After 31 years at the head of what was supposed to be a five-year enterprise, Norman Newton is resigning as executive director of Associated Republicans of Texas, or ART. Newton and then-U.S. Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, started up the organization after the Republican drubbing that followed President Richard Nixon's resignation. For years, ART was the only group working steadily to increase the number of Republicans in the Texas Legislature; others joined in as a majority came within striking distance. Newton will join his son, Trey Newton, and Johnnie B. Rogers in their Newton-Rogers consulting firm. ART hasn't named a new ED. Mark Miner, communications director for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for the last four years, is leaving state employment to try his hand as a lobster. He'll open an Austin office for Mercury Public Affairs, which is affiliated with Fleishman-Hillard. Ginger Murray, formerly a legislative aide to Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, is back on staff as legislative director. Deon Daugherty Allen is back in the Senate after a stint with the Quorum Report. And she's in the same spot she left, working as communications director for Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock. Gov. Rick Perry appointed Shalia Cowan of Dripping Springs and Angela Wolf of Austin to the governing board at the Texas School for the Deaf, and reappointed Jean Andrews of Beaumont. Cowan is an adjunct professor at Texas Tech and teaches an online course in deaf education. Wolf works in human resources at the Public Utility Commission of Texas and a member of the school's district advisory committee, and Andrews is a professor of deaf education at Lamar University. House Speaker Tom Craddick appointed Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, to the Sunset Advisory Commission. She'll take Carl Isett's spot; he resigned that spot (not his House seat, though) because he's been deployed to Iraq. John Gravois, a former reporter in the Capitol Press Corps (for the late Houston Post) and now the deputy managing editor for government and politics at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is recovering from valve replacement and triple-bypass surgery. We're told the prognosis is good. Deaths: Phil Strickland, a terrific guy who sometimes referred to himself as the only lobbyist for religion in Austin, of complications from a rare form of lung cancer. He was 64. Strickland was director of the Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and founder of Texans Care for Children. He was a lawyer until 1967, when he decided to take a break to fight gambling legislation.