Randal Tye Thomas (August 23, 1978 – January 13, 2014) served as Mayor of Gun Barrel City, Texas. He was also a member of the Electoral College in the 2000 Presidential Election. Early years Tye Thomas was born August 23, 1978 at a small hospital in Terrell, Texas and was raised in Mabank, Texas. As a teenager, he was an active member of the Methodist church in Mabank. He began to demonstrate unusually bright entrepreneurial qualities at an early age, and while he was a student at Mabank High School, he founded and published a newspaper known as Cedar Creek Briefs. Years later, he was quoted by a newspaper reporter, and he claimed that he was earning a profit twice as high with his newspaper than his parents' combined annual income. Based on this newspaper, he entered a high school entrepreneur contest sponsored by Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. He won the competition and a full scholarship to the University, where he eventually enrolled as a business student on the Providence campus. Thomas immediately made himself well known on campus at Johnson & Wales, where the student body numbered approximately 10,000 on the Providence campus. As a freshman, he was elected to serve as the first president of the newly formed College Republicans club. Later, he was elected Student Body President (which made him the leader of the Student Government Association) by a margin of three votes. As a student at Johnson & Wales, Thomas owned a vending route that was rumored to have included a portfolio of almost 100 vending machines scattered all over Rhode Island. He was employed for several years at Coastway Credit Union, where he worked in various positions, including SBA loan generation and as a personal assistant to the President, Reynolds German. He also worked for almost a year as a volunteer in the Executive Offices of then Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Almond. Thomas graduated from Johnson & Wales in June 1998 with an Associate of Science degree in Business Administration and in November 1999 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing. He immediately moved from Rhode Island to Gun Barrel City, Texas, where he had purchased a lakeside condominium several months prior. Mayor of Gun Barrel City In January 2000, Thomas founded Lakeside News, a weekly newspaper in Gun Barrel City. In February 2000, he launched a campaign for Mayor