The Best and the Worst Legislators
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Richard Smith, 49, Republican, Bryan
A superstar in the making. Just a sophomore, he already excels at every phase of the legislative game. Take one look at Smith on the floor as he walks from huddle to huddle, chewing on an unlit cigar, and you can sense that he understands exactly how politics works.
A case in point: Smith was a key player in one of the most crucial—and most dramatic—moments of the session. It occurred in the House Appropriations Committee, where Smith, who represents Aggieland, was a vocal supporter of additional funding for higher education. The committee had already voted down several proposals when, unexpectedly, Republican archconservative Bill Ceverha of Richardson switched sides and cast the decisive vote for adding $635 million more. When several of Bill Clements’ operatives pulled Ceverha into a back room to pressure him into reconsidering, Smith left the committee table and went to Ceverha’s rescue. “Wait a minute,” he said, flinging himself on the grenade. “Don’t beat up on him. I voted for more money than he did. If you’re looking for somebody to beat up on, beat up on me.” Ceverha held firm.
The mysterious tides of the House are no puzzle for Smith; he knows intuitively when to talk and when to keep quiet. Though a member of the insurgent Appropriations Committee octet known as the Pit Bulls, he didn’t antagonize committee veterans as most of his comrades did. Instead, he played good cop, offering compromise positions and soothing ruffled feelings. In the hectic final days of the session, he always seemed to be at the microphone during floor debate, yet he never wore out his welcome as he added an amendment here, asked a penetrating question there, and kept close watch on any bill involving cities (he is a former mayor of Bryan).
In a House where timidity seems to be contagious, Smith doesn’t shrink from a fight. When Republican hard-liners tried to send the appropriations bill back to committee, he asked tough questions that exposed the maneuver as a GOP grandstand play. Smith is never motivated solely by partisanship—or, for that matter, ambition. He is never devious or petty. It is a pleasure to find a gifted member of the House whose virtues are not weighted down by vices.
Terral Smith, 41, Republican, Austin
Universally liked and respected; a nice guy who finished first. He’s the House analog to Senator Ray Farabee—fair almost to a fault, someone who would rather compromise than win by running over people.
At the start of the session, Speaker Lewis made the inspired decision to depose the longtime chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Tom Craddick of Midland, and install Smith in his place. Smith made Lewis look good by becoming the best chairman in the House. Craddick had ignored environmental groups; Smith brought them into the process. Soon he had both the Sierra Club and the Texas Chemical Council singing his praises—the equivalent of making peace between the gingham dog and the calico cat. With Smith’s guidance, the committee passed needed legislation that Craddick would have sent to Siberia, including assurance of clean water for colonias in South Texas.
Smith is one of those rare members whose mere presence invests a cause with credibility. When he saw a colleague run into trouble while trying to pass a bill involving theft of services, he went to the microphone and rescued him. Smith’s announcement that he would defend the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee’s revision of the governor’s crime package forestalled a feared right-wing attack; it breezed through floor debate.
Smith’s few failures were no less impressive than his successes. When Bill Clements reversed his stance against new taxes in mid-May, Smith and Barry Connelly of Houston rounded up a dozen Republicans and went to the governor to offer their support for his new position. Nice try, no cigar—Clements reversed himself again. But the group Smith forged remains together, poised to play a central role in the special session. His other disappointment was the defeat of his own bill regulating underground water. Smith nursed the bill further than anyone thought possible, only to lose a floor fight late in the session. As the clock approached midnight on the last day to pass bills, Smith thought he might have turned around enough votes to win passage. Should he precipitate a lengthy floor fight on the long shot that the bill might pass, or give up on his own bill so that other members could have time to pass theirs? Characteristically, he chose the latter—the kind of decision that has earned him the respect necessary to get the bill as far as he did.
Jack Vowell, 60, Republican, El Paso
The conscience of the Republican party and, for that matter, the entire House. A Horatius at the Human Services bridge who held off armies of Republicans and conservative Democrats bent on laying waste to welfare programs.
The biggest attack came in the House Appropriations Committee on a day when conservatives on the committee were in a feeding frenzy. Vowell, who had drawn up the Human Services budget, stayed on his feet for the better part of the day, patiently explaining every number in a soft, calm voice, providing the answer for every inquiry. He fended off a possible reduction in Aid to Families with Dependent Children by showing that AFDC cuts would cost the state $200 million in federal Medicaid funds. Welfare critics questioned whether the increase in requests for state assistance was the result of bureaucratic empire building: Vowell tied the increase to the downturn in the oil economy. He forestalled any attempt to cut family planning funds by showing that unwanted children made future demands on the welfare and prison systems. When the long battle was over and Vowell had staved off most of the cuts, he left the committee room shaken. “I thought he was just going to boo-hoo,” says a lobbyist.
Modest and unassuming, Vowell looks more like a neighborhood grocer than a successful politician. Yet he is second to no one on the Best list in importance. A rock-ribbed conservative on business issues, Vowell keeps Human Services from becoming a partisan fight. He beat fellow Republicans who waged a floor fight against a study on teenage pregnancy; he refuted Bill Clements when the governor asserted that AFDC caseload estimates were inflated by bureaucrats. He has taken the debate over welfare in Texas where it has never been before—out of the realm of rhetoric, into the realm of fact.
The Worst
Betty Denton, 41, Democrat, Waco
A lifetime nonachiever. Her role in the legislative process is to make life more difficult for the people who have to get things done.
As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Denton had the responsibility for coming up with a budget for the treasury department. She wasn’t up to it. The problem, apparently, was that she couldn’t bring herself to cut the budget of a powerful statewide Democratic official, state treasurer Ann Richards—even though Richards herself had suggested a way to save tax dollars.
In Appropriations Denton played catch-up more than the Houston Oilers. “Wait! Wait!” she’d say. “What did they just do?” In one memorable exchange, the chairman explained that a motion had failed because it needed a two-thirds vote. Denton’s follow-up: “I have a question. Does it take a two-thirds vote?”
On second thought, maybe she was better when she wasn’t participating. When she did join in, the committee was treated to proposals like her rider prohibiting the Teacher Retirement System from making real estate investments outside of Texas. Republican watchdog Bill Ceverha pointed out that it was probably unconstitutional to tell managers where to invest. Denton: “It may well be, but I see no point in thirty-eight million dollars going to California.” Ceverha: “Even if they get a better rate of return?”
A stalwart TRS supporter over the years, Denton found herself in a session in which every budget-balancing plan (except, presumably, hers) called for the state to reduce its contribution to the system. Denton resisted all the way; then, after others had taken the lead in negotiating a compromise, she insisted on being the lead sponsor of the bill and presenting it on the floor. Otherwise, she fumed, she would stir up retired teachers against the bill. She got her way. “If pride of authorship goes before a fall,” grumbled a House insider, “Betty had better carry a parachute.”
Ted Lyon, 39, Democrat, Rockwall
Remember the most unpopular kid on the playground, the one who bullied all the others and then complained that nobody ever gave him any candy? That’s Senator Ted Lyon in a nutshell. When he isn’t threatening, he’s whining.
“He’s not someone who wants to work out differences,” said one lobbyist. “His first tactic is to intimidate.” When a conference committee was working on communicable diseases, Lyon demanded that his own controversial AIDS bill (it required doctors and hospitals to report positive AIDS tests to police and firemen on request) be made part of the package—or he’d kill the bill with a filibuster. The threat was unnecessary; a compromise was quickly worked out. When his bill to require motorcyclists to wear helmets ran into trouble in the House, Lyon again resorted to brow-beating. He summoned lobbyists with no connection to the helmet bill and gave them lists of members to lobby on behalf of his bill. The threat—you help me, or I’ll hurt you—was unspoken but unmistakable.
His legislative package was full of demagoguery, including an abortion bill that turned out to be almost wholly symbolic and an anticrime bill that was so bad (authorizing search warrants by telephone) that the law-and-order House didn’t pass it. He passed his abortion bill, but only after being rebuked by colleagues in committee for berating a pro-choice witness.
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