Pete Sessions Biography

Pete Sessions, the son of Alice June and William Steele Sessions, was born on March 22, 1955, in Waco, Texas. His father is the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.

Pete Sessions grew up in Waco until the ninth grade, and then moved to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., after his father started for the Department of Justice.

Moving back to Texas when his father became the U.S. Attorney in San Antonio, Pete Sessions completed his schooling from ‘Churchill High School’, later graduated from 'Southwestern University' in Georgetown, Texas in the year 1978.

After graduating from college, Pete Sessions started working at 'Southwestern Bell Telephone Company', which is a subsidiary of ‘AT&T’ company, where he worked for 16 years, before retiring in 1993. He was the District Manager for Marketing in Dallas, Texas, at the time. During this period, he was also the Chairman of the 'Northeast Dallas Chamber of Commerce'.

Pete Sessions tried his hand at politics in 1991, coming in sixth in a special election held for the House of Representatives. He quit his job with 'Southwestern Bell Telephone Company' two years later, so that he could run for Congress elections in the 5th Congressional District, Texas. He lost the election to the incumbent Democratic Congressman John Bryant.

He was subsequently elected as Vice President for Public Policy at the 'National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA)' (a conservative public policy research institute based in Dallas).

In 1996, Pete Sessions Democratic candidate John Pouland to win the 5th Congressional District, Texas seat. He was re-elected from the same seat in 1998 and 2000.

For the 2002 elections, he switched to the brand new 32nd Congressional District in Texas, and defeated Pauline Dixon.

Pete Sessions was re-elected to the 32nd District again in 2004, in what was labelled as the most expensive U.S. House race in the nation at that time.

Pete Sessions established the very first ‘Congressional Down Syndrome Caucus’ (a caucus is a group of people within a larger organisation, especially the Congress party, who have similar interests), in 2007. He is currently one of the four co-chairs of the caucus, alongside being a supporter of the ‘Global Down Syndrome Foundation’.

In 2008, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America, Pete Sessions introduced a legislation that was responsible for creating a commemorative silver dollar.

Pete Sessions was elected repeatedly from the 32nd District in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 elections.

He served as the chairman of the House Rules Committee from 2013 to 2019

His 22-year career in the United States House ended when he lost the general election, on November 6, 2018, to Democratic Party candidate, Collin Allred, a former National Football League player.

In October 2019, Pete Sessions announced his intention to compete in the 2020 election, from Texas's 17th congressional district, the winner of which will advance to the general election, to be held on November 3, 2020. In the primary election held on March 3, 2020, Pete Sessions received 31.9% of the vote, while his opponent, Renee Swann, got 19.2% of the vote. He advanced to the runoff election, which was held on July 14, 2020.

In 2011, Pete Sessions was awarded the 'Quincy Jones Exceptional Advocacy Award'.

Pete Sessions has courted controversy multiple times. He had a personal relationship with banker Allen Stanford, who was convicted in 2012 for running a Ponzi scheme.

In 2019, it was proven that Pete Sessions was the previously unnamed Congressman-1 in the trial indicting Soviet-born Americans, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. Both men were charged with trying to buy American influence by pooling Russian money into elections, by way of illegal campaign contributions. They were also accused of pushing for the removal of the then-U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch, at the behest of various Ukranian officials. In May 2018, Sessions had posted pictures after a meeting with Parnas and Fruman, after which he wrote a letter calling for Yovanovitch's removal. Sessions has denied the meeting had anything to do with Yovanovitch's dismissal. Sessions himself has not been indicted in any wrongdoing in this trial.

Pete Sessions married Juanita Diaz in February 1984, and they have two sons, Bill and Alex. The latter was diagnosed with Down syndrome and currently works at Home Depot. Bill and his wife are completing their medical residencies in Greenville, SC. Pete and Juanita divorced in August 2011, after 27 years of marriage.

Pete Sessions married widow Karen Diebel, a 2010 congressional candidate in Florida, in August 2012. Karen has three sons from her first marriage. The couple lives in Waco, Texas, United States.