Arlene Wohlgemuth
Arlene Reid Wohlgemuth is a former Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives from District 58 in Johnson and Bosque counties south of Fort Worth, Texas.
She left the state house in 2005 after having been defeated in November 2004 in a race against the incumbent Democrat Chet Edwards for Texas's 17th congressional district. She lost 51 to 48 percent. Edwards was later defeated for his seat by the Republican Bill Flores.
Wohlgemuth served in the Seventy-fourth through Seventy-eighth Texas Legislatures. In 1997, she became involved in what was called the "Memorial Day Massacre." She raised a point of order that killed fifty-two proposed bills by preventing them from coming up for a vote before the end of the legislative session. Wohlgemuth was angry that opposition legislators had used a similar procedure the week before to prevent a vote on a proposal supported by Wohlgemuth to require parental notification if a minor procures an abortion.
In 1995, Wohlgemuth in her first year in office and a fellow representative, Gary Walker of Plains, hired DeWayne Burns of Cleburne as a legislative analyst. Burns holds the seat vacated in 2005 by Wohlgemuth. He was elected in 2014 after Rob Orr, Wohlgemuth's successor, decided not to seek a sixth term in the position.
Wohlgemuth now serves with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin as the executive director and the director of the Center for Health Care Policy. A native of Midland, Wohlgemuth attended Texas Tech University in Lubbock from 1965 to 1967 but left to marry her childhood sweetheart, Mikeal Wohlgemuth, an optometrist in Burleson.
