The Best and Worst Legislators 1993
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These and similar incidents add up to an egocentric view of politics that is destined to produce failure. Good legislators don’t wait to be “invited” into the process; if they truly care about an issue, they throw themselves into it. Good legislators don’t vote against a budget because one item isn’t everything they want it to be. Of course there isn’t enough money for AIDS. There isn’t enough money for schools or prisons or anything. There never is. But the new budget does have a record amount for AIDS—everything the Health Department sought and enough to get all the federal funds available. (Maxey eventually switched his vote on the budget to yes.) Good legislators don’t inject their causes into inappropriate issues. It’s counterproductive to mix handguns and homosexuality. Single-issue legislators, whatever their obsession, quickly wear out their welcome. Glen Maxey has talent. If only he would broaden his interests, use the process instead of his mouth, and recognize that in politics one has to settle for what is possible, not wait for what is perfect, then he could do more for homosexuals and AIDS victims than just make speeches. And he would be a real hero.
Jane Nelson
Talk Is Cheap
Republican, Flower Mound, 41. There’s a reason why freshmen are supposed to be seen and not heard. It’s called self-protection. Jane Nelson proved the wisdom of the rule this session. She was loud and uninformed, a lethal combination.
You’ll never guess why Nelson opposed a bill to give all children access to immunizations. Because it might allow children access to abortion pills. When a fellow Republican suggested that the bill be limited to “preventable diseases,” Nelson still wasn’t satisfied that pregnancy was excluded. She told a staffer that she would have to check with the ultraconservative Eagle Forum.
Nelson’s style was to shoot off her mouth first and ask questions later. On the Senate floor she said that she had serious questions about a bill prohibiting discrimination by private clubs—but when the bill had been considered before Nelson earlier in committee, she had raised no questions at all. When the Senate passed its version of the state budget, she voted no, telling reporters, “My greatest concern was that my colleagues and I did not have adequate time to review the budget.” Senate Finance Committee chairman John Montford was furious; he had told senators that he would give them three days to study the bill, during which time budget staffers were available for private briefings. “Jane doesn’t want to get things done,” said a Republican colleague. “She wants to make speeches.”
This is the way it went, all session long. In the final week it was crystal clear that she had learned nothing. She challenged Montford again, claiming that the final budget spent too much money. Montford quickly whipped out a long list of spending items in Nelson’s district that he had included in the budget at her request. Was she volunteering to cut these? Then Nelson questioned the spending for debt service. Do you know what most of our debt service goes to pay? Montford asked. She didn’t.
“Prisons. Which prison unit would you have me close, Senator?” shouted the usually unflappable Montford, pounding his fist on his desk. “Tell me which prison you would close.”
Nelson’s performance was more appropriate to a bygone era when Democrats dominated the Texas Legislature and Republicans had no choice but to complain and vote no. Instead, it came at a time when Republicans exercised unprecedented influence and leadership in the Senate. They have the option to be insiders now to fashion solutions consistent with their admirable principles of keeping taxes low and government efficient. That is a job that requires responsibility preparation, and brainpower—three qualities Jane Nelson did not demonstrate this session. As John Montford said in his parting shot during the budget debate, “Talk is cheap.”
Special Awards
Mission Impossible
The assignment: Keep the public schools open and solve the school finance crisis with a fair plan that doesn’t hurt any schools. The struggle to meet his standard consumed the talents of two legislators who normally would be material for the Ten Best list. House Public Education Committee chairman LIBBY LINEBARGER (Democrat, Manchaca) displayed a nonthreatening, inclusive style that won the confidence of the House. But she was too reluctant to make concessions to Republicans that might have resulted in an end to never-ending lawsuits. Of course, House Republicans weren’t interested in making concessions either. Senate Education Committee chairman BILL RATLIFF (Republican, Mount Pleasant) kept school finance from becoming a partisan issue. Dignified and humble, he wasn’t so married to his own plan, which allowed poor school districts to annex business property from rich districts, that he couldn’t recognize the that the House’s pick-your-poison plan was more politically palatable and passable. Alas, the final plan satisfied only one portion of the assignment – keeping the schools open. Maybe the rest really is impossible.
Best Line
Rodney Ellis, Democrat, Houston. Republican senators, objecting to Democratic maneuvers to increase the number of black and Hispanic judges, shut down the Senate for a day by walking out—the same tactic used by a group of senators known as the Killer Bees back in 1979. Said Ellis of the Republicans: “They’re not killer bees. They’re killer WASPs.”
Better than Best
Seldom if ever has one person so dominated a legislative session as Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock, who ran the Texas Senate like an evangelist on speed. His agenda for the session amounted to addressing every problem facing Texas that he could think of. When the session was over, he had cleaned his plate. A budget that increased spending without raising taxes, a school-finance plan that staved off a court order to close the schools, and tough new penal laws were just the beginning; turf wars that had paralyzed the Legislature for years, from trucking deregulation to use of the Edwards Aquifer, had been resolved.
Topic A was how Bullock had done it. The Capitol was full of street-corner psychologists analyzing his obsession with detail, his compulsion for work, his drive to seal a deal, his impulse to chastise, his need for vote margins that reflected near-unanimity. People queued up outside Bullock’s office, grumbling that he was a control freak who dictated when the Senate inhaled and exhaled; then they went behind closed doors and asked him to dictate a solution to their battles. Bullock was desperate to lead, and everybody else, the Senate included, was desperate to be led.
How did he get his way so often? Through incessant use of facts, flattery, rewards, and old-fashioned threats. He trusted underused senators with major assignments, and they were afraid not to succeed. He communicated with unmistakable intensity, boring his unblinking eyes in uncomfortably close to a senator’s face in a manner reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson. He always knew the substance of an issue better than anyone else, and he had, as always, an unsurpassed feel for politics. Far from being weakened by a large Republican minority, he was strengthened by it; coalition building was essential, and no one can assemble coalitions like Bullock. Underlying everything else, he had a public spiritedness that was genuine; when he demanded that senators do what was best for Texas, they knew he meant it. He dominated the Senate because the Senate knew it could not have done what it did without him.
Honorable Mention
Rob Junell (Democrat, San Angelo) came oh-so-close to making the Ten Best list. As a rookie chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, he mastered the state budget but not always his temper or the ability to say no in a way that let people feel that he cared about their problems.
Three former committee chairmen who backed losing speaker candidate Jim Rudd looked like outcasts at the start of the session, but their knowledge made them indispensable in the end. The B team, as they referred to themselves, included Robert Eckels (Republican, Houston), Ron Lewis (Democrat, Mauriceville), and Robert Saunders (Democrat, La Grange). Others on the Honorable Mention list are Senator Teel Bivins (Republican, Amarillo), Robert Duncan (Republican, Lubbock), Senator Rodney Ellis (Democrat, Houston), Pete Gallego (Democrat, Alpine), Talmadge Heflin (Republican, Houston), Paul Sadler (Democrat, Henderson), and Ron Wilson (Democrat, Houston).
Best Mixed Metaphor
Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock. Warning business lobbyists not to oppose the Senate’s eleventh-hour plan to keep the schools open after the voters defeated Proposition 1, Bullock said, “This is the last train, and it’s moving, and if you get between me and the schoolchildren of Texas, I’ll wrap it around your neck.”
Worst Bully
Layton Black, Democrat, Goldthwaite. As the new chairman of the committee that oversees the business operations of the House, he could grant or withhold perks—and he never let anybody forget it. He bullied freshmen into changing their votes, tongue-lashed witnesses who favored bills he opposed, and reminded members of who he was before they voted on his bills: “I would respectfully request this committee vote this bill out, not only for the well-being of the people in Killeen, but maybe for the continuing aid and comfort of my colleagues.”
Best Amendment
Carl Parker, Democrat, Port Arthur. The wily Senate veteran helped kill a dumb bill that authorized lawsuits against people who disparage Texas produce in a manner not based on scientific evidence by announcing that he wanted to exempt children and sitting presidents who don’t like broccoli.
Furniture
The term “furniture” is used around the Capitol to identify legislators who are so indifferent or ineffective that they are indistinguishable from their desks and chairs—the Legislature’s least consequential members. Here is the furniture list for the Seventy-third Legislature:
New Furniture
Mary James, Republican, Aubrey
Tony Parra, Democrat, El Paso
Used Furniture
Senator Buster Brown, Republican, Lake Jackson
Charles Finnell, Democrat, Holliday
Sam Hudson, Democrat, Dallas
Jim Horn, Republican, Denton
Garfield Thompson, Democrat, Fort Worth
My Library
