The Ten Best and The Ten Worst Legislators
(Page 6 of 7)
In idle moments staffers amused themselves by listening to a tape recording of Price presenting his bill requiring all public buildings to be accessible to handicapped persons (currently only structures built after 1970 have such a requirement). Not since Ethelred the Unready has lack of preparation presented so many pitfalls—and Price obligingly fell into each one. Asked the cost of his proposal, Price referred senators to the mandatory fiscal estimate attached to the bill. That was, as everyone but Price already knew, precisely the problem: it said no estimate was possible. Next Price offered an amendment that turned out not to be an amendment at all but a staff-written analysis of the bill. Then Price offered to make the bill apply only to buildings constructed in the future—which, as a colleague pointed out, was already the law. Finally Price moved to send his then meaningless bill to subcommittee, only to be told that, not being a member of the committee, he couldn’t make the motion.
Carried some of the session’s strangest bills—one required every agricultural product produced in or shipped through Texas to be labeled “product of the United States”—and cast some of the strangest votes. Remonstrated against, then voted for, a bill to increase interest rates on large bank loans; flip-flopped so many times on one utility bill that a desperate mayor from his district brought a local TV cameraman to Austin to film Price taking the mayor’s side before he changed again.
Actually succeeded in passing some farm-oriented legislation, partly because liberal colleagues appreciated his occasional don’t-take-me-for-granted votes that, at apparently random intervals, put Price on their side (fellow Republicans, however, didn’t; they twice chewed him out publicly) but also because they felt sorry for him. On the day one farm bill was scheduled for debate, Price told backers of the bill, “Everything will be all right as long as nobody asks me a question.” Nobody did, at least not until he was over all the procedural hurdles; then a colleague inquired if he could ask a question now that it couldn’t hurt anything. Sure enough, Price couldn’t answer it.
Senfronia Thompson, 40, liberal Democrat, Houston. The kind of politician who would have fit right in during the heyday of Tammany Hall: concerned only with parochial ethnic issues and tarred with the brush of taint.
For most legislators, trouble with the law means difficulty understanding the statutes; for Thompson it was the real thing. The only legislator to have a run-in with a district attorney over anything more serious than setting DA’s salaries. Investigated—and still under investigation—for charging personal phone calls to her state credit card, including 47 to a Galveston funeral home and 6 to an Oklahoma real estate man. When reports of the investigation hit the front pages, Thompson vanished, going AWOL from the House for nearly two weeks.
Had earlier stretched the edges of propriety by inviting lobbyists to a January fundraiser in violation of the universally observed custom that one doesn’t hit up the lobby during the session. Perhaps it never occurred to her that it’s bad form to ask people for money at the same time they want something from you—but it certainly occurred to lobbyists on the invitation list; one Capitol veteran flatly described the affair as a “shakedown.”
A washout as a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee. Interested only in black issues, especially funding for long-neglected Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern University; viewed other issues not on their merits but according to the you-get-yours-then-it’s-my-turn-principle. Had all the subtlety of an importunate debt collector: colleagues cringed when she shouted across the room reminders such as, “See, Mr. Heatly, I’m voting with you. I’ll expect a vote from you later.” This brazen logrolling worked against her in the end: when the time came to trim the budget to realistic size, she didn’t have the respect, and consequently lacked the clout to defend her ill-gotten gains.
Terrible on the floor: loud, blustering, and usually wrong; one who was not baffled by complexity but rather missed it altogether. Irate over the state’s approval of a dump in her district, she cut out funding (later restored) for regulation of solid-waste disposal sites—ignoring warnings of sympathetic members that without regulation, even more dumps would end up in her district. Opposed a Sunset-inspired proposal to reduce the burdensome training required of shampooers with “If you went to get your hair done, wouldn’t you want someone to recognize all the venereal diseases in your scalp?”
Here is Senfronia Thompson in a nutshell: appointed to the Election Code Revision Committee during the last interim, she attended only two meetings, left both early, showed up once on the wrong day, and then made a big fuss to make sure she was reimbursed.
Bob Ware, 22, Republican, Fort Worth. A freshman, who, by defeating notorious incumbent Tom Schieffer, performed a public service; it was his last. A throwback to a nineteenth-century Thomas Nast cartoon, in which politicians were characterized by large bellies and small minds. Sent lobbyists fleeing with comments like, “You didn’t help me in my campaign, but you can still get right.”
Displayed overwhelming ineptitude in losing an innocuous bill to extend from 500 to 750 feet the distance unmanned walk-up facilities may be located from a bank. The bill had already received tentative House approval by a 69-52 vote; banking lobbyists padded Ware’s cushion by persuading 11 nay votes to switch. What they hadn’t anticipated was that Ware would lose 26 of his aye votes by privately describing his legislation as a “branch banking bill”—as ill-advised as asking in old Salem where the witches were meeting that night. Things went downhill so far and so fast that one member went to the microphone to ask Ware, at 22 the youngest member of the House, “Don’t you want to have your twenty-fourth birthday in the Legislature?” Said one lobbyist thankful to be an uninvolved spectator: “It may not be the worst performance of the session, but it’s got a three-stroke lead.” Nobody caught up.
One of the most stoutly partisan members of the Legislature—a trait that got him in trouble with his fellow Republicans, who were deliberating how to respond to a Democratic legislator’s attempt at overriding a Clements veto. Since the Republicans are still a tiny minority (23 out of 150), they feared a vote along strict party lines would isolate Clements and endanger their own effectiveness; several suggested that the Republicans split their votes, but Ware, ever blind to subtlety, took offense at the slightest prospect of defection. “He suspected the rest of us of being tainted by moderation,” complained an irked colleague.
Has all the earmarks of a one-termer. Told his hometown paper that he voted against a loan shark bill, after previously supporting it, because “it was obvious the bill was going down to defeat”; went on to say he nevertheless supported the bill—thereby negating the political advantage of voting against it. During the banking bill debacle, was warned during debate that he was contributing to Schieffer’s political resurrection. What did the hapless residents of southwest Fort Worth do to deserve such a choice?
John Whitmire, 29, liberal Democrat, Houston. Nicknamed Double Zero: one digit representing his ability, the other his stature in the House. The comic relief of the Gang of Four, though how he wound up in fast company like Bryant and Coleman is one of the more mystifying questions of the 66th Legislature.
Seemed to walk around carrying a “Kick Me” sign. One member, Susan McBee of Del Rio, was so eager to oblige that after two hours of refusing to answer any hostile questions about her bill to cripple the school breakfast program, she made an exception for Whitmire. Sure enough, given the opportunity to help save an important program for Texas children, he launched a series of dumb, pointless questions that benefited neither his cause nor his reputation.
Whitmire approaching the podium was a misguided missile homing in on his own self-destruction. Offered to make peace with Clayton at the start of the session, saying he wanted to be on the team, then took the microphone to rant and rave for a rule to elect the Speaker by secret ballot—a direct attack on Clayton. Not content to quit while he was behind, proceeded to bury himself by going back to the microphone to say he was only kidding, just the sort of humor the Speaker—and the House—appreciate about as much as brucellosis.
Plumbed unexplored depths during debate on the appropriations bill by offering an amendment to eliminate funding for thirteen assistant commissioners of mental health, after admitting he hadn’t read the bill and had no idea what the commissioners did or didn’t do. His justification: “I was bored to death and wanted to shake things up.” A fellow liberal tried to turn Whitmire’s lark into something serious by proposing to transfer the funds earmarked for the bureaucrats’ salaries to child welfare. Whitmire opposed it. Craig Washington took the microphone to explain patiently to Whitmire, like a parent attempting to reason with a petulant child, that the substitute would help pass his amendment: “They’re trying to help you, John.” Whitmire still opposed it. The substitute passed anyway. Eventually a House-Senate conference committee restored the positions, as everyone, except possibly Whitmire, knew all along they would.
My Library
