Editor's Note: Midland has provided the country with a number of influential leaders from all walks of life, probably most notably politics. Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, a graduate of Midland Lee High School, is the latest, announcing this week he is a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2012.  I sat down and spoke with Commissioner Williams in Austin on Election Day last November, and the following article appeared in the December 2010 edition of the West Texas Angelus, the newspaper covering the Catholic Diocese of West Texas. Williams spoke on a number of topics, from his love of social media to the current president, Barack Obama.

By Jimmy Patterson

   AUSTIN — There are more than a handful of Austin insiders who will tell you that the next big charismatic political figure to emerge on the national scene is a Catholic from West Texas.
   Popular sentiment last year was that Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, a Midland native and graduate of St. Ann’s School and Midland Lee High School, was to be hand-picked by Gov. Rick Perry to fill what was to have been a vacant U.S. Senate seat. But then Kay Bailey Hutchinson did not vacate that seat during her unsuccessful bid to win the Republican nomination for Texas governor. And that was, as they say, all she wrote.
   Now, instead, Williams is left to work hard for what he gets. Instead of being named to fill a senate seat, it is believed that he will campaign for that seat. Even he strongly hints at that possibility, but will say little more at this time.
   “Nobody knows if Kay will stay,” Williams said in November. “And then I’d have to mount a challenge to a sitting senator. Right now, though, we’re gonna focus on the people’s business between now and June and then go straight into the campaign.”
   Currently a parishioner at Blessed Sacrament in his hometown of Arlington, Williams counts as his early influences former history teacher James Bradford and student council sponsor Olga Banks, fellow Catholic and former Midland mayor Ernie Angelo, former Midlander President George W. Bush, and Sisters Bonafee and Leonardene at St. Ann’s School.
   When we talked on Election Day at his downtown Austin office, Williams also shared his feelings about the current president, Barack Obama. His review wasn’t exactly glowing.
   “We know there’s some real buyers’ remorse going on right now. If you were listening closely to the president and not just to the style but to the substance — if anyone had actually scratched the surface and looked deeper than just the performer — we probably should have known this was coming,” Williams said. “The president has truly overplayed his hand. Maybe he’ll do what President Clinton did in 1994, but I don’t see him pulling back into the center. I just don’t see him doing that. When he said he was for hope and change, people had no idea how much change he was really talking about.”
   Williams is different from a lot of public officials in that he personally authors his own Tweets and Facebook posts. He has long recognized the power of not only the media, but the new media today that is social networking.
   “I love social media,” Williams said. “We have to find new ways to talk to people and new ways to have a new conversation. Voters want to sit down and have a conversation with you now. And they want to be with you, and be an authentic voice and if they can’t, they’re gonna let you know about if.
   “Do you realize that we are going to end an election cycle where the person at the top of the ballot (Gov. Rick Perry) says ‘I’m not going to do editorial boards and, oh by the way, I’m not gonna do a debate, I’m going to have my conversation directly with the voters, unfiltered by the print media. That’s a turn of events. That’s a fundamental change of the landscape. And he got away with it.”
    Williams said he posted a YouTube video regarding a topic in the Railroad Commission office and a constituent responded by sending him a video response on YouTube. Another example of a fundamental change in communications that we are all currently involved in.
   “Is it all positive?” Williams asked. “No. There are no filters. My chief of staff is concerned because her job is to see that I stay out of trouble and my habit is to drive the car as fast as I can in the direction I think it should go.
   “There are going to be certain problems but we’ll figure out what the rules are. If a guy goes out and posts something there are millions of spell checkers and fact checkers, and if you post something silly, a bunch of folks are gonna respond to it. I love the way the game has changed. Now, everybody is a publisher, and everybody is a fact checker. Now, everybody can participate.”

Although Midland was founded in the 1880s, the Twenties were especially roaring for the new West Texas town, and it all began 90 years ago this year -- 1921 -- with the construction of Highway 80 through the heart of the city.

The highway system in the United States before the advent of the interstate system was particularly helpful to downtowns as long-distance travelers would frequently pull off for lodging and meals in any number of towns along the journey. Midland was no exception.

When Highway 80 was built, it was called "The Broadway of America." One of its original objectives was that it be used as a transcontinental highway when people couldn't traverse Route 66 to the north in the harsh winters. Although 80 stretched the width of the country, from San Diego to Tybee Island, Ga., and itself would one day be replaced by an interstate just like Route 66 was, U.S. 80 never gained the same fame as the nostalgic Chicago-Los Angeles roadway.

John Howard Griffin summarized Midland's fast growth in the Roaring 20s in his book, "Land of the High Sky," and the construction of Highway 80 through Midland wasn't the only thing exciting to happen to our town at that time.

"Bankers, cattlemen, merchants and professional men quickly seized on the almost staggering opportunities that lay within Midland's reach. An advanced corps of young land men, geologists, promoters and executives, representing both majors and independents, poured into the cowtown. They occupied every available room. Knowledgeable and trained, they were the class a town like Midland would welcome as citizens.

"A number married Midland girls. This entrenched them more solidly in the community and proved that their interest in Midland was permanent.

"Midland rushed to build. Business men reasoned that other things being equal, oil companies would move to town where comfortable and civilized facilities were made available. The Llano Hotel was modernized, but the advanced guard of newcomers filled it to overflowing.

"Clarence Scharbauer decided to put up another first-class hotel, and immediately ordered construction. The Scharbauer Hotel was paid for as it was built, an almost unheard of procedure. Across the street, Dr. J.B. Thomas pioneer Midland physician, erected an office building. It was also paid for as it was constructed.

"Another builder, a former U.S. senator from Montana, T.S. Hogan, came. He had been active in oil in Colorado and Montana. When Gulf Oil Corporation made discoveries in Upton County, he sent his son, Fred, later to become a Midland independent operator, to scout possibilities. Senator Hogan followed and for two months moved quietly from one town to another throughout the area, and on Tuesday, September 27, 1927, the Midland Daily Telegram carried this front page headline: "Hogan says he's ready to help build Midland into city."

Midland's first real boom time was the 1920s, and by the end of that decade, the Hogan Building would later prove to be the very reason the city would come to be known as the oil capital of the Permian Basin and beyond.

 "Only in recent years have I understood how Midland nurtured me, what I learned there by trial and error, how much of its West Texas sand still blows through my soul. It was in Midland where I first paid my apprentice writer's dues and dreamed those 'sweet dreams' I felt I was living when I first rode into Midland on a day coach that night 50 years ago." -- former Midlander Larry L. King, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." (From a column by King published in the Midland Reporter-Telegram Centennial edition, 1985).