The Ten Best and The Ten Worst Legislators
It began with the Capitol almost burning down. It ended with Governor Mark White burning up over teacher salaries. But in between, the 68th Legislature was anything but fiery.
The predominant emotion during the 1983 session was anxiety—something new to Texas politics. In recent years the Legislature has had lots of money to spend, low turnover, and little pressure from the public. Suddenly the rules changed. The good old days of multibillion-dollar surpluses were replaced by a budget crunch. Almost a third of the House and Senate was new, the most radical turnover since Sharpstown. And as is always the case when times are hard, people wanted government to do something.
The budget crunch seemed to take the fun out of the Legislature; there wasn’t even any room to logroll. The session plodded along dispiritedly. Mark White couldn’t decide whether he wanted a tax increase. Then he couldn’t decide what kind of increase he wanted if he wanted one. Early on, the Senate bogged down in a battle over Bill Clements’ holdover appointments and couldn’t get unstuck; the House bogged down while Speaker Gib Lewis tried to undo the damage of his failure to disclose his financial holdings. Nothing happened. Then, when the big issues- trucking deregulation, utility reform, interest rates- finally reached the floor, they all fizzled out into deals with no clear winner. April turned into May and the governor still hadn’t phoned in from Mars to say what he wanted. Horse racing died. The son of son of son of water package died. Teacher salaries died. The tax bill was murdered.
A bad session? Not at all. In fact, while the headline-grabbing issues were running into trouble, the budget crunch was having a completely unforeseeable effect on the session: it was turning out to be a blessing in disguise. After a decade on the crest of the oil boom, the state bureaucracy was cushioned in blubber. The budget crunch forced the Legislature to hunt for all the fat that had accumulated over the years. It found plenty- especially in higher education, which underwent its first close inspection since the huge expansion of the sixties and early seventies.
Almost all the Legislature’s accomplishments can be traced back to the money crunch. Without it, prison reform would have been impossible; the state would have gone on building maximum-security prisons ad infinitum. The crunch eased the way for PUC reform and lower interest rates too.
It was, in sum, a pretty good record. To make it better, this was one of those rare sessions when the good was not canceled out by the bad. The Legislature passed only one bill that should shame the collective conscience: the one that made it next to impossible for cities to get rid of existing billboards—and Mark White saved the day by vetoing it. In fact, the only group that didn’t fare well this session was teachers, who didn’t get their 24 per cent pay raise.
That defeat did not augur well for White, who had made education and teacher pay his number one priority. But then, little did. By remaining aloof from the tough negotiating sessions on PUC reform in the House and Senate, he blew his chance to earn legislators’ respect choosing instead to stick with the one issue, an elected commission, that he couldn’t and shouldn’t have won. His tax bill follies were pathetic, as he successively embraced and dismissed highway bonds, gasoline taxes, severance taxes, and sin taxes. His treatment of legislators, including stumping against several in their home districts, made Bill Clements look like Emily Post. Without question he was the big loser of the session.
Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby, suzerain of the Senate, was the big winner. If he were eligible for the Ten Best list, he would be at the top. During his tenure, Hobby has reshaped the Senate in his image, changing it from a brawling House of Commons to a restrained House of Lords. The best senators are Hobby’s alter egos on the floor: never provincial, always pragmatic, only interested in sound public policy.
Then there’s Gib. His ethics problems were foolish (and illegal; he paid an $800 fine in May), and his limited understanding of substance was deplorable. Yet he was never in any serious danger of palace coup, even when he was at his nadir. Why not? It was partly because Lewis is not a threat to the House. While his predecessor Billy Clayton was a strong prince with week barons, Lewis is a weak prince with strong barons; in this session the committee chairmen had most of the skill and most of the power. But it’s also because Lewis did some things right this session. He was right to oppose the tax bill (even if their was a lot of self interest in that decision); a tax bill would have destroyed the discipline needed to cut the fat out of the budget. And his rule change to choose the members of the appropriations conference committee exclusively from among chairmen of the substantive budget and oversight subcommittees- that is, from experts- was a stroke of genius. It was a built-in brake on logrolling. This year there are more major committee chairmen on our Ten Best list and fewer on our Ten Worst list than ever before; Lewis deserves some credit for that.
Our criteria for Best and Worst rest on personality rather than ideology, because that is how legislators judge their colleagues. They don’t want to know whether a member is conservative or liberal; they want to know whether he is smart or dumb, honest or venal, industrious or lazy, open-minded or closed-minded, straightforward or backstabbing. Apart from openly partisan battles like redistricting, an accurate assessment of personality is far more useful to a legislator than the knowledge that someone is a Republican or a Democrat.
A legislator on the Ten Best list uses his good qualities to the fullest. He wants to be at the center of action, and his colleagues what him there. He inspires respect rather than fear. To succeed he must be a student of the process- the rules, the rhythms, the reins of power- and the better student he is, the more he will succeed.
Negative qualities are not enough to land a legislator on the Ten Worst list; it is the aggressive use of such qualities that is fatal. The old adage “Lead, follow, or get out of the way” is peculiarly applicable to the intensity of the brief session. In life the sin may be not trying to lead; in the Legislature it is trying when one is unable.
Of last session’s Good Guys, only three repeated: Ray Farabee, Bob McFarland (who moved from the House to the Senate), and Bill Messer. As for the Bad Guys, let us all breathe a collective sigh of relief: eight of them aren’t here to kick around anymore. Two returned to try again. Senator John Leedom was still good for a few laughs, but he’d lost his shock value. As for Senator Carlos Truan, he confined his bumbling to issues so minor that he too escaped.
The Ten Best
Kent Caperton, Democrat, Bryan.
Sophomore Caperton came into his own this term as a brilliant forger of coalitions, the archetypal New Senator: the young moderate who can-and will- deal on anything. Hardly the kind of guy you’d peg as an Aggie; small and unprepossessing, with thinning hair and a prominent forehead, he’s more brain than brawn. Unlike some of his other bright colleagues, uses his intelligence as a tool rather than a weapon: doesn’t put anyone down, doesn’t make enemies. Attacked a huge work load with energy, discipline, and organization; full of enthusiasm for the job of being a senator.
Classic Caperton scene: late at night, in some conference room, extracting commitments from factions warring over utilities regulation or gas credit cards or venue legislation-the kind of major, complex issues that can make a senator’s reputation. Negotiating endlessly with crack lobbyists on such hotly contested issues is even less fun than being locked in a room full of two-year-olds who haven’t had their naps. But Caperton’s blend of patience, humor, and toughness invariably carried the day.
Knew how to play good cop-bad cop despite his deceptively mild appearance; seemed to have a sixth sense about where the pressure points were, where each side could and couldn’t give. Since 1963 one legislator after another has attempted to revamp Texas’ cumbersome venue law, which governs where lawsuits can be tried; not one could get antagonistic trial lawyers and defense counsel into line. Caperton did. With negotiations falling apart, he shrewdly recruited Supreme Court chief justice Jack Pope, in whose soothing presence both sides turned reasonable and gave up points they held dear.
Not loath to take on the big guys. During negotiations over the credit card processing fee that oil companies charge gas station operators, took on Exxon’s world vice president for marketing- and prevailed. Never too full of himself to attend to the small stuff: testified for his compromise gas credit card bill in front of a House committee, something few senators deign to do.
Keeps the pressures at baby by relying on a top-notch staff. As a new member of the important Finance Committee, hired an LBJ School of Public Affairs graduate specifically to follow financial issues. Some fault him for overreliance on aides during PUC negotiations but as legislative issues grow more complicated, Caperton’s efficient use of staff may be the wave of the future.
Senate-watchers occasionally gripe that Caperton has a finger too often to the wind and is too eager to deal rather than fight. They point to the PUC legislation, where, they say, he didn’t wrest enough consumer concessions. In fact, he was far better for consumers on the PUC than was Lloyd Doggett, who bothered to attend precious few of thirty-plus negotiating sessions. And whenever Caperton appeared on the scene, things just worked better. It once seemed almost too much to hope that mossback Bill Moore would be replaced by someone who would undo some of the mischief his district has been responsible for over the years. But it’s happening.
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