The Ten Best and The Ten Worst Legislators
Nineteen people you voted for and one you didn’t.
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It is true that rules are made to be broken, and no senator can achieve greatness without breaking them. Lloyd Doggett, for example, frequently wasted the Senate’s time—but always for a strategic purpose. Pete Snelson left no doubt that he knew more about bilingual education than his adversaries—again, for a purpose: to wear down their resistance to compromise. Ray Farabee has found things in bills that sponsors either didn’t know about or wouldn’t tell. But Leedom had no purpose and achieved no result—except his own expulsion from the club.
Mike Martin, 29, Republican, Longview. Only miracles could have turned him into a decent legislator; he believed in them, but in his case, no one else did. Had only one bill in his legislative program—to require that creationism (the biblical theory of man’s appearance on earth) be taught alongside evolution in the public schools—and displayed no hint of interest in anything else.
On the Worst list not because of his views (Walter Mengden of Houston carried a creationist bill in the Senate with no adverse consequences) but because of his utter lack of substance. Like a bit actor who blows his only line, Martin messed up his one assignment. Didn’t get around to filing his bill until the last day possible under House rules, thereby assuring that it wouldn’t be heard in committee until there was too little time left in the session to pass it. Later tired to convert his bill into an amendment but didn’t know how—leaving himself easy prey for a point of order by Craig Washington that killed it once and for all.
Pathetically ignorant of politics and the legislative process. His first act in Austin was to “fire” the staff of the committee chairman he defeated last November, not realizing that chairmanships do not pass by inheritance. Proposed what maybe be the most preposterous floor amendment of the session—a plan to let each of the 150 members of the House appoint one teacher to a committee that would then draw up teacher competency tests.
Tangled with Washington in committee over welfare spending; afterward told a hometown reporter that Craig had threatened to get him beat in the next election. Oops—all committee meetings are recorded, and the tape revealed no such threat. Washington said, “There are two cardinal rules in the Legislature—you don’t lie on a member and you don’t lie to a member—and he broke both.”
House members found a remedy for Martin’s shenanigans: they shunned him as they would a leper. The House floor is a gregarious place that sometimes resembles the New York Stock Exchange on busy days, but weeks passed with no one stopping by Martin’s desk—by happy coincidence, situated by itself at the far right of the chamber—where he sat hunched over his mail all day. Most lobbyists avoided him as well; said one, “How can you talk to someone who’s carrying the round-or-flat bill?”
But Mike Martin is no joking matter. The merits of his bill aside, he is a full-blooded representative of a growing and dangerous political tribe, the single-issue politicians who don’t really care about politics at all. Are Martin’s constituents—and the state—better served by someone who spends all his energies on creationism or by someone who divides his efforts among interest rates, public school finance, consumer protection, and soaring property taxes on residences? The answer should be obvious: in politics, as H.L. Mencken wrote, man must learn to rise above principle.
Ken Riley, 34, Republican, Corpus Christi. The bullyboy of the freshman class in the House. Conducted a session-long seminar on how not to succeed in legislative politics: cuddle up to the lobby, insult your colleagues, flout the conventions of the House, design your legislative program for you personal benefit.
Broke the unwritten commandment against holding campaign fundraisers during a legislative session; saw nothing wrong, he said, with asking people for money at the same time they are asking you for votes. Billy Clayton alluded to Riley’s breach in presenting his campaign reform package, which finally put the commandment into the law books.
Riley fouled his own nest by feuding constantly with the rest of the Corpus Christi delegation. Sat mutely through a meeting with Corpus judges and law-makers to discuss creating new local courts, then without warning introduced a bill that ran directly counter to what the others had agreed upon. Filed a bill to raise the drinking age to nineteen—a proposal that had already been introduced by another Corpus legislator, Arnold Gonzales, who promptly charged Riley with thievery. Antagonized Corpus’s other legislator, Hugo Berlanga, by providing the decisive vote in committee to pass a tax administration bill that was damaging to Corpus Christi, then admitting afterward that he’d never read the bill. Later went berserk when the House Redistricting Committee released its Nueces County plan; called committee member Berlanga a “racist, pompous ass” because the plan split an Anglo community in Riley’s district. But the political effect of the bill was to help Riley and hurt Berlanga.
That left only Senator Carlos Truan uninsulted, and Riley soon took care of that. To embarrass Truan, he surreptitiously passed a resolution honoring Billie Pickard, a fellow Republican whose nomination as a Pan American University regent had just been blocked by Truan amid much controversy. The stunt was trademark Riley: gratuitous (Pickard doesn’t even live in his district), contemptuous (Riley had exploited House courtesy, which allows all members to pass noncontroversial resolutions routinely), and sneaky (when asked whom the resolution honored, Riley refused to say, violating the legislative understanding that when asked the right question, you have to ’fess up).
Made enemies outside the Legislature as readily as inside. When police groups backed a bill to impose badge and uniform restrictions on private security agencies, Riley, who owns one, retaliated with a bill against moonlighting cops. The rest of his legislative program was mostly lunges at headlines, from impeaching Judge Justice to allowing prayer in the public schools.
Wants to run for the Senate against the lackluster Truan. It figures. Corpus Christi has had such an unbroken line of nonrepresentation since the fifties that there’s a saying around the Capital: “If Corpus could find a worse senator, they’d elect him.” Riley may be in for life.
Chris Semos, 45, conservative Democrat, Dallas. A holdover from the pre-reform era of Ben Barnes and Gus Mutscher, when Speakers were lions and everyone else had better be a docile lamb. Semos was. Times have changed, but not Semos, and events have finally led him to the slaughter.
As head of the Dallas delegation, should have taken the lead in that city’s redistricting effort. Instead, refused to call delegation meetings or draw plans, leaving a power vacuum into which titans like Republican Bob Davis and Democrat John Bryant inevitably rushed, in a struggle so acrimonious and so evenly matched that it threatened to rend not only the delegation but also the entire House redistricting plan, right up to the moment of its passage. Meanwhile, Semos dutifully followed whichever side showed an inclination to appease his only desire: making two of Oak Cliff’s three seats safe for white legislators, a nifty trick since Oak Cliff is two-thirds black.
A four-term committee chairman (Business and Industry) who wields no clout in the House. Takes no controversy like a cat takes to water; when he can’t avoid it, spends his time assuring both sides that everything will turn out all right rather than hammering out compromises. It’s probably just as well, since he still doesn’t understand legislation: has spent the last two sessions trapped in a struggle between CPAs and bookkeepers, but still can’t seem to grasp the difference between the two. Hates for anybody to be mad at him but gets mad himself if someone testifies against one of his bills.
Suffers from the unfortunate anatomical anomaly first observed in William McKinley: he has the backbone of a chocolate éclair. Stands firm for only one thing—the interests of the Texas Restaurant Association, of which, as the owner of a Greek restaurant, he is a member. Made his committee a graveyard for bills opposed by the TRA, such as requirements for practicing truth in menus and for providing medical equipment in case a patron should choke.
The entire citizenry of Dallas might well have choked over one of Semos’s maneuvers. In order to feather the nest of the Texas Sesquicentennial Commission (dedicated to the wholly uncontroversial goal of celebrating Texas’s 150th birthday in 1986; chairman: Chris Semos) extracted $50 million from an urban park fund earmarked for his hometown. The money will wind up in Austin instead, used to construct a sesquicentennial museum. Will there be space for legislative fossils?
E. L. Short, 55, conservative Democrat, Tahoka. A regular passenger on the line of least resistance. Rides wherever the train of events carries him, even when it heads back in the direction from whence he came.
The kind of legislator who was more dangerous as a friend than as a foe; supported his causes as a rope supports the man it hangs. His main sin: he broke more vows than Henry VIII. Promised colleagues to support their bills and then, like old glue, wouldn’t stick.
To cope with Short’s frequent reneging, the Senate had to learn its own version of new math. Senate practice requires the assent of two thirds of the 31 members before a bill can reach the floor for debate—using standard arithmetic, 21 votes. But when Short was included, senators recomputed the number as 22. One who didn’t—and paid the price when Short reversed himself—confronted Short afterward, only to be told, “Don’t give up on me. I might be with you next time.” On another occasion, Short explained away his last-minute switch with “Yeah, I told you I’d vote for that bill, I just didn’t tell you when.”
If Short had been playing coy—holding out, say, for a favor in return for his support—he would have at least earned some grudging respect along with the resentment. But there was no method in his madness other than a proclivity to crater under political pressure.
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