The Ten Best and The Ten Worst Legislators
Nineteen people you voted for and one you didn’t.
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As unique in style as he is in impact. Acerbic, earthy, plays the cynic at times. In debate, agile as an Olympic gymnast. A stranger to pedantry; never opens his mouth without sounding relentlessly right.
Admits to being pledged to Gib Lewis as Speaker for next session, so could conceivably even end up on the team. We doubt it, though—he’s never been one to suffer fools gladly.
Lloyd Doggett, 34, Democrat, Austin. It’s easy to find people who don’t agree with Lloyd Doggett, and it’s easy to find people who don’t like him, but it’s well nigh impossible to find anyone who doesn’t respect him. Assessments of Doggett range from “incredibly good” to “has four times the guts of any other state senator” to “adds immeasurably to the caliber of the Senate” to “so honest you could play craps with him over the telephone”—and most of those accolades come from his adversaries.
An indefatigable crusader for consumer causes and a critic of greedy business interests, but no Don Quixote. Supported the interest rate bill and showed a new willingness to compromise for the sake of winning, as when he exempted the all-powerful real estate lobby from his bill requiring political action committees to reveal their donors. In fact, he now draws criticism from both sides—from hard-core liberals who call him too accommodating and from conservatives who say he’s too rigid—which is probably the best indication that he has mastered the realities of legislative politics.
Still eminently worthy of the title Killer Bee; feared far and wide as a slayer of legislation. Intimations of a Doggett filibuster in the works were enough to make some opponents so nervous that they compromised even when he didn’t have the votes to beat them. Actually staged only two cursory filibusters (the Medical Practices Act and wiretapping), but used the threat of a talkathon to work the session’s most startling transformation: turning the funeral industry’s mandatory embalming bill into a pro-consumer measure.
Passed a weighty program of Sunset and ethics bills (the latter were mostly cannibalized into Billy Clayton’s ethics package), but his primary role was to be the lightning rod of the Senate, the one who stayed out in the storm when his colleagues went scurrying for cover. The only legislator willing and able to take on both the governor (insisted that Clements share authority over the state’s criminal justice fund) and the Speaker (his delaying tactics left Clayton’s beloved water fund fatally impaled on a point of order); even had some harsh words for the lieutenant governor after Hobby scheduled the wiretapping debate for the one time (Saturday morning) when a filibuster wouldn’t imperil other Senate action. That, however, was Hobby’s only safe course, for otherwise no one doubted that somehow, some way, Lloyd Doggett would have killed it dead.
Ray Farabee, 48, conservative Democrat, Wichita Falls. The compleat senator. Operates on a different level from everyone else, even the good ones: acts not as a representative of a single district but as a trustee of an entire state.
Nowhere was his overriding concern with public policy more evident than in final negotiations over the state budget, when Farabee stood his ground against House members bent on destroying social programs. Single-handedly fended off attacks on welfare and prison appropriations. Overcame objections to state-funded birth control counseling by exploiting House members’ moralistic impulses (“This program is one of the best controls against abortion and child abuse and, frankly, in the long run, welfare”). When the House wanted to stonewall the court decree to end overcrowding in state prisons, Farabee responded with calm appeals to logic (“We should be as concerned about overcrowding as the court is”). On the twelfth day of combat, the House abandoned the siege.
Not a do-gooder but a do-righter. At the same time that he was fighting for better prisons, Farabee was passing law-and-order bills to improve the management of the Board of Pardons and Paroles and to relieve the burden on the Court of Criminal Appeals.
Follows Senate protocol as though he wrote it. Never grandstands, never claims credit where none is due (he soft-pedaled the effect of his bill implementing teacher competency tests while House supporters were trumpeting it as an educational millennium), never shows disrespect for his colleagues. Inherited the chairmanship of the powerful State Affairs Committee from defeated Senate pooh-bah Bill Moore and, to no one’s surprise, put an end to the panel’s reputation as a burial ground for legislation.
Back in 1977 we said of Farabee, then making the Ten Best list for the first time, “…there is something about this soft-spoken, scholarly-looking senator that sets him apart—an air of inner strength, or incorruptibility, which suggests that a true legislative craftsman may be in the making.” Consider him made.
Susan McBee, 34, conservative Democrat, Del Rio. Unilaterally disproved the axiom that absolute power corrupts absolutely. As chairman of the omnipotent Committee on Calendars, brought democracy to a fiefdom that in the past has known only tyranny.
The committee’s seemingly routine function—scheduling floor debate on bills already cleared by other committees—conceals the fact that Calendars is a treacherous Strait of Hormuz that every bill must navigate in order to reach the House floor. Before McBee’s tenure, one word of disapproval from any member of Calendars was enough to relegate a bill to oblivion. Last session’s chairman, Tom Massey of San Angelo (now blessedly retired), kept the House in continuous turmoil by using his position to scuttle bills for reasons wholly unrelated to merit: personal enmity for the sponsor, opportunity for deal-making, whim.
McBee’s dilemmas: How to make Calendars less than almighty but more than impotent? Equally difficult, how to soothe the sensitive egos of committee members faced with the prospect of losing their life-or-death power over all legislation? Her solution: give them the power to wound but not to kill. Anyone on Calendars could blackball a bill for one week; after that, the majority ruled—seeing Calendars vote was as unlikely a development at the Capitol as an oil tax increase.
Next to Billy Clayton, McBee was most responsible for creating the spirit of rapprochement that pervaded the House this session. Succeeded not so much because of her rules as because of her personality: never sensational, never equivocal; the sort of legislator who regards minding her own business as her most important accomplishment. Showed her mettle early in the session during an election appeal by casting the swing vote in committee for a Republican challenger against a conservative Democrat—one of the most courageous and independent acts of the session. But the best measure of McBee’s virtuoso performance is that after a session in the most visible, most tempting, most often abused job in the House, she had received exactly one complaint—a call from Tom Massey.
Bob McFarland, 40, Republican, Arlington. A touch of class. Plays the legislative game the way Joe DiMaggio played center field: gracefully, instinctively, making the hard ones look easy.
Unmatched for breadth of ability; no one is as close to the top in so many areas. An outstanding committee chairman (Constitutional Amendments), a powerful advocate (won House passage of two of the session’s most controversial bills—manufacturers’ liability for defective products and college construction funding), a technician of the first rank (helped negotiate a difficult products liability compromise), and a skilled strategist (helped formulate the successful counterattack to a redistricting plan that gutted Republicans).
But more than talent accounts for McFarland’s stature in the House: he is the member who comes closest to being what other members regard as the ideal legislator. A litmus test of what is fair, reasonable, and good politics; never seeks refuge in ideology. The proposed constitutional amendment to lift the ceiling on welfare spending, a desperately essential bill, could not have passed without him. First helped persuade Bill Clements not to oppose it, then lobbied suspicious Republican colleagues to get the necessary votes on the floor. For this and other efforts, the Black Caucus gave him its award for the legislator who most advanced its causes.
Is regarded as one of the most unflinching and trustworthy of legislators and carefully cultivates personal qualities that enhance his reputation. Carries himself ramrod straight, like a statue looking for a pedestal; talks, both on and off the microphone, in a calm baritone that resonates proficiency rather than passion. Has learned the lesson that in the heat of battle, how you say something can be as important as what you say. “There’s something about McFarland,” says one lobbyist, “that always has a soothing effect on the House.”
Conducted himself outside the Legislature as he did in it, even in a moment of iniquity. Arrested for DWI at 2 a.m. one night in April (he had just flown back to Austin from an evening of Speaker’s race politics at Billy Bob’s Texas nightclub in Fort Worth), McFarland actually won points in the eyes of the macho Capitol crowd by declining to offer the usual excuses and denials. Said McFarland: “I guess I had one too many.”
Bill Messer, 30, conservative Democrat, Belton. The ablest young legislator to come along in years. In just two terms, has established himself as the point man for those who subscribe to the theory that what’s good for business is good for Texas. Far ahead of his sophomore classmates in influence, achievement, and intuitive understanding of the subtle tides and rhythms of the House.
Some would say there is nothing intuitive about it; they attribute Messer’s meteoric rise to astute coaching from father-in-law, veteran petrochemical industry lobbyist Harry Whitworth. But Messer is no lobby lapdog. Said a lobbyist who worked with him: “He lets you know whose bill it is. Either you take it the way he wants it or you find a new sponsor.” A case in point: as sponsor of the controversial interest rate bill, Messer informed banks that he wouldn’t go along with their craving to pile extra fees and charges on large commercial loans.
Messer’s six-hour floor battle to win House passage of the interest bill merits the Oscar for the best performance of the session. His strategy was to defuse potential opposition by preparing consumer-oriented amendments to his own bill, which he parceled out to his supporters and accepted without debate, thus appearing to be the soul of reason. Said a respected liberal: “He made it easy for me to be for that bill.”
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