[Texas Songwriter]

Charlie Wilson was my congressman for 20 years. He was know as Good Time Charlie. He was put into office by Arthur Temple of Temple Industries (huge lumber and land holdings). Mr. Temple died about 2 years ago. Temple kept Wilson's pecker in his hip pocket for the entire tenure of Wilson's occupancy of his office. He was a drunk and a womanizer. He was someone who was extremely attentive to Granny back in the home district and he mostly took their calls and from time to time brought home the bacon.

For a group of people of the Bible belt I never understood how Wilson, who was widely known to be an immoral person, could keep his office, but that Temple bought the office. That was not even an unspoken truth here in Lufkin. Everyone knew it and it did not seem to bother them.

He was a chain smoker and developed severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was an alcoholic and subsequently developed alcoholic cardiomyopathy and just recently had a successful heart transplant.

Wilson was, if nothing else, a very colorful character. I believe he was a passionate anticommunist and extremely promilitary. One of his more notable antics was killing a bill which would have given the Air Force funding for a very large aircraft. He did it for spite because he was dating Ms. World and the Air Force would not give her a ride back from Afghanistan to the United States, but would give him a ride. For that he struck at the Air Force for spite.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I know he had a strong challenger in the ‘90s named Donna Peterson. Unfortunately, the GOP didn’t pump enough money to support her. We probably could’ve beaten him in ‘94. As it was, we didn’t get the seat until we got control of redistricting and used it to knock off Charlie’s successor, Jim Turner, in ‘04.

[untrained skeptic]

Thanks for the interesting background. Sounds like the kind of interesting character with lots of controversy that Hollywood likely to do documentaries about.

Of course they seem to have an affection for immoral people who manage to do good things despite their faults. It's part of being bleeding heart liberals that are rotten to the core and want to make themselves feel better about their own failings.

[EaTxWoman]

Arthur Temple owned Charlie Wilson, true..When Donna Peterson tried to run gainst him they got into her cellphone records, hmmm and brought out she was seeing a married jewish man from Beaumont, Tx. A ealthy lawyer from Jasper did that for Temple...