The Best and the Worst Legislators 1995
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His slender frame and mild manner belie a toughness and a political savvy that enable him to navigate the currents of the 62-member caucus. Never was his skill more evident—or more needed—than on the final Thursday, when the governor’s number one issue, education reform, was in trouble. Buried in the final version of the bill was a provision that relaxed safeguards against excessive local property tax increases. Even mainstream Republicans were vowing to oppose the entire bill if the safeguards weren’t restored. Without GOP votes, the bill was doomed. But changing the bill was dangerous, to say the least. The House would have to debate whether to return the bill to a conference committee with the Senate, Democrats would air their own grievances about the bill, and the support for the whole reform package could collapse. Craddick came up with the solution: attach a compromise restoring some of the safeguards to one of his own bills, which could be passed without refighting all the education battles. No member of the Legislature did more to assure Bush’s success this session than Tom Craddick.
Beating the Odds
Rodney Ellis
Democrat, Houston, 41. Forced to play the game with the deck stacked against him, Rodney Ellis beat the odds and won. He somehow found a way to pass legislation benefiting minorities through the most conservative senate since the one-man, one-vote era began in 1965. Republicans had established a new high-water mark with 14 of the 31 senators, and most of the 8 white Democrats voted conservative too. Ellis also had to contend with Senate tradition, which requires that two thirds of the members agree to debate a bill before it can reach the floor. So he operated mostly be amending other senators’ bills—a process that requires only a majority vote. Not just any bills would do; he needed those that were all but certain to pass. So the welfare reform bill that was a gubernatorial priority became a vehicle for Ellis’ plan to reorganize job-training programs. When a Bush-backed tort reform bill came along, he rounded up the votes to block debate on the main bill unless its backers agreed to accept his amendment allowing lawsuits against insurance companies that redline, or discriminate against, property owners in poor neighborhoods. He didn’t always resort to amendments; he passed a groundbreaking reform bill limiting campaign contributions in judicial races.
Parliamentary skill alone does not explain Ellis’ success. He is a member of the Club, an unofficial group of elite senators who conduct themselves the way that elite senators are supposed to: Toughness is good, shrillness and criticism are not, and humor is essential. Ellis fits right in. When fellow Club member David Sibley of Waco proposed a state constitutional amendment to bar affirmative-action programs, Ellis said “no comment” to reporters, adding that he would have a written statement after he calmed down. He also has a knack for pithy observations that bring relief to tense debates. During a committee hearing on the telecommunications bill, with the Senate chamber crammed with lobbyists, Governor Bush escorted his father through the room. As the crowd ogled the former president, Ellis asked, “Did Southwestern Bell hire him too?”
For all Ellis’ skill and success, however, a trace of skepticism about him remains in the Senate. The knock against him is that he goes overboard on the issue of guaranteeing contracts for minority-owned firms, known as HUBs (historically underutilized businesses). He even tried to force HUB requirements into a noncontroversial city planners’ bill sponsored by GOP senator Bill Ratliff, who had supported two of Ellis’ most important bills. When Ratliff took him to task for holding up such a minor bill, Ellis relented. It has not escaped notice that Ellis is the majority owner of an investment banking firm that is a state-certified HUB, and while the firm does no business with the state, it certainly benefits from a political climate in which HUBs are regarded as a proper means of doing business. Rodney Ellis cannot stop the national debate over affirmative action from affecting Texas. He will not continue to command respect in the Senate if he tries.
Number Three
Patty Gray
Democrat, Galveston, 48. Before Patty Gray came along, only two women had appeared on the Ten Best list in ten sessions of ranking the Legislature: Sarah Weddington in 1975 and Lena Guerrero in 1989. One reason, of course, is that until recently there haven’t been very many women in the legislature. Another is that the Capitol is still a boy’s club, and women haven’t had much opportunity to take the lead on major issues. But it is also true that most women haven’t tried.
In the past, this is one of those late-night topics that members and lobbyists chat about over coffee after a long committee meeting. Not this year. Gray was the star of the sophomore class, the newest member with the brightest future. Already she has been a major player on budgetary issues, the environment, education, prisons, and horse racing. While she hasn’t been around long enough to have power, she has plenty of influence.
As a member of a special House committee looking at a Senate plan to halt auto-emissions testing, Gray decided early that the state couldn’t just ignore its contract with the testing company, Tejas Testing Technology. The House followed her lead and authorized a loan to Tejas during a moratorium on testing. She was the key player in the passage of a controversial environmental audit bill that gave companies incentives to report their violations of pollution laws. First she toughened it with floor amendments; then, when the sponsor was fumbling the debate, she rode to the rescue, taking over the defense of the bill in her anchorwoman’s voice. Once again the House followed her lead and it passed.
Gray sponsored two of the session’s most hotly contested bills: a rewrite of horse-racing regulations, which evolved into a struggle over whether Texas should have off-track betting, and a pension bill for retired teachers. Under intense time pressure, Gray weighed her personal antipathy for gambling against the economic woes of the racing industry and decided that a bare-bones plan for off-track betting was justified. But it didn’t reach the floor until just minutes before the final deadline, and anti-gambling forces talked it to death.
Her pension bill for retired teachers—which as usual was a fight between teachers who had retired recently and those who had retired long ago—had a happier ending. It gave retired teachers the biggest increase in benefits they had ever received, and the most money went to those who’d been retired the longest, many of whom were living near or below the poverty line. When it passed, Gray spoke to former teachers in the gallery: “This day has been a long time in coming.” In more ways than one.
Take That Hill
Rob Junell
Democrat, San Angelo, 48. How good was Rob Junell this session? He accomplished things no other House member in recent memory had done. He was a star in the House—as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, he assembled a budget that received an unheard-of unanimous vote—but he also managed to be a star in the Senate, where House members are usually about as welcome as termites. Invited to join backroom Senate negotiations on tort reform, Junell made the key decisions on the two most important bills in the reform package: setting limits on punitive damages and deciding who pays damages in cases involving several defendants. “He was like having a thirty-second member of the Senate,” says Lieutenant Governor Bullock.
Junell earned his unanimous vote on the budget by putting education first (“We listened to your priorities,” he told the House) and insisting that the financial shenanigans used to balance the budget in recent lean years be eliminated. Even after the budget was adopted, Junell continued to stand guard against raids on the treasury. He made the clinching arguments in a floor fight to eviscerate a bill that would have let school districts grant property tax breaks to industries and then get reimbursed by the state. Warning the House how much the bill could cost, Junell said, “We could have done a lot of good for $73 million.”
Junell’s more relaxed attitude was central to his success. Described as a “feisty fireplug” when he was honored as citizen of the year last February by the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce, the former Texas Tech linebacker seemed to smile more and lose his temper less than in previous sessions (although he humorous baseball cards that Senate staffers made up for budget writers noted that he had “beaned five agency directors”). “He acts tough, but he’s a soft touch for members with a problem,” says John Montford, his budget counterpart in the Senate.
Unlike most politicians, Junell is aware of his weaknesses. “Montford is more of a statesman,” he says. “I’m different. If you tell me to take the hill, I’ll take the hill. But if you ask me, ‘Should we take the hill? Should we go around the hill? Why this hill? I can’t help you.” Fortunately for Junell, the Legislature always has more hills to take but never enough people who can take them.
The Gold Standard
John Montford
Democrat, Lubbock, 52. With his fourth appearance on the Ten Best list, Montford ties the record held by former senators Babe Schwartz and Ray Farabee. He is the only legislator who makes the list not just for what he accomplishes but also for what he represents, which is the gold standard of what a senator ought to be: deliberate, fair, utterly unflappable, totally prepared; a sponsor of major bills, a guardian of the purse strings, a watchdog for sloppy legislation, and a soother of crises.
As the Senate’s chief budget writer and negotiator, Montford pinched pennies from regulatory agencies to keep money in reserve for colleges and universities. His trickiest problem was finding the funding for new medical clinics in South Texas, whose often-feuding senators regard the competition for pork as an Olympic event. Montford whittled $100 million in requests down to $24 million and still managed to divvy up the pot in a way that made all the contestants feel as if they were going home with a medal.
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