Mark Wells White Jr. (March 17, 1940 – August 5, 2017) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 43rd governor of Texas from 1983 to 1987.

[1] A member of the Democratic Party, White sought to improve education, transportation, water resources, law enforcement, and taxes to attract new industry to Texas.

He appointed the first Hispanic woman to serve as a judge of a district court in Texas, Elma Salinas Ender.

[8] Briscoe explained on his appointment of White as the 74th Texas Secretary of State: "When I began to consider candidates for secretary of state, I realized that it was crucial to appoint someone with legal training who shared my political views and who was loyal, energetic, and personable," Briscoe wrote in his memoirs.

Mark White's talent and ambition would eventually lead to his election as attorney general in 1978 and governor in 1982."

[12] First, White defeated former State House Speaker Price Daniel Jr., the son of former Texas Governor Price Daniel, in the Democratic primary and in general election, he comfortably defeated the Republican choice, James A. Baker, III, a Houston lawyer, businessman, and power broker affiliated with the Bush family of Houston.

[12] White declined to seek a second term as state attorney general, but chose to seek the governorship in 1982 against fellow Democrat Bob Armstrong, who was the outgoing state Land Commissioner, who vacated the General Land Office following twelve years, and then the incumbent Bill Clements, Texas' first Republican governor since Reconstruction.

[14] In November 1982, he defeated Clements over concerns about the governor's poor economic numbers and lack of support from minority groups.

[14] White received 1,697,870 votes (53.2 percent) to Clements' 1,465,537 (45.9 percent) in a year where Texas Democrats swept all the statewide offices up for grabs; led by U.S. senator Lloyd Bentsen (who won a third six-year term to the Senate) and the legendary Lieutenant Governor of Texas William P. Hobby Jr.[15] As the state's 43rd chief executive from January 18, 1983, to January 20, 1987, White worked to "preserve and enhance... resources so that Texas would not fall back, but go forward as a state of the future".

[12] White served as governor during Texas' sesquicentennial in 1986 and oversaw a number of the celebrations concerning that anniversary.

[16] Among White's appointments was Elma Salinas Ender as the first Hispanic woman to serve as judge of a district court in Texas.

When he took office, Texas was ranked as one of the lowest performing states for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) also in teachers' salaries.

[19] By focusing on education, White was able to make Texas a "state of the future" with regard to its most important resource, its children.

[3] Some believe that the wildly unpopular "no-pass, no-play" policies of the White administration, which prohibited any high school student athletes from participating in varsity sports if they were failing any single element of their overall class load, sealed the doom of a second term.

In 2010, White voiced support for a posthumous exoneration of Cameron Todd Willingham, who is believed by many to be wrongfully convicted and executed for arson and murdering his three daughters.

[14] At his funeral on Wednesday, August 9, 2017 at Second Baptist Church Worship Center in Houston, the officiant was Pastor Homer Edwin Young and among the attendees who were there also included White's fellow governors: former U.S. president George W. Bush, United States Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and incumbent governor Greg Abbott.

In the March 6, 2018 Democratic Party primary, he placed second, forcing a runoff with former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez on May 22, 2018.