The Best and the Worst Legislators
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Inevitably there was an insurrection. Frustrated senators complained to Hobby, who formed a committee of the whole, giving each senator a negotiating portfolio. But when Glasgow did show up at the bargaining sessions, he only made matters worse. He would toss out an idea, negotiators would tinker with it, then he would abandon it and toss out a new proposal just when progress was being made. “He’s like a bullet in a concrete room,” said a legislator. “You can’t figure out where he came from, and you can’t figure out where he’s going.”
Finally Glasgow produced his bill. It was a home run, but the game was over—he had taken too long and had lost all credibility. He had such a small following that no one wanted to figure out what the bill did or negotiate with him further. The Senate, under pressure to do something about worker’s comp, passed a face-saving, do-nothing bill that was predestined to be rejected by the House, forcing a special session.
On the day of the debate Glasgow, whether from fatigue or pique, violated Senate rules by questioning colleagues from a sitting position, his body language conveying contempt. When another senator demanded that Hobby instruct him to stand, Glasgow snapped, “If my questions are annoying the members of the Senate, I’ll just withhold them.” Then he hurled down his microphone, slumped in his chair and disappeared in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Talmadge Heflin
Just Say No
Republican, Houston, 49—No, no, a thousand times no. That’s Talmadge Heflin’s political philosophy. His voting record has more nos than Pinocchio,more nays than Churchill Downs, more negatives than Ansel Adams. Heflin is the spiritual descendant of isolationist Senator William Borah, of whom it was written, “Borah, in his only avocation, rides regularly in Rock Creek Park, his only regret that he must proceed in the same direction as the horse.”
Watching Heflin vote on spending bills became a House diversion. The suspense lay not in how he would vote, but in how few of the 150 House members would join him. The House appropriations bill: 145-2. An emergency appropriations bill: 129-15. Dedicating funds for groundwater cleanup: 143-1. One day he voted against three bills that created dedicated funds (money that can be spent only for one purpose, such as building highways): 138-2, 131-6, and 120-12. Then one passed without a dissenting vote, 133-0. What happened? Heflin didn’t vote.
Heflin’s knee-jerk contrariety grated on Democrats and Republicans alike. “He gets mad about the federal government intruding in state business,” said a senior conservative Democrat, “but then he votes against spending the money to alleviate the problem.” A young Republican wanted to protest an action by the House leadership but thought better of it because “I don’t want to be someone who falls on his sword all the time like Talmadge Heflin.” When a fellow Houston Republican proposed a plan that would encourage banks to make small-business loans, Heflin mounted a one-man floor fight. “This is such a conservative approach,” pleaded the author, hoping he had found the key word that might get through to Heflin. No luck. Replied Heflin: “It’s a small-business welfare bill.”
What makes Heflin the way he is? “He’s smart but suspicious about everything,” said one lobbyist. “He thinks your information is tainted.” But another lobbyist had a different idea. Noting that members raise one finger to vote yes and two for no, he said, “Talmadge can’t vote aye. He was born with his index and middle fingers welded together.”
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Temper, Temper
Democrat, Dallas, 53—When things don’t go her way, look out. Her primary legislative tool is anger. She hasn’t learned-or won’t accept-that in politics you can’t always get what you want and that your opponents can have motives as good as your own.
During one memorable exchange, another senator started to ask her about her bill setting goals for contracts to be awarded to minority businesses. “This doesn’t take anything away from white men,” she interrupted. When the legislative budget staff examined one of her bills and produced what she thought was an inflated estimate of its cost to the state, she threatened a lawsuit. At the end of the session, one of her bills died on the House calendar, speared by a point of order. Numerous other bills had met a similar fate, but that didn’t stop Johnson from marching to the lower chamber, brandishing a letter from Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, and warning that she would sue the House for racist parliamentary rulings.
When she controlled her anger, as when she protested Bill Clements’failure to appoint minorities to state boards, she could be effective and even eloquent. But her rages undercut her own best interests. Johnson co-sponsored a bill allowing nurses to work more independently from doctors—a personal cause of hers as a registered nurse. But she harbored so much resentment toward physicians that she grilled friendly doctors testifying for her side. She voted against the bill in committee because it didn’t advance the cause enough.
There was a poignant moment late in the session when Johnson seemed to sense that something was wrong. She had made a snide remark about senators who were absent from a committee hearing while she was presenting a bill, and a colleague had said, “Now, Senator…” Johnson pointed to a fish pin she was wearing and said, “I always feel like I’m swimming upstream.” Yes, but why blame the stream?
Al Luna
Absent without Leave
Democrat, Houston, 38—An Achilles who spent the session sulking in his tent; a mighty warrior who refused to join the fray. His vulnerable spot was not his heel but his ego, and he was constantly tending to its wounds.
Just a session ago, Luna was a general on the front lines of the House—the head of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, the chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, a master at floor debate, an emerging force on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. But his troubles began with a smear-filled reelection campaign in which his opponent was managed by another Houston legislator, Roman Martinez. Returning to the Legislature, an embittered Luna set out not to get things done but to get his enemies. Once the model for the kind of minority legislator who rises above parochial concerns, Luna became the living stereotype of a pol consumed with his personal feuds. When Martinez tried to pass an uncontested local bill, Luna used a parliamentary maneuver to block it. Said a non-combatant member: “Nothing will get you in trouble here faster than picking on the author instead of the bill.”
Luna was mad at the Speaker for again naming him chairman of Science and Technology instead of a more prestigious committee; he went AWOL from many of the weekly chairmen’s lunches. He was mad at the Mexican American caucus for not picking the chairman he wanted; he went AWOL from their meetings too. He was AWOL from floor debate except to battle Martinez.
Late in the session Luna finally moved himself to action, like a great beast struggling to extricate himself from quicksand. He pushed his bill to provide scholarships to keep potential dropouts in school; he helped kill a proposal to impose paperwork on biotechnology research. It was so good to see the old Luna again. He still grabbed the lectern as if to shake some sense into it; his stentorian baritone filled the great chamber, penetrating right to the brain. But he fell off the high ground by blocking consideration of a bill whose lobbyist was related to a Luna foe back home. The next day opponents killed Luna’s dropout bill with their own point of order. He was back in the muck, and the whole Legislature was the less for it.
Bob Richardson
Just a Zero
Republican, Austin, 44—A political football who is kicked by all but claimed by none. With a look of deep concern perpetually etched on his face, Richardson gives the impression of someone who is expecting the worst—and he is usually right.
The debate over the criminal-justice reform package was not one of Richardson’s better moments. For once, the House was in a statesmanlike mood; leaders of all ideologies had agreed that the prison-overcrowding crisis was so severe that the Legislature couldn’t afford to engage in law-and-order demangoguery. Everybody got the word except Richardson. First he offered a “Willie Horton” amendment restricting prison furloughs. Richardson got no votes. Zero. Even old-timers could not remember another shutout. Undaunted, or perhaps just unwise, Richardson came right back with a silly amendment requiring parolees to take a drug test at their own expense before being released. Most House debate is formally polite, but not this one. “You realize that statistics are no substitute for common sense?” asked one opponent. Another was more blunt: “You’ve got to be a zero.” He lost again.
Things happened to Richardson that happened to no one else. One committee chairman explained a simple Richardson bill and waited for a motion to approve it. Someone asked the fatal question: “Who’s the author?” The chairman ‘fessed up. Snickers. The chairman: “It’s good legislation.” Silence. No motion. Meeting adjourned.
Richardson’s problem is that he just can’t seem to relax and fit into the summer-camp legislative atmosphere. He sounds like he is posturing even when he is not—a holdover, perhaps, from his days as a TV newsman. He loves to ask theoretical, what-if questions in committee, leading a colleague to say: “We get a lot more done when he’s not here.”
Dalton Smith
Public Enemy Number One
Republican, Houston, 42—It’s not easy for a freshman to become a pariah, but Dalton Smith worked hard at it, he achieved it, and he deserved it. Something about him rubbed legislators the wrong way-and they knew exactly what it was. “I don’t know how we got along without him all these years,” sneered a veteran Republican. “Why, he’s so much smarter than everybody else.”
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