TX Nomination Policy

Nav84

5-Year Member
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Aug 15, 2011
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Texas appears to have a policy of awarding no more than one nomination per candidate. The two senators wait to see who received a nomination from their MOC, and then remove those candidates from their respective nominee list. In other words, the policy appears to be only one nomination per candidate.

The intent of this policy is to maximize the number of Texans in the national nomination pool. Unfortunately this has the side-effect of limiting the number of slates a highly qualified candidate can compete against.

Are there any other states that limit the number of nominations awarded to a candidate? I realize there are a few Texas candidates that have received more than one nomination, but it appears they “slipped through.”
 
Last year, our son received a nomination from both Senator Cornyn and Congressman Hall. He also initially received a nomination from Senator Hutchison but was later asked if he would "give up" her nomination because he already had one from Senator Cornyn. While I would agree that the TX senators do not duplicate nominations, I would not agree that all TX congressmen adhere to this policy. Our son was not the only candidate to receive multiple nominations in Texas last year.
 
I just spoke with Senator Hutchison's office. Their intent is one nomination per candidate across the state. That said, this policy requires coordination with the state's 32 congressional districts. Hence some candidates end up with multiple nominations. My DD received a nomination from Sen Cornyn, then another from the MOC, then Sen Cornyn withdrew her nomination since she had one from the MOC, and based on old information, Sen Hutchison did not evaluate my DD since her office was under the assumption DD already had two nominations. My DD is thrilled to have at least one of the state's nominations, but the extensive coordination required between the senator and the many MOC's is still a challenge.
 
It probably has something to do with the timing of the nominations. Our son received Senator Cornyn's nomination in November, Senator Hutchison's in early January (I can't remember the date on this one), and Congressman Hall did not submit his slate until the end of January. At that point, it was probably too late to help anyone by withdrawing a nomination.

Good luck to your daughter!
 
Well, I think it's their intent more than a written policy on stone. Why do I mince words? B/c I already had this same discussion/argument for and against the merits of this idea. Needless to say, I believed it was a good idea; however, I think I was wrong.

More Noms = more opportunities to be considered and considered for more academies.

In our case, we received a "no thanks" from Sen. Cornyn's office waaaayyyy before he could have had any idea of who our Congresswoman had in mind. So his office I do not think communicates well with other districts. They pick who they want and send the noms out. Which is fine and nothing wrong with that.

Sen. Hutchinson's office is much more diligent in that regard and we did receive a nicely worded letter which led us to believe our DS could have received her nom if our district Rep. did not. Don't know for sure but it was evident she waited to confirm this was the case b/c our Rep. interviews were very, very late January and we just received the letter. No fault of the Congresswoman...she's important and busy and that was the only time she had.

Why I don't think it's a stone cold policy is b/c there are numerous accounts of double noms in Texas over the years. Our DS did receive multiple noms for several academies from our Rep., I believe this was the case for several candidates.

Without confirmation of this, I think the intent is to not "Principally" nominate a candidate multiple times as this would be a waste if it was the same academy slot. Multiple academies? Well, if the candidate was that good it should be their choice I guess. Since each slate can have 10 noms I now see it differently and this it would be fine to give multiple noms.

So I think the Sen.'s try to do this but it's not written in stone, most of the Rep.'s work with the Sen's to do this but not all. Rep.'s can and do give multiple noms based on the candidates desires and qualifications.

All in all I was very impressed with how much our MOC's in Texas do for the candidates. :thumb:
 
Hmmm

The problem I have with the way the noms were done for THIS year is that the USAFA is having to be pretty stingy with appointments. What has happened with DS is that he has an LOA for USNA, but received a nom for USAFA. USAFA is his first choice, but USNA was a VERY close alternate. We've talked to our MoC about it and we're told that Sen. Paul has given out all his noms for USNA. BUT, on an encouraging note his office is working pretty hard with USAFA to get him reviewed and accepted.
We got one of those "nice" letters from Sen. Hutchison too, but the letter pretty much said that since he had a nom to USAFA, no nom to USNA.
DS just wants to serve our country in uniform as an aeronautical engineer. The best schools for that are, of course, USNA and USAFA. It will be tragic if he has a nom to USAFA but no appointment, an LOA for USNA, but no nom. MoC says that they're pretty certain he'll get an appointment, but they're not on the board.
 
There are always superintendent's noms and vp noms.....I don't really know the selection process for these.
 
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