoying instructing most of all seventh grade Texas History and eighth grade US History.

His hobbies revolve around racquetball that he has played for over forty years and hunting that began with his father when Steve was twelve. A life-long hunter-conservationist since then, and once again turning something he loves into an educational opportunity, he was inducted into the Texas Parks & Wildlife Volunteer Hunter Education Hall of Fame in 2014, having instructed several thousands of mostly young Texas in the mandatory hunter education and safety courses. He has been strongly committed to youth hunting and shooting sports as a counselor for the Texas Brigades conservation camps for middle and high school students, and he is a Huntmaster with the Texas Youth Hunting Program that introduces youth and parents to often what are their first hunting experiences.

Steve is married to Lou Ann, and their blended family includes four adult children and six grands. In August Steve will celebrate five years of serving a small congregation in Montalba between Palestine and Athens. He thinks they are the liveliest senior citizens he has ever met! He also enjoys the delightful variety of folks he meets when shuttling them from the Tyler area to airports and other destinations in Dallas, Ft. Worth, and sometimes Houston.

Twice before Steve’s name has appeared on the ballot for a seat in the Texas legislature, but he did not have much time for campaigning in those two efforts. He has entered the race for Texas Senate District 3 with the theme that “Texas Can Do Better!” And he looks forward to meeting and to listening to the folks in TX SD 3 who are scattered from Athens to Beaumont! He deplores the extreme positions of the far right and the far left that continue to polarize and paralyze our politics and cripple Texans from positive ways forward for us all. He is a coalition builder who believes that when we stop the blame game and the angry shouting from various extreme ideologies, we can find far more that unites us than divides us. Steve believes that rights must be accompanied by equal responsibilities for a self-governing people to survive. He hopes you will stand with him in this fight and vote for him on November eighth.