Victor G. Carrillo

Victor G. Carrillo (born 1965) is the chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, a petroleum, natural gas, and pipeline regulatory body on which he has served since his initial appointment in February 2003 by Governor Rick Perry. Having won a full six-year term of his own in the 2004 general election, Carrillo was a candidate for renomination in the statewide Republican primary election on March 2, 2010, but he was handily defeated by newcomer David Porter, an accountant. Porter polled 732,892 votes (60.7 percent) to Carrillo's 474,096 (39.3 percent). In the November 2, 2010, general election, Porter FACES the Democrat Jeff Weems, an oil-and-gas lawyer from Houston, Texas, who received 481,902 votes without an opponent in his party primary.

Prior to his appointment to the regulatory panel, Carrillo, a native of Abilene, Texas, had served as county judge of Taylor County, a position to which he was initially appointed. He was elected to a full four-year term as county judge in the 2002 general election but served fewer than two months, having resigned to accept the Railroad Commission seat vacated by Tony Garza of Brownsville, a former county judge of Cameron County who resigned with two years left in his term to accept appointment from U.S. President George W. Bush to be U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.

Carrillo did not win the March 2004 Republican primary outright but faced a runoff election against the politically unknown Robert Butler on April 13 to secure the required majority. Carrillo polled 140,471 votes (62.8 percent) to Butler’s 83,298 (37.2 percent). Carrillo, running on a Republican ticket that had 100 percent success in races for statewide offices, then easily defeated the Democrat choice, Bob Scarborough. Carrillo polled 3,891,482 ballots (55.5 percent) to Scarborough’s 2,872,717 (40.9 percent). Libertarian Anthony Garcia held the remaining 252,497 votes (3.6 percent). Carrillo outpolled both of his opponents in 2004 in Taylor County by a margin of some three-to-one..

Carrillo received his Bachelor of Science degree in geology from Hardin-Simmons University, a Baptist institution in Abilene. He then procured a Master of Science from Baylor University in Waco. From 1988-1994, Carrillo was a petroleum geophysicist for Amoco. He attended law school at night and in 1994 procured his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Houston Law Center. From 1994-1996, he was an attorney for the Texas General Land Office under the Democratic commissioner Garry Mauro.

Having returned to Abilene, he taught political science for a time at Hardin-Simmons and served on the city council and as an assistant city attorney while maintaining a law practice. He and his wife, Joy M. Carrillo, have three daughters, Laura, Christina Andrea, and Grace, all home-schooled. They attended Abilene Bible Church but relocated to Austin, when he joined the Railroad Commission.

While in Abilene, Carrillo was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Abilene Hispanic Leadership Council, Keep Abilene Beautiful, the Redeemer Presbyterian Church, the Salvation Army, and the board of advisors of the Texas Journal of Oil, Gas, and Energy, published by the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

On his website, Carrillo uses the slogan "Promoting Texas Energy for All Texans", adding: "Texas is our nation’s premier energy producing state and the Texas energy sector plays a critical role in ensuring domestic energy security. At this critical stage in our nation’s energy security future, we must responsibly drill more in our own backyard to minimize foreign oil and gas imports."

Carrillo’s two colleagues on the Railroad Commission, fellow Republicans Michael L. Williams (elected 2008) and Elizabeth Ames Jones (elected 2006), are both expected to seek the U.S. Senate seat that Hutchison decided to vacate early in order to run for the gubernatorial nomination.