Why Does Dolph Briscoe Want To Be Governor?
And when is he going to start?
(Page 3 of 9)
While Briscoe stays deep in the background of his own administration, matters which need attention languish. By mid-January, the governor’s Energy Advisory Council (directed by law to formulate a state energy policy) had still not been called together for the regular meeting that was due in November 1975. Having pronounced himself an implacable foe of special sessions, Briscoe dithered for weeks in 1973 trying to avoid calling one that was plainly inevitable: the reduction of the speed limit to 55 mph in order for Texas to continue receiving federal highway funds. He finally called it for December 18, disrupting Christmas holiday plans for legislators and staff alike. He is notoriously slow in making appointments to state boards and commissions—one of the most significant powers a Texas governor has. A search of the Secretary of State’s register of appointments on December 1 showed dozens of vacancies, including some boards on which all the members’ terms had expired. One advisory council had 29 vacancies. Some divisions of the governor’s own office, like the Texas Film Commission, are under “acting” leadership more than twenty months after the previous director left.
Capitol observers are still incredulous about some of Briscoe’s protracted delays, like the nomination of Jim Wallace to a new district judgeship in Harris County. Wallace, a highly popular state senator who had sponsored Briscoe’s drug bill, had been checked out with everyone who mattered—including the local bar association, the Trial Lawyers Association, the defense attorneys, his Senate colleagues, and Briscoe’s own informal committee of Houston lawyers—and had received top marks from everyone. Even before the 1973 Legislature departed, it was widely understood around the Capitol that Wallace was in line for the job. “Well,” recalls a lobbyist from Houston, “Briscoe fiddled around with that appointment, and he fiddled around, and folks started going to see him. Finally Bill Hobby went to see him. He said, ‘Governor, you remember back when we were setting up this seat, everybody agreed that Jim Wallace ought to have it? Well, you know, Jim’s term is coming to an end, and I think you ought to go ahead and appoint him and get the uncertainty out of the way, because otherwise he’s going to have to run for the Legislature again.”
Months later, in 1975, Briscoe did appoint Wallace; but not until the uncertain senator had been forced to seek, and win, the Senate seat again. A special election costing $37,000 had to be called to replace him.
The situation prevailing on the State Banking Board is perhaps the most scandalous example of all. Charged with the responsibility of awarding new state bank charters—which are much-sought-after and potentially lucrative pieces of paper—the three-man board consists of two state officials and one layman who is appointed by the governor. Lay member James L. Lindsey’s term expired in January 1973, and Briscoe still has not named a successor. Under the law he continues to serve until the governor does so. Lindsey, who could win Senate confirmation without much trouble, says he “indicated to Briscoe soon after he took the governorship that I would like to be reappointed,” but he has heard nothing from the governor one way or another since that time. Because the other two members have a tendency to disagree about whether to grant new charters (Banking Commissioner Robert Stewart being more likely to frown on them than State Treasurer Jesse James), Lindsey has occupied the awkward position of a “holdover” swing vote for three years.
The failure of a banker-governor to act on such a crucial nomination to the Banking Board has caused extensive concern in financial circles. After Briscoe told newsmen at his last press conference in December that he had not given any consideration to the matter “lately,” Dallas Morning News reporter Sam Kinch, Jr., suggested that the prolonged delay might be “about to set a record for a holdover appointment.” Briscoe’s response, in its entirety, was: “What is the record?”
The results of Briscoe’s procrastination usually make no political sense. A case in point is the Joint Interim Surface Mining Operations Study Committee, created by the 1973 Legislature to investigate strip mining and present a report to the 1975 Legislature which would, thus informed, enact appropriate laws on the subject. The committee was to consist of three senators, three House members, and five “lay citizens” appointed by the governor. The legislators were ready to begin work when the session ended in mid-1973, and there was no real controversy about who the other members were supposed to be. Recalls a lawyer who followed the committee’s work: “It was one of those situations where the two protagonists—industry and the ecologists—agreed the study needed to be done, and had pretty much agreed beforehand on who ought to be appointed. Well, Briscoe just sat on his appointments—which were necessary before the committee could meet. Everybody was telling him about once a week, ‘Now goddamit Dolph, we don’t really so much care who, just appoint somebody and let us get started.’” Why the delay? Senator Max Sherman of Amarillo, the committee’s chairman, says, “A lot of people tried to get him [Briscoe] to move, and he didn’t. That’s about all anybody knows.” Briscoe finally made his appointments on May 31, 1974, and by the time the legislators were finished with the Constitutional Convention in late July, only five months remained for them to complete the eighteen-month project.
With a sigh, the lawyer adds, “That’s what he does with everything. He sits on it forever, until you absolutely despair that anything is ever gonna happen, and then he finally does it.”
Visitors who manage to gain an audience with Briscoe often find the experience strangely unproductive. Several leading advocates of the proposed new constitution, who had been trying for weeks to win his support for the document, were finally allowed to meet with him on the day before he announced his opposition. Among those present were Attorney General Hill, Speaker Clayton, retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Calvert, and state Representative Ronald Earle. “He greeted us all warmly,” one participant remembers. “He said, ‘I wanted you gentlemen to have the chance to discuss the constitution with me before I make my decision public,’ or words to that effect. We discussed one aspect that we thought he might disagree with, and then someone said, ‘Could you tell us any other concerns you might have?’ Well, he just smiled and said, ‘Oh, no. I couldn’t do that.’ So we had a little guessing game, talking about various articles. He just sat there, not saying anything, never asking any questions at all. The conversation kept lapsing. Finally we thanked him and left.”
Advisory groups that have worked on a nonpartisan basis with Texas governors for decades complain that he, unlike his predecessors, does not follow up on his agreements. “After we talked to Briscoe,” said an officer of one, “it was just like we’d never been there. It all disappeared.”
“Nothing happened”; that is the recurring complaint of those who deal with Briscoe personally. What frustrates them is not his reluctance to give commitments—that is a common ploy among politicians—but his lack of interest in discussing issues and his unreliability about following through on whatever commitments he does make. It is rare to find anyone who claims to have had a penetrating discussion with him about anything, including (especially) matters about which he has been outspoken, like school finance, and constitutional revision. What is he doing? His behavior is not devious, not the fancy skating of a skilled political operator. It is the indifferent behavior of someone who seems to care about next-to-nothing.
Among those whose work brings them into regular contact with the governor’s office, there is virtually unanimous agreement that many of Briscoe’s worst problems can be traced to his selection of staff.
From the beginning, Briscoe chose amateurs to run his administration. The Sharpstown Scandal did more than help elect him in 1972: it reinforced his own instinctive, homespun mistrust of political “types,” while at the same time making that mistrust seem entirely appropriate in the eyes of the public. Briscoe, who saw himself as a non-politician, came to power at precisely the time when non-politicians were becoming fashionable; and far from perceiving that there might be hidden risks in carrying that approach too far, he gloried in it. “Politics,” he told the bemused Legislature in his first address, “is not a game, and I will not play it.”
In the interval between his election and his inauguration he made only half-hearted efforts to persuade experienced state capitol hands like Jim Oliver to stay on; he shut himself off completely from old acquaintances like Walter Richter, a former state senator who headed the State Program on Drug Abuse, leaving them utterly uncertain whether they were supposed to remain or not. Eventually he surrounded himself with innocents: two lawyers with no substantial political experience, a school administrator, the pampered son of a small-town mayor. Only his press secretary, former LBJ man Bob Hardesty, knew any political ropes. The result was chaos: for while there may be something to be said for talented amateurs, there is nothing to be said for untalented ones.
“His organization,” says former Speaker Price Daniel, Jr., “is as poor as any I’ve ever seen. It borders on incompetence.” That is an attitude which, quite honestly, few knowledgeable people seem willing to dispute.
“Not only does he [Briscoe] not deal with people directly,” says a nonpartisan observer who has been in active contact with state government for years, “he doesn’t have a staff capable of dealing directly. Preston Smith picked good people and gave them some leeway. Briscoe’s staff doesn’t get anything done.” Says another: “The thing about Preston Smith was, at least he knew a lot about state government. Briscoe doesn’t. And Smith at least surrounded himself with some people who were pretty good; Briscoe has surrounded himself with idiots. They may be real bright in whatever it is they did before they came to the Capitol, but they don’t know a thing about state government. It’s frightening how stupid those people are.”
Both of these men had voted for Briscoe in 1972.
Shortly before Briscoe came out against the proposed new constitution last October, one of his top assistants called to discuss the document with a high-ranking aide to Lieutenant Governor Hobby. “We really like the Executive Article,” he confided, “and we’re gonna support that. But we just can’t go along with that Legislative Article at all.” Came the astonished reply: “But they’re the same thing! You know, ‘Proposition One: Executive and Legislative.’” “You’re kidding,” said the governor’s man.
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