Matt Shaheen


Matthew F. "Matt" Shaheen is a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives for District 66 in Plano in Collin County north of Dallas, Texas.

Biography

A native of Virginia, Shaheen received a bachelor's degree from Randolph-Macon College in Ashland near the capital city of Richmond, at which he received All Conference honors through the Old Dominion Athletic Conference as a player on the college Yellow Jackets football team. Shaheen also holds a master's degree from Southern Methodist University in University Park, Texas.
Since 2004, he has been a technology and management consulting executive, with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services.
Shaheen is a deacon at the large Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano and directs a Bible study for inmates in the Collin County jail.

Political life

Shaheen is the former Precinct 1 commissioner for Collin County, one of four legislative positions in county government which encompasses North Plano, Frisco, Prosper, Celina, and northwestern McKinney. As a county commissioner, he served on the Texas Conference of Urban Counties Policy Committee and the Texas Juvenile Justice Department Advisory Committee. Then Governor Rick Perry named him to the Texas State Board of Social Workers, for which he was chairman of the board's Professional Development Committee and a member of the Ethics Committee. He has also served on the Plano Community Relations Commission.
A past election judge, precinct chairman, and delegate to Republican state conventions, Shaheen is the founding chairman of the political action committee, the Reagan Conservative Society. He is a member of the Collin County Republican Men's Club.
Shaheen won the Republican nomination for the District 66 House seat in a runoff election on May 27, 2014, with his intraparty rival, lawyer and businessman Glenn Brian Callison, also of Plano, 54 to 46 percent. The district encompasses most of West Plano and parts of North Dallas. In that same primary, Susan Fletcher unseated Mark Reid, the Precinct 1 commissioner, who was appointed in December 2013 to succeed Shaheen, when he stepped down to make the state House race. Shaheen, with no Democratic opponent, then defeated the Libertarian Party candidate, Ian Michael Santorella, also of Plano, in the November 4 general election. The departing representative, Republican Van Taylor, succeeded state Senator Ken Paxton of McKinney, subsequently the state attorney general.
In 2018, Shaheen won reelection by 378 votes to his fourth legislative term. With 34,142 ballots, he defeated his Democratic opponent, Sharon Hirsch, who polled 33,764.