The Most Powerful Texans
The power game in Texas: how it works and who calls the shots.
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The most curious quantity in Texas power is Dolph Briscoe, a second-generation rural potentate who has risen to the governor’s office. He could, simply by virtue of his wealth and the position he holds, rank among the most powerful people in Texas. However, he appears uninterested in exercising even the most routine powers of his office. His list of campaign contributors—a group dominated by men from Texas Instruments and other large corporations—makes clear his affiliation with Big Corporate Power; his own preferences, however, seem to be for the clean and simple air of his Uvalde ranch and not for the urban power centers. By and large, he is irrelevant to modern Texas power and represents a throwback to an earlier, more rural state.
Almost as curious is U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen. An old-line Establishmentarian schooled by the great Sam Rayburn, Bentsen retains considerable economic power because of his family’s wealth and his previous Big Corporate connections, but he may have burned up a great deal of his political clout in his recent bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. His vote against the oil depletion allowance infuriated his many oil business supporters, and so have other politically expedient (and no doubt temporary) shifts leftward. He will probably win re-election to the Senate—if not a place on the national ticket—but his status as a power wielder has undoubtedly been diminished. In fact, Bentsen’s two principal supporters, Ben Love and Bill Lane, both younger and newer to power than the senator, were far more frequently mentioned as being among the most powerful people in Texas, especially by those in the Big Corporate world.
A native of Vernon, Ben Love came to Houston shortly after World War II and founded a paper products manufacturing plant, which he operated for seventeen years. In the mid-Sixties, he moved into banking, first with River Oaks Bank and Trust, then with Texas Commerce Bank. By 1969, he had become president of Texas Commerce Bank, and in 1972 he was named chairman and chief executive officer of both the bank and the bank holding company. Affable, articulate, and—of no small importance—a University of Texas graduate, Love, 51, seems to embody the most highly valued qualities of the new Big Corporate leader. Under Love’s leadership Texas Commerce made the transition from bank to bank holding company, and now ranks as the fourth-largest bank holding company in Texas. Meanwhile, Love himself has taken an active role as a Bentsen fund raiser, and is the manager of Bentsen’s personal finances, now held in “blind trust” while Bentsen holds public office.
Equally admired in Houston business circles is Love’s close personal friend, Bill Lane. Like Love, the 52-year-old Lane has enjoyed an almost meteoric rise. A native of Tennessee, Lane came to Houston in 1959 as president of River Brand Rice Mills, Inc. Before long, however, he built River Brand into Riviana Foods, a multi-national with emphasis on rice and specialty foods. Now twenty-sixth in size in the state, Riviana markets such diverse goods as Russian caviar and Kosher meats, the latter being a product of Riviana’s Hebrew National Division. A generous contributor to conservative political candidates of both major parties, Lane was the campaign chairman for Bentsen’s presidential effort.
Though real estate developers like Gerald D. Hines of Houston and Trammell Crow of Dallas may have a greater influence over the shaping of our environment, it is men like Ray Hunt, Love and Lane who will play the greatest future individual roles in determining the underlying politics and economy. But despite their many talents, none of them will likely attain the status of a Jesse Jones or a George Brown, and this is in no way to their detriment. As Oveta Hobby points out, “The art of running a business takes so much more time now.” One can no longer set up one corporation after another as the 8F Crowd used to do, without facing a host of federal regulations and soaring overhead costs. And leverage over the political process has become ever more difficult to gain.
Along this same line, it is important to note that the overall structure of Big Corporate Power in Texas exists in the larger national and international context. Relationships on this level are even more complex, but the New York banks and the Washington bureaucracy clearly occupy central institutional roles. Texas’ billion-dollar bank holding companies must look to their much larger Eastern counterparts—Chase Manhattan, First National City, Morgan Guaranty—as correspondent banks and regular sources of back-up funds. Large Texas-based corporations must also look to the big New York banks as well as to insurance companies and investment banking firms in order to obtain enough capital for many of their projects. In fact, the largest stockholders in most of Texas’ largest corporations are these Eastern financial institutions. From this perspective, the Rockefeller family who dominate Chase Manhattan and much else, should receive due consideration as being among the most powerful people in Texas, especially since the Vice President has established a partial claim to residency by virtue of purchasing a South Texas ranch.
On the other hand, the central domestic conflict of our time may well be the struggle between Big Corporate Power and Big Government. With each passing day, businessmen complain of more power being transferred from the private sector to the public sector and of ever increasing bureaucratic interference in their affairs. Once they sought to control government; now the emphasis is on a “fair hearing.” At the same time, however, the public learns of seemingly endless corporate transgressions—from pay-offs for local sheriffs to bribes for foreign diplomats—and hears evidence of monopolistic concentrations in one major industry after another. While businessmen see regulatory agencies as a bungling and unmerciful “Establishment” in its own right, the private citizen often sees these agencies co-opted by those who are to be regulated, and wonders who, after all, does rule—the government or the Big Corporate bloc.
Recent Mideast oil developments have also added an international dimension to the “Who rules?” question: is it us or the Arabs? Should the Shah of Iran or some other person like Sheik Yamani now be included among the most powerful people in Texas because of their enormous influence over the state’s most important industry? Clearly, their price hikes and political policies have made the state’s already giant energy corporations even bigger and more crucial to the U.S. economy.
These, then, are the main outlines and many of the important faces in the structure of Big Corporate Power in Texas. If examining their interlocks does not quite include all the powerful organizations and power holders, it at least provides the essential schematics of the state’s dominant political and economic force. And it is critical to understand that the state’s largest corporations, banks, and law firms—whatever their internal differences—do operate as a unified force, dancers to the same tune. The source of this unity is far deeper than interlocking directors and political party affiliations. It lies instead in a more general identity of economic interests—exemplified by the eternal struggle to preserve a “good business climate”—and in shared educational and social backgrounds. For the most part, the state’s most powerful men give the impression of being almost too gentlemanly, too soft-spoken for their roles. Seldom do they display the fist-pounding and stentorian tones commonly associated with being “aggressive.” They don’t have to. An Allan Shivers, a George Brown, an Erik Jonsson need never raise his voice; people seem to listen anyway.
While they may be business rivals, the leaders of Big Corporate Power also enjoy a common social life. Each major city has its hierarchy of men’s luncheon clubs like the City Club in Dallas, and the Ramada and Coronado clubs in Houston, and a similar hierarchy of country clubs: Brook Hollow, River Oaks, Houston Country Club. These are not merely convenient places to eat the midday meal or attractive family recreation spots, but true business and political centers, and it is as such that they thrive.
“The Ramada Club is probably the new 8F,” observes a senior member of one of Houston’s leading law firms. Though he speaks with expected bias toward his hometown, he may well be right. There is no other place in Texas where so many people nominated as the most powerful in Texas meet so often and for such extended periods. On any given workday, the main dining room will be crowded with the state’s most prestigious Big Corporate figures: John Connally may be lunching with James Elkins or Marvin Collie. Allan Shivers, Robert Stewart, or James Aston may be in town for a meeting of the board of one of their banks. There will be some major oil company executives in the room, perhaps a few Arab faces now, and a host of other Big Corporate officers. George Brown will usually be there, seated at his favorite right corner table, a vantage point from which he can face anyone who enters the room. On the occasions when he lunches with Oveta Hobby, friends can be seen passing by their table, imparting a respectful greeting and bowing noticeably. Meanwhile, in the men’s grill, other executives will be eating at “the round table” or drinking and playing cards much as the old 8F Crowd did in the Lamar Hotel.
After business hours, the Ramada Club often becomes the site of more easily recognizable political activities—a candidate review or a campaign fund raiser—usually in cocktail party form. “A ticket to a cocktail party at the Ramada Club is a one-way ticket to a contribution,” observed the scion of one of the big Houston law firms. He went on to point out, very much amused, that article three of the Ramada Club House Rules specifically states that “the Club shall not be used for sectarian or political meetings.” But then power, in the last analysis, may simply mean the ability to break such rules, even if they are one’s own.
[1] The bank position eventually went not to Mrs. Hobby but to another woman whose intelligence is greatly admired in Houston business circles, Mrs. John Blaffer. The daughter of Dallas banker Wirt Davis, a cofounder of Republic Trust and Savings Bank, Blaffer is a Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley. Her late husband, another Humble Oil heir, was also a member of the Texas Commerce board.
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