The Best and the Worst Legislators 1995
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In 1991 Willis got state licensing officials to double the number of chances potential nursing home administrators had to pass a qualifying test, from three to six. It seems that one of his daughters had flunked the test. In 1993 he sought a change in state pension laws that would allow him to shift his beneficiary from his wife, who no longer lives with him, to one of his daughters without getting his wife’s consent. The provision didn’t make it into the final bill, so Willis tried again this year. This time, he got caught. “Oh, that’s the Doyle Willis amendment,” the pension bill’s Senate sponsor confessed to a newspaper reporter. Following an embarrassing round of headlines that squelched the ploy, Willis got his wife to sign a consent form.
We’re not talking peanuts here: Willis was first elected to the Legislature in 1947, or maybe it was 1847, and is eligible for an annuity of more than $65,000 a year. It would be worth the money to be rid of him. In his heyday he was known as Oily Doyley for reasons that have long since been forgotten but are not difficult to imagine. When he made the first Ten Worst list, in 1973, we wrote, “One of the least competent legislators, he has fed at the public trough for most of his adult life.” He’s still feeding. One of Willis’ bills this session would have given a tax exemption to veterans who sell agricultural property that they have owned for more than twenty years. According to a fellow House member, Willis estimated that only forty or so veterans qualified for the break. One of them was—who else?—Oily Doyley.
Special Awards
Best Quip
Former senator Carl Parker of Port Arthur, a liberal Democratic stalwart who was defeated for reelection last fall, came back to the Capitol as a lobbyist. When a business lobbyist asked how he was faring, Parker said, “Great! All your friends are hiring me to protect them from all my friends.”
All-Star Team
With the former managing general partner of the Texas Rangers occupying the governor’s office, baseball metaphors were in vogue at the Capitol. So here are the awards for the legislative leadership team, which had its most cooperative session in many a year.
Rookie of the Year: George W. Bush. The governor passed his entire legislative program without a hitch, including his most controversial proposal, home rule for school districts. When the session began , no one—except possibly Bush himself—thought that a strong education reform bill had much of a chance, but he paved the way by forging personal relationships with numerous legislators. In the end, it passed with ease.
Manager of the Year: Bob Bullock. The lieutenant governor had to handle a difficult lineup of seventeen Democrats and fourteen Republicans. From opening day on, he drove the Senate to handle the big issues early, as if he had had a premonition of disaster. It came true on March 26, when his parliamentarian and close friend of nearly forty years, Bob Johnson, died from a heart attack. Johnson’s institutional knowledge and his advice to Bullock and senators alike made him irreplaceable. And yet Bullock’s control of the Senate remained unwavering, if sometimes heavy-handed (he interrupted a debate over whether to pay a multimillion-dollar court judgment to whistle-blower George Green by introducing Green, who was in the Senate gallery, and describing him as “a man who has been wronged by the State of Texas”). After midnight on the last night of the session, he frantically ran through the final calendar of bills at the speed of an old Federal Express commercial. His critics called him a control freak, but his single-mindedness guaranteed that the state’s business got done.
Strikeout Ace: Pete Laney. A more relaxed leader than Bullock, the populist Speaker of the House put his mark on the session despite its overwhelmingly pro-business tilt. Laney is a farmer from tiny Hale Center, north of Lubbock, and like most farmers, he has never looked kindly on big concentrations of economic power. It was no coincidence that any interest group fitting that description struck out in Laney’s House: big banks (they lost one key issue by a vote of 142-0 and another never came up for a vote), big insurance companies (they will have to lower their rates because of tort reform), and big utilities (they didn’t get the protection against competition that they sought).
Honorable Mention
At the top of the Honorable Mention list is Fannett Democrat Mark Stiles. He has a record worthy of a Ten Best legislator, but like last year’s Aggie football team, which was denied a Cotton Bowl bid because it was on probation, he is ineligible. Newspaper reports have questioned whether Stiles, the president of a cement company, has used his position to become a subcontractor on major state construction projects. The controversy caused him to cast a neutral “present” vote on the state budget.
Old Reliables
Allen Hightower, Democrat, Huntsville
Kenny Marchant, Republican, Coppell
Curtis Seidlits, Democrat, Sherman
Senator David Sibley, Republican, Waco
Steve Wolens, Democrat, Dallas
Career Years
Toby Goodman, Republican, Arlington
Todd Hunter, Democrat, Corpus Christi
Steve Ogden, Republican, Bryan
John Smithee, Republican, Amarillo
Dianne Delisi, Republican, Temple
Comers
Fred Bosse, Democrat, Houston
Robert Duncan, Republican, Lubbock
Scott Hochberg, Democrat, Houston
Senator Jerry Patterson, Republican, Pasadena
Best Nickname
Senate Democrats began referring to JANE NELSON, Republican, Flower Mound, as Calamity Jane, or just plain Calamity, after she repeatedly shot down efforts to reach a compromise on the sensitive issue of affirmative action.
Furniture
The term “furniture” first came into use around the Capitol to describe members who, by virtue of their indifference or ineffectiveness, were indistinguishable from their desks, chairs, and spittoons. It is now used casually and more generally to identify the most inconsequential members. Here is the unusually large furniture list for the Seventy-fourth Legislature.
New Furniture
Gary Elkins, Republican, Houston
Judy Hawley, Democrat, Portland
Barbara Rusling, Republican, Waco
Gilbert Serna, Democrat, El Paso
Burt Solomons, Republican, Carrollton
Dale Tillery, Democrat, Dallas
Used Furniture
Homer Dear, Democrat, Fort Worth
Joe Driver, Republican, Garland
Bob Glaze, Democrat, Gilmer
Roberto Gutierrez, Democrat, Mcallen
Jesse Jones, Democrat, Dallas
Senator Gregory Luna, Democrat, San Antonio
Huey Mccoulskey, Democrat, Richmond
Jim Pitts, Republican, Waxahachie
Buddy West, Republican, Odessa
Antique Furniture
Charles Finnell, Democrat, Holliday
Sam Hudson, Democrat, Dallas
Senator Don Henderson, Republican, Houston
Best Additions to the Legislative Lexicon
The legislature has a language all its own. Some terms, such as “flake” (to renege on a promise to support or oppose a bill), have been in use for many years. Others, such as “lobster” (a lobbyist), are newer. Here are the latest expressions to come out of the Capitol.
BELLFARE: In general, a telecommunications bill regarded by opponents as excessively generous to Southwestern Bell. In particular, the one that passed this session.
HUBCAP: An attempt to block an affirmative-action provision for HUBs (historically underutilized businesses) that gives minority-owned firms a share of state contracts.
RIG COUNT: The number of TV camera tripods in the Capitol on a given day. A high rig count is a sure sign that a major issue is about to be debated.
Dishonorable Mention
This year only nine legislators made the Worst list. The final slot remains vacant because the only other lawmakers who committed blunders bad enough to land them in the bottom ten had more credits to their name than demerits: Ron Wilson, Democrat, Houston, and Judith Zaffirini, Democrat, Laredo.
Wilson played the race card as if it were the ace of trumps. In one of the session’s pivotal moments, he donned Ku Klux Klan regalia to attend Republican senator David Sibley’s press conference about his proposal to eliminate affirmative-action programs. Said Wilson: “I was rummaging around in Senator Sibley’s closet and dredged this up.” His antics—and their message that questioning affirmative action is illegitimate and racist—destroyed the atmosphere of goodwill that is essential to finding common ground through the legislative process. Republican opposition hardened. Both the House and the Senate fought over affirmative action for the rest of the session, with the result that blacks were the big losers. Wilson’s actions caused his side to cede any claim to the moral high ground. Yet, when he got off the subject of race, he was a powerful and unpredictable force; he sponsored the concealed-weapons bill, going against the grain of black urban Democrats, and he was the member who best knew the arcane House rules and how to use them to get what he wanted.
Zaffirini is the most effective senator South Texas has ever had—so effective, in fact, that she drives her colleagues nuts with her schemes to grab goodies for her impoverished district. She usually succeeds, because she is incredibly relentless and hardworking (she arrives at the Capitol before five in the morning), but this year she tried to grab too much. Without advance warning, she introduced a bill to shift Texas A&M International University in Laredo to the University of Texas system. The bill zipped through the Senate, but the Aggies declared war and stalled it to death in the House. The rift her bill opened between the state’s two big universities, which usually try to maintain a united political front, still hasn’t healed. Meanwhile, state leaders have decided that before any future legislative meddling with colleges can take effect, it must be approved by the higher education coordinating board. Zaffirini’s overreaching canceled out an otherwise excellent session, in which she passed major bills overhauling the welfare and Medicaid systems.
My Library
