Perry O. Hooper Jr.

Perry Oliver Hooper Jr. (born October 5, 1954), is an insurance agent from his native Montgomery, Alabama, who is a Republican former member of the Alabama House of Representatives, having served in the District 73 seat from 1984 until 2003. After five terms, he was defeated in the primary election held on June 4, 2002.

Background

Hooper is the oldest of four sons of late Perry O. Hooper Sr., the former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and the former Marilyn Yost. He received his undergraduate degree from Auburn University at Montgomery and his Juris Doctor from the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, affiliated with Faulkner University, also in Montgomery.^[1]

Hooper is a vice president of the Palomar Insurance Corporation. He is married to the former Judy McKissick, the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Clement McKissick, formerly of Montgomery. Judy Hooper is a teacher at the Trinity Presbyterian School in Montgomery, affiliated with the Trinity Presbyterian Church.^[1] Hooper is United Methodist.^[2]

The couple has three sons: (1) Perry Hooper, III, D.O., who is married to Dr. Marsa True Beck, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Steven Taylor Beck of Richmond, Virginia, named for her aunt, Marsa Susan Beck of Jacksonville, Florida, (2) Davis Shaw Hooper of Auburn, Alabama, and (3) Thomas Clement Hooper of Montgomery.^[3]

Political life

In 1982, Hooper ran for the District 81 state House seat vacated by the Democrat Larry Dixon, who was elected to the Alabama State Senate and switched to Republican affiliation in 1984. He was narrowly defeated by another Democrat, Ham Wilson Jr., who received 7,996 votes (50.9 percent) to Hooper's 7,725 (49.1 percent). In a special election in District 73 in 1983, a result of redistricting, he narrowly unseated Wilson, 4,518 (51.1 percent) to 4,328 (48.9 percent) to fill the remaining three years of the term. Hooper was unopposed for reelection in 1986 and won with 64.1 percent in 1990 over the Democrat Robert Finley. Hooper increased his margin in 1994 to 73.3 percent over another Democrat, Ray Vaughan. He won re-nomination in 1998 over fellow Republican Donald Blair Little (1954-2012), an attorney in Montgomery and a son of Republican former state Representative Tandy Little. Hooper had no Democratic opponent in 1998 for what turned out to be his last four-year term in the state House. Hooper lost in the 2002 primary to fellow Republican David Grimes, 3,582 (52.3 percent) to 3,273 (47.8 percent). Grimes was then unopposed in the general election of 2002 but lost the Republican primary in 2008.^[1]Hooper's defeat by Grimes is attributed in part to a $12,000 fine in 2001 from the Alabama Ethics Commission.^[4]

Hooper was a delegate to the Republican national conventions of 1984 (Dallas), 1992 (Houston), and 1996 (San Diego). He served on the Platform Committee in 1992, with the re-nomination of the Bush-Quayle ticket, and the Rules Committee in 1996, when the party turned to Bob Dole.^[1]

Hooper failed in a political comeback in 2006 though he won the Republican nomination with 58 percent of the vote for the Place 2 seat on the Alabama Public Service Commission vacated by Democrat-turned Republican George Wallace Jr. Hooper defeated a former state senator, Democrat-turned-Republican John Amari, a lawyer from the Birmingham suburb of Trussville, to win the Republican nomination for the Public Service Commission. Hooper was thereafter defeated in the general election by the Democratic former state auditor, Susan Parker, 633,584 (53.5 percent), to 550,435 (46.4 percent).^[1] Amari served twenty years in both houses of the legislature and was elected in 2008 as a judge of the Alabama 10th Judicial Circuit Court. In the 2006 campaign, Hooper called Amari a "RINO, a Republican in name only." Amari replied that Hooper "might have been born in a Republican family, but [by] his conduct ... he has 'left his raising' as they say."^[4]

In 1987 at the age of thirty-three, Hooper was named "Outstanding Young Man of Alabama" by the Junior Chamber International. He received the Thomas Jefferson Free Enterprise Award from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group of conservative lawmakers and businesses. A coach of youth athletics, Hooper is a former "Man of the Year" by the YMCA of Montgomery. He is affiliated with Kiwanis International, the Southern Development Council, and the Montgomery County Republican Committee.^[1]

References