The Ten Best and (Sigh)…The Ten Worst Legislators
Could any public body, anywhere in the world, be quite like the Texas legislature?
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Petty and venomous toward those who disagree with him. Is considered hopelessly untrustworthy by his colleagues, who have quit trying to make sense of him and now just hold him in icy contempt. Sees them (and the issues) as no more than vehicles for his own immense ambition. Works hard, but with an ulterior motive: “His homework consists of trying to find things that give him leverage on you,” said one of the state’s most powerful political figures. “His whole life is a series of demands on people.”
Having ruined his reputation in the legislature, he seems to be looking toward new fields to conquer: recently moved out of Smith County, his legislative home base, into adjacent Henderson County, which not coincidentally happens to be in the congressional district of aging Wright Patman, a man whose integrity compares to Head’s like platinum to lead. There ought to be a law.
Al Korioth, 46, Republican, Dallas. A classic prototype of the Legislative Mooch. Come mealtime, this mustachioed, walrus-looking representative seeks out lobbyists and forces them to feed him; a favorite technique is to walk into a restaurant or club, gaze around until he sees a lobbyist he knows, then tell the headwaiter, “Put me on his ticket.” The lobbyist, given the choice of buying his dinner or making a scene, usually goes along. Korioth calls this “having a sponsor.” Said one lobbyist who’d been victimized once too often: “There’s a difference between being asked out to eat and refusing to go unless someone else pays for it. He probably hasn’t paid for one meal during the whole session.”
A nonentity on the floor; nobody respects him or pays any attention to him. This doesn’t deter him from traipsing to the microphone constantly. “It’s never anything constructive, just nitpicking,” said one observer. During debate on a bill to control land subsidence near the San Jacinto Monument, he asked, “Are you sure it’s the ground sinking and not the ocean rising?” When not wasting the members’ time on the mike, he chatters away with loud, disruptive comments to anyone within shouting distance of his desk.
Considered one of the lobby’s most reliable water carriers. Is he on the take? Said one colleague: “Why should the lobby pay for it? They get it free.”
Glenn Kothmann, 47, Liberal Democrat, San Antonio. Less than furniture, the closest thing to a non-senator the Capitol has seen since David Ratliff resigned in 1972. Could vanish from the face of the earth and never be missed; indeed, his very presence in the Senate constitutes featherbedding—a practice he may have learned from organized labor, whose implement he is.
Still the densest member of the Senate, though Houston’s Lindon Williams is running him a close race. Introduced exactly one bill: SB 276, to establish a state school for the mentally retarded in San Antonio, a subject which some of his critics consider an entirely fitting choice. Despite the lack of any substantial opposition to the bill (which passed 28-3), it took Kothmann three tries starting in 1971 to get it through.
By the inexorable process of seniority, was selected President Pro Tem this session, an honorary position that entitles the occupant to serve as Governor for a Day. His colleagues looked forward to that occasion (June 28) with irrepressible inner mirth, as though they were watching someone prepare to light an exploding cigar.
Opposes bills of benefit to urban areas with depressing regularity; stalled one in committee that would have given cities more federal funds. His comment on mass transit legislation: “I don’t like new bills; you never know what’s in them.” The lobby regards him as an easy mark.
Very popular in his home district for reasons that elude outsiders. Takes his cues in the Senate from Bill Moore of Bryan, whose mossback view of what’s good for Texas could not be more foreign to the interests of Kothmann’s working class constituents. If, as the saying goes, people get the government they deserve, the residents of southeast Bexar County may be due for a rain of frogs.
Mike McKinnon, 36, Conservative Democrat, Corpus Christi. Like Kothmann, once again a unanimous Ten Worst choice. A TV-station president who seems to have sought public office largely for the satisfaction of hearing other people call him “senator.” Research failed to uncover a single person who claimed to have heard him say an enlightened word on the floor. Usually limits himself to the role of a giggling, chuckling yes-man for obstreperous Senate heavyweight Bill Moore.
Held in unconcealed contempt by many of his colleagues, who have learned the hard way that they can’t rely on his word. One senator called him a “son of a bitch” within earshot of spectators at the State Affairs Committee, adding “you promised me you would vote with me.” Said another: “You can’t trust him. There’s just not enough time up here to keep going back to McKinnon and ask him if he’s still on your side.” Politicians by nature must learn to get along with each other; but many Texas senators seem unable and unwilling to tolerate McKinnon in their midst.
They are not alone. “Wholly lacking in substance,” said one lobbyist. “No redeeming social value,” said another. “A real old-fashioned jerk,” said a third.
Has few legislative interests; his one triumph of the session was a geothermal energy resources bill handpicked and turned over to him by Hobby in an effort to rescue him from deep trouble with environmentalists in his district. Asked on the floor if it would give the state land commissioner authority to lease state lands for geothermal energy production, he replied, “To the best of my knowledge I don’t know whether it does or not.”
An ultra-conservative who believes that the government ought to standardize weights and measures and not much else. Votes his convictions whenever he can figure out how they are reflected in the bills. As a member of the State Affairs Committee, declined to vote one way or the other on the utilities bill. Likes to pore over audit reports of state agencies, then asks nitpicky questions that nobody else knows—or wants to know—the answers to.
Longs to run for lieutenant governor, making him the Senate winner of the Tom Schieffer Award for the member whose ambition most outstrips his talent.
Tom Schieffer, 27, Conservative Democrat, Fort Worth. What you get is even less than what you see.
Arrogant and—what is worse—ambitious. Gained abundant notoriety early in the session as the sponsor of a patently unfair presidential primary bill designed to boost the chances of Senator Lloyd Bentsen. His garbled mishandling of that affair could put him on the Ten Worst by itself, but he wins his spot by conspicuous lack of merit in every field.
“Actually he is furniture,” said one lobbyist. “His mistake was in trying to be anything else.” Said another: “He sits around and acts like he’s thinking. The worst type of person is someone who’s very ordinary and gets it into his head he’s some sort of big shot.” Said a high-ranking employee of a key state agency: “He’s just not very capable. All he can do is turn red in the face and scream at you.”
As chairman of the Local and Consent Calendars Committee, he killed uncontroversial but important legislation sponsored by members he didn’t like. Said one person victimized by Schieffer’s maneuverings: “He really had big britches this session. Every time he let a bill out, he acted like he’d done you a big favor.” After a feud with Comptroller Bob Bullock over the fiscal implications of the presidential primary (capped by a letter from Bullock remarking, “I am sorry if you were offended by the cost of your own bill”), he killed two innocuous bills that were vital to the orderly operation of the comptroller’s office.
The most appalling news of the 64th Legislature may be the fact that Tom Schieffer is soliciting pledges to be Speaker of the House.
G. J. Sutton, 66, Liberal Democrat, San Antonio. Scandalously bad member. Smokes little thin filter-tip cigars and wears natty black suits that make him look like an undertaker—which he is. Has buried, among other things, the morale of the Black Caucus, whose members elected him as chairman out of misplaced respect for his illustrious past leadership of the NAACP.
Was responsible for the single most odious maneuver in this year’s appropriations process: the approval, without a public hearing and in violation of parliamentary rules, of $750,000 to buy a run-down, vandalized foundry, and $250,000 to remodel it into a “state office building.” The foundry is located two blocks from Sutton’s funeral parlor in one of San Antonio’s most decayed neighborhoods, looks like something Generalissimo Trujillo might have designed as a joke, and is on the Bexar County tax rolls (at 100 per cent of fair market value) for $221,852—less than a third of what he expected the state to pay for it.
Had the full support of the Speaker in this nefarious enterprise because Clayton wanted to reward Sutton for his timely support in the Speaker’s race.
Still sees everything in poisoned 1950s battle-rhetoric terms, though old age is beginning to take its toll. Infuriates liberals and conservatives alike by trying to blame his own failures—and they are many—on the “racism” of everyone else. Said one white liberal: “He really thinks any time he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, race is the only reason. This place doesn’t work that way any more.” Even other blacks have nicknamed him “Papa Doc.”
Shocked the Black Caucus by his opportunistic readiness to pursue you-get-yours-I’m-getting-mine logrolling, instead of the team effort they had expected. Has been observed asleep for hours at his desk during House sessions; is periodically awakened by Houston Representative Senfronia Thompson. On the session’s most important issue for minorities—school finance—Sutton slept through large portions of the debate and then voted against the bill that would have most benefited minorities.
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