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Roy Clifton Strickland (born September 20, 1942) is a businessman in [[The Woodlands, Texas|The Woodlands (Montgomery County), Texas, north of Houston, who has been an unsuccessful Republican candidate in political campaigns in both Louisiana and Texas.

Strickland was born in Vicksburg, the seat of Warren County, Mississippi. He became a licensed real estate agent in 1967, while he was attending college at what is now the University of New Orleans. Since the late 1960s, he has been involved in real estate as an agent, investor, developer, or contractor.

Running for the U.S. House, 1972

In 1972, when he was still twenty-nine and employed by the trucking company Younger Brothers, Inc., in Gonzales in Ascension Parish near Baton Rouge, Strickland decided to run for the open seat in the United States House of Representatives from the now defunct Eighth Congressional District of Louisiana. Former U.S. Representative Gillis William Long (1923-1985) was the Democratic nominee in the reconstituted district. Strickland, who had become a Republican when he first registered to vote, filed for the GOP nomination to face the man considered the "most liberal" of the Louisiana Longs.

Thereafter, Dr. S.R. Abramson, a surgeon from Marksville, the seat of Avoyelles Parish in south central Louisiana, also filed as the candidate of George C. Wallace, Jr.,'s former American Independent Party. From the start, the ] made the race impossible for either challenger. Then freshman Governor Edwin Washington Edwards and the Democratic state legislature had redrawn the Eighth District in 1971 to create territory friendly to former Congressman Long, who had served in the position from 1963-1965, until he was unseated by his cousin, Speedy O. Long, in the 1964 Democratic primary. Speedy Long did not seek a fifth term after the district was altered, and Edwards wanted to repay Gillis Long for Long's support of Edwards in the 1971 Democratic runoff primary. Gillis Long himself had been an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in the primary both that year and in 1963 as well.

In recalling the campaign after the passage of more than three decades, Strickland said: "Our strategy was to field as many candidates as possible to run on Nixon's coattails and hopefully some would get elected. My memory of Dr. Abramson was that today his thoughts would have been considered of the fringe groups. I think back at some of the campaign literature that I used and shake my head at our positions."

Strickland continued: "Regardless of how the district was drawn up, it was a marketing effort on behalf of the party to field as many candidates as possible in order to keep the party effort in the news. As I remember, the ultimate objective was to make sure that Dave Treen got elected to Congress in 1972 and, if any miracles happened, then they would happen. My campaign literature emphasized nothing but negatives as I view things today. They were construed as positives back then; that is what makes me shake my head." Strickland said that he did get important financial support from several leading Louisiana Republicans, but he declined to name any of them. He crossed paths with Long only once in the campaign, briefly in Baton Rouge.

Abramson practiced medicine in Marksville with a group calling itself the Abramson Group. He was considered part of the "Radical Right" at the time. For instance, he criticized Gillis Long for Long's embrace of the federal anti-poverty program begun in the administration of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson., who had lost Louisiana to Republican Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona in the 1964 general election. Abramson was living in Lafayette at the time of his death a quarter of a century after the campaign.

The returns spoke clearly: Louisiana wanted a Long: Long, 72,607 votes (68.6 percent); Abramson, 17,844 (16.8 percent); and Strickland, 15,517 (14.6 percent).

Business entrepreneur

In June 1977, Younger Brothers transferred Strickland to Houston. He remained with the firm until 1982, when he cofounded a construction company, Strickland & Smith, Inc. The new company progressed and was ranked in the early 1980s as one of Houston's fastest growing. However, in 1986, the good times ended, and the company closed as part of the Houston-area economic crash. It was in that crash that former Texas Governor and United States Treasury Secretary John B. Connally, Jr., went bankrupt.

In 1987, Srickland reentered the transportation industry and joined several prior business associates who had acquired a small company based in Tennessee. He remained there until 1989.

In 1990, Strickland formed what became CANUSAMEX, Inc., a firm twice named the "Fastest Growing In Houston." In 2000, it was ranked by Inc. Magazine as the 133rd fastest growing company in the United States. CANUSAMEX, Inc., was a victim of September 11, 2001, Strickland explained, because it could not comply with new government regulations which stemmed from the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. The company ceased operations in the summer of 2002.

Strickland returned to Vicksburg in August 2002 and worked with family members to negotiate the merger, acquistion, and consolidation of twelve Internet Service Providers which were sold to Xfone early in 2005.

He returned to The Woodlands in the fall of 2004 and activated his Texas real estate license. He is awaiting his broker's license in 2007.

Texas political activities

Strickland continued his Republican political activities in Montgomery County. After the suicide of one of the four county commissioners in the middle 1980s, Strickland sought the Republican nomination from a committee organized to select a replacement. When the committee chose someone else, who was part of the GOP hierarchy, Strickland ran unsuccessfully as a write-in candidate in the general election. Strickland said that he has "since learned that the most important person is not the candidate or the elected official, it is the person behind them with the checkbook."

Strickland said that Montgomery County, a Texas Republican stronghold , has manyGOP factions. "There are so many factions here that there is not a clear definition as to what a Republican believes and what he or she does not believe. That being said, do not plan on getting elected to anything unless you are running as a Republican." Strickland is still affiliated with the Republican Party.

Strickland is divorced and has one daughter, Lindsay Dawn Strickland (born 1983). He attends both the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian churches and humorously refers to himself as a "Cathopalian".

References

Billy Hathorn, "The Republican Party in Louisiana, 1920-1980," Master's thesis (1980), Northwestern State University at Natchitoches

Billy Hathorn, email exchange with Roy Strickland, December 2006

http://www.roystrickland.com/

(http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_29/b3741618.htm)

http://www.roystrickland.com/ourteam.html

• Candidates for the United States House of Representatives
• People from Texas
• People from Louisiana
• People from Mississippi
• 1942 births
• Catholics
• Episcopalians
• Businesspeople
• Louisiana Republicans
• Texas Republicans
• Louisiana politicians
• Texas politicians
• University of New Orleans alumni
• People from Vicksburg, Mississippi