Dan Patrick has been a salesman of Paper Mate products and class rings, a local TV sportscaster and weatherman, a restaurant and nightclub owner, a conservative radio personality, an author, a filmmaker and a politician. He has attended Lutheran, Catholic and Baptist churches. He has gone by Dannie Scott Goeb, Danny Scott and Dan Patrick.

He was hospitalized for depression, underwent a vasectomy live on the radio and participated in enough bar fights to gain a reputation. He opened businesses, angered investors and closed the businesses. He filed for bankruptcy and was sued by the NFL, twice.

By Patrick’s own telling, his years of instability and self-reinvention came to a sudden halt in March 1994, when he was in Las Vegas for a broadcast industry convention. Five years earlier, he had taken over a tiny suburban Houston radio station with a weak signal. Through hard work, good luck and a knack for tapping into his audience’s political id, he’d built it into a major player on Houston’s AM dial. Now Clear Channel wanted to buy it in a deal that would net Patrick and his partners almost $27 million.

To the future Texas lieutenant governor — a man whom friends and associates described as erratic and insecure and who had once been dismissed by critics and written off by himself, having twice attempted suicide — the offer meant more than financial security. It was a revelation that he was meant for a higher purpose.

"I went back to my hotel exhilarated and in awe at what God seemed to be doing," he wrote in his 2002 book. "I know my limitations — I wasn’t smart enough to have orchestrated the last seven years. I wasn’t that talented, I wasn’t a visionary. I instinctively knew this was all a ‘God thing.’"

He hailed a cab to a nearby church, the Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer by the Tropicana casino.

"I got down on my knees and prayed as I have never prayed before or since," he wrote. "I finally decided that day to take God up on His promise."

The combination of his sudden wealth and newfound faith provided the scaffolding for Patrick’s rebirth as a man with a public purpose that has led him to the pinnacle of Texas politics. After years of searching for success and meaning, he found a worldview that provided certainty, even against overwhelming opposition. He began keeping a smaller group of trusted friends who shared his principles.

For Patrick, the few became the righteous; criticism was affirmation. "I can’t do the Lord’s work if I deny my faith and I deny those values because popular opinion was against a particular issue or it wasn’t the comfortable thing to do or I was criticized by some group or by the media," he said in a 2015 interview.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick bangs the gavel to call to order the 85th Legislature on Jan. 10, 2017. RALPH BARRERA / AMERICAN-STATESMAN

American-Statesman Staff

That confidence was most recently on display during the 2017 legislative session, when Patrick relentlessly promoted the so-called bathroom bill. The measure, which would have prohibited transgender Texans from using the restrooms of their choice, was opposed by Democrats, moderate Republicans and the business lobby.

Patrick’s rapid rise — he beat three established Republicans to win a state Senate seat in 2006, his first run for office, before unseating Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in 2014 — has been made possible by a political landscape increasingly shaped by a small but influential group of anti-establishment conservative activists.

"He came of age when the whole deal was the Republican primary, and he has just masterfully worked that thing," University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray said. "Patrick was brilliant in sensing that ‘I don’t have to worry about all these other folks. They don’t vote in Republican primaries.’ And his talk radio, of course, was wonderful to connect with those voters."

After U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign began to falter, Patrick was quick among Texas Republicans to jump on board with Donald Trump, a man whose history as a troubled businessman-turned-populist politician mirrored his own, chairing the president’s Texas campaign in 2016 and becoming the administration’s go-to surrogate in the Lone Star State in 2017.

Trump in November tapped Patrick’s son, Ryan Patrick — who has little federal court experience — to be the top federal prosecutor for the Houston area.

"Someone said to me, ‘Dan you just bought a penny stock,’" Patrick told the San Antonio Express-News about his early embrace of Trump. "And after he won, you know that penny stock? I still have it. And it’s worth a whole lot more."

Patrick, who declined to be interviewed, rarely accommodates media requests that don’t come from conservative outlets, preferring to spread his message through social media and his radio stations.

In an emailed response to written questions about his past, including a business history that has left a trail of creditors and critics, Patrick political strategist Allen Blakemore wrote that the inquiries are "a collection of 30 year-old allegations that voters heard and dismissed during the 2014 election."

"It is disappointing, though not surprising, that just days before early voting begins the Statesman would stoop so low in an attempt to disparage a leader who has amassed a distinguished conservative public policy record during a decade of elected public service and who enjoys broad support from the people of Texas," Blakemore wrote.

At the pinnacle of Texas politics

The post of lieutenant governor, as leader of the Senate, has always wielded outsize influence in Texas politics. Last year, Patrick began to harness that power, driving the Legislature’s agenda by issuing a list of 25 priorities and forcing Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session dominated by his goals.

At 6-foot-4 and standing on a raised podium, Patrick, 67, literally looms over the Senate when it is in session. And he has remade the body in his image.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick looks on as state senators speak about Senate Bill 14 in 2017. RICARDO B. BRAZZIELL / AMERICAN-STATESMAN

American-Statesman Staff

Thanks to his strict observance of long-ignored rules, the chamber’s proceedings have taken on an austere atmosphere. The number of staffers and reporters allowed inside is limited. The sergeant at arms chastises anyone caught loitering or engaging in small talk. And partisan debate has become largely ceremonial since Patrick pushed through a rule change that prevents Democrats from having any real impact on most legislation.

While past lieutenant governors such as Bill Hobby and Bob Bullock have also made full use of the office’s power and overshadowed governors, Patrick is unique in what he has done with it.

"A lot of lieutenant governors were much more focused on nuts and bolts, and Patrick is a movement politician," Murray said. "He’s much more ideological than most lieutenant governors, and sometimes he goes too far."

Last year, for instance, two of Patrick’s top objectives, the bathroom bill and a measure limiting city and county property tax increases, were blocked by House Speaker Joe Straus, a more centrist Republican. Straus is not seeking re-election this year, and, if he is replaced by a more conservative Republican, which is likely, Patrick could further tighten his grip on state government.

Although Patrick is expected to win re-election this year against poorly funded opponents, he is nonetheless casting his shadow on races across the state. Conservatives competing in the March 6 GOP primaries are pledging themselves to his agenda while Democrats and politically active teachers groups are invoking his name to motivate their bases.

Gone to Texas

The only child of a newspaper circulation manager and a bookkeeper, Patrick grew up in 1950s Baltimore as Dannie Scott Goeb, his birth name. At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, he majored in English and disc-jockeyed for a country radio station where he took up his first on-air pseudonym: Danny Scott.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as a junior at Andover High School in Maryland.

American-Statesman Staff

In his 20s, Patrick worked as a salesman in several East Coast cities. While in Scranton, Pa., he talked his way into a part-time gig doing sports and the weather for a local TV station and assumed a new on-air name: Dan Patrick.

Two years later, he was hired to be the lead sportscaster for KHOU, Houston’s Channel 11, at age 29. Patrick immediately embraced the mythology of his new home.

"I loved the idea of going to Texas, and the early 1980s were great years to be in Houston. John Travolta released ‘Urban Cowboy,’ and the cowboy craze swept across America," Patrick wrote in his book. "We had the world’s biggest rodeo in Houston, and people everywhere were wearing boots, jeans and cowboy hats. I loved it!"

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