Mayor May Not
Is Wichita Falls' Jerry Lueck an embarrassing rube or a man of the people? It's too close to call.
The local daily warned that something terrible might happen. In the week leading up to Wichita Falls' May 6 mayoral election, the Times Record News depicted insurgent candidate Jerry Lueck as uninformed, uncooperative, and unsophisticated, a ticked-off wheat farmer who was running only because his farm had been annexed by the city. The paper pointed out the inherent impossibility of the slogan on his hand-painted signs: "Less Taxes, More Water, A New Mayor." But despite lacking the News' endorsement, never having run for office, and being outspent ten to one by two-term incumbent Kay Yeager, after the dust settled, Lueck won by 33 votes: 3,574 to 3,541.
The local media turned up the heat on Lueck (pronounced "Luke") as soon as he was sworn in. The next day the paper disclosed that he had claimed a homestead exemption on a house in another county. It revealed that he had been on the giving end of a 1992 hit-and-run traffic accident. It reported that he carried driver's licenses from three states. Phonetic spellings of his more creative oratorical moments ran alongside statements from council members openly questioning his ability to grasp issues. By the time the Dallas Morning News ran a front-page story describing his sod-covered house; his yardful of trailers, tankers, and farm equipment; and the fact that he lived with a woman that he had identified at various times as his sister, his secretary, and his girlfriend, he was the running joke of North Texas.
The city's public face grew as red as the big Dodge diesel with Wisconsin plates that the mayor parks, always back-end first, in front of city hall. Wichita Falls has always been a little neurotic about its small-town image—aided in no small part by ridicule from this magazine, which once listed being a full-time resident of the city as one of the fifty worst jobs in the state—and the new mayor's increasingly high profile did not help. "I kept saying after we got Mayor Lueck that Texas Monthly was going to come around and do another story on us," says council member Arthur Bea Williams. And sure enough, here we go.
So how did Lueck get elected? Why would a city with that self-image choose this mayor? City manager Jim Berzina blames light voter turnout (12 percent) and overconfidence on the part of Yeager and her supporters, although more people voted in this election than when Yeager won her second term, in 1998. City attorney Greg Humbach points to drought-induced unrest (the city has been on emergency water rationing since last December). But the Times Record News got closer to the general consensus in a May editorial: Many of Lueck's supporters, the paper wrote, "harbor some glaring misconceptions or incompletely formed perceptions about the nature of our democracy." In other words, the mayor was elected by folks who didn't know any better.
Still, Lueck is not overly concerned about the paper's impression. "I'm here for one reason and one reason only, and that's to do the will of the people," he says in all earnestness. He looks exactly like what he is: a 65-year-old Army Air Corps veteran who has spent the past forty years minding his own business, which has included trucking, farming, and ranching. He combs his thinning gray hair up and back, has lively blue eyes, and speaks with a flat Wisconsin accent in a high-pitched nasal voice that runs from buzz saw—"That's a goddamned lie!" (at the city's assertion that he missed a recent luncheon because he didn't know what "brunch" meant)—to witch's cackle—"Oh, I guess I should have bought stock in the Times Record News when I ran because I've sure sold a lot of papers"—to mildly contemplative—"The elite and rich that control this town think that the more they disgrace me, the more people they can discourage from running."
He points to accomplishments that are different from those of your run-of-the-mill elected official. He is most proud of the self-designed house that the Morning News had such fun with, its twelve-inch-thick walls of poured concrete surrounded on three sides by at least four and a half feet of earth, with a yellow-brick facade that could front any number of small-town post offices—if it weren't for the horses grazing on the roof. "In thirty years what we save on utilities and fire and tornado insurance will pay for this place," he says. His self-sufficiency, and that yard full of resurrected farm equipment, gives him a unique notion of what he can do for the city. "You can tell the average person that we need new buses, that the old buses are all worn-out, but you can't tell me. I used to own a trucking company. You might be a big shot in this town and drive your Marcedes-Benz around, but you won't get anywhere without a mechanic." He keeps his message for the city simple: "My goals are to cut out conflicts of interest at city hall, make this an honest town, and see that everybody is treated equal."
And the mayor has identified people he thinks could stand to be treated more equally. One is his friend Ted Drummond, a Christmas tree farmer—and incidentally, one heck of a peanut roaster—who sees Lueck as his only voice at city hall. Drummond is furious that the city would not connect him or his neighbors to city water after annexing their land. Because he must drive more than three miles to fill a 750-gallon tank with water for his home and field, he is angry that the city council voted to build a $20 million coliseum, dedicating $8 million to it that could have gone to provide water. He cannot understand why councilman Dan Shine was allowed to vote to commit those funds when Shine's electrical company has the low bid on a $1.2 million subcontract to wire the coliseum. "All that annexation has gotten me is a new trash can and new taxes," says Drummond.
City manager Berzina has tried to answer Lueck's and Drummond's concerns. The city has run mains out to the annexed areas, as it has to neighborhoods throughout town, but the residents are responsible for getting the water to the individual homes. "I had to pay to personalize my water-sewer," says Berzina. "It's an established water policy that meets the state law, and more important, it meets the custom and practice that built this city." He says that increased tax revenue from the coliseum will more than offset the lost water funds and that Shine does not have a conflict of interest because his company's contract would not be with the city but with a construction manager working as the city's general contractor. City attorney Humbach, on the other hand, says that there is no conflict because there is no contract: A recent petition drive supported by Mayor Lueck has forced a January vote on the coliseum. If the referendum goes through and the contract is awarded, Humbach says Shine will have to resign, but, as Berzina points out, "Dan's term is up in May anyway."
Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it's the lingering drought, but these answers have not helped the mayor and Drummond to more completely form their perception of the way things should be in Wichita Falls. Nor have the explanations worked for some other people, judging from the reaction the mayor received at a recent midweek barbecue commemorating the grand reopening of a Ferguson Enterprises industrial supply superstore. Turnout for the lunch was decidedly not light ("Come hungry," advised the mayor the night before, "because there's going to be free food!"); and there among the plumbers, painters, electricians, and carpenters enjoying the culinary handiwork of Elks Lodge Number 1105, the mayor was actually cut some slack. "Don't let them give you any trouble, Mayor!" "Keep up the good work, Mayor!" Though the men chipping plastic golf balls at a ProFlo toilet bowl in hopes of winning a Ferguson gimme cap were too busy to pat Lueck on the back, most of the rest of the two hundred or so folks assembled were not only friendly but also downright appreciative that someone at city hall shared their views.
The sentiment showed up again that afternoon at a business expo at the town's Multi-Purpose Events Center. As Mayor Lueck walked the hall, stopping at nearly every booth to pick up the available freebies—pens, pencils, plastic rain bonnets, emery boards—he heard plenty of "Attaboys!" But for every person who cheered him on, another would take his hand to say hello and look over his shoulder to wink at me, as if we were in on some joke that was sailing over the mayor's head.
"You know, I learned some things during the campaign," Lueck said as he picked up an emery board with the name of the local funeral home on it. "I learned that if you hand out business cards at a function, you're going to see a lot of them on the floor around the trash can by the exit when you leave. And if you put your name on bumper stickers, you'll end up with a big stack of them after the election is over. But if you give people a fingernail file with your name on it, their eyes will light up like Christmas trees."
At a software vendor's booth, a sales rep asked the mayor if he needed to upgrade his Internet connection. "I'd probably need to get a computer first," Lueck said. "Maybe I'll buy it from you." But at the next table he picked up free mouse pads for himself and his girlfriend.
"Mayor, what are you going to do with those?" I asked. "You just said you don't have a computer."
The local daily warned that something terrible might happen. In the week leading up to Wichita Falls' May 6 mayoral election, the Times Record News depicted insurgent candidate Jerry Lueck as uninformed, uncooperative, and unsophisticated, a ticked-off wheat farmer who was running only because his farm had been annexed by the city. The paper pointed out the inherent impossibility of the slogan on his hand-painted signs: "Less Taxes, More Water, A New Mayor." But despite lacking the News' endorsement, never having run for office, and being outspent ten to one by two-term incumbent Kay Yeager, after the dust settled, Lueck won by 33 votes: 3,574 to 3,541.
The local media turned up the heat on Lueck (pronounced "Luke") as soon as he was sworn in. The next day the paper disclosed that he had claimed a homestead exemption on a house in another county. It revealed that he had been on the giving end of a 1992 hit-and-run traffic accident. It reported that he carried driver's licenses from three states. Phonetic spellings of his more creative oratorical moments ran alongside statements from council members openly questioning his ability to grasp issues. By the time the Dallas Morning News ran a front-page story describing his sod-covered house; his yardful of trailers, tankers, and farm equipment; and the fact that he lived with a woman that he had identified at various times as his sister, his secretary, and his girlfriend, he was the running joke of North Texas.
The city's public face grew as red as the big Dodge diesel with Wisconsin plates that the mayor parks, always back-end first, in front of city hall. Wichita Falls has always been a little neurotic about its small-town image—aided in no small part by ridicule from this magazine, which once listed being a full-time resident of the city as one of the fifty worst jobs in the state—and the new mayor's increasingly high profile did not help. "I kept saying after we got Mayor Lueck that Texas Monthly was going to come around and do another story on us," says council member Arthur Bea Williams. And sure enough, here we go.
So how did Lueck get elected? Why would a city with that self-image choose this mayor? City manager Jim Berzina blames light voter turnout (12 percent) and overconfidence on the part of Yeager and her supporters, although more people voted in this election than when Yeager won her second term, in 1998. City attorney Greg Humbach points to drought-induced unrest (the city has been on emergency water rationing since last December). But the Times Record News got closer to the general consensus in a May editorial: Many of Lueck's supporters, the paper wrote, "harbor some glaring misconceptions or incompletely formed perceptions about the nature of our democracy." In other words, the mayor was elected by folks who didn't know any better.
Still, Lueck is not overly concerned about the paper's impression. "I'm here for one reason and one reason only, and that's to do the will of the people," he says in all earnestness. He looks exactly like what he is: a 65-year-old Army Air Corps veteran who has spent the past forty years minding his own business, which has included trucking, farming, and ranching. He combs his thinning gray hair up and back, has lively blue eyes, and speaks with a flat Wisconsin accent in a high-pitched nasal voice that runs from buzz saw—"That's a goddamned lie!" (at the city's assertion that he missed a recent luncheon because he didn't know what "brunch" meant)—to witch's cackle—"Oh, I guess I should have bought stock in the Times Record News when I ran because I've sure sold a lot of papers"—to mildly contemplative—"The elite and rich that control this town think that the more they disgrace me, the more people they can discourage from running."
He points to accomplishments that are different from those of your run-of-the-mill elected official. He is most proud of the self-designed house that the Morning News had such fun with, its twelve-inch-thick walls of poured concrete surrounded on three sides by at least four and a half feet of earth, with a yellow-brick facade that could front any number of small-town post offices—if it weren't for the horses grazing on the roof. "In thirty years what we save on utilities and fire and tornado insurance will pay for this place," he says. His self-sufficiency, and that yard full of resurrected farm equipment, gives him a unique notion of what he can do for the city. "You can tell the average person that we need new buses, that the old buses are all worn-out, but you can't tell me. I used to own a trucking company. You might be a big shot in this town and drive your Marcedes-Benz around, but you won't get anywhere without a mechanic." He keeps his message for the city simple: "My goals are to cut out conflicts of interest at city hall, make this an honest town, and see that everybody is treated equal."
And the mayor has identified people he thinks could stand to be treated more equally. One is his friend Ted Drummond, a Christmas tree farmer—and incidentally, one heck of a peanut roaster—who sees Lueck as his only voice at city hall. Drummond is furious that the city would not connect him or his neighbors to city water after annexing their land. Because he must drive more than three miles to fill a 750-gallon tank with water for his home and field, he is angry that the city council voted to build a $20 million coliseum, dedicating $8 million to it that could have gone to provide water. He cannot understand why councilman Dan Shine was allowed to vote to commit those funds when Shine's electrical company has the low bid on a $1.2 million subcontract to wire the coliseum. "All that annexation has gotten me is a new trash can and new taxes," says Drummond.
City manager Berzina has tried to answer Lueck's and Drummond's concerns. The city has run mains out to the annexed areas, as it has to neighborhoods throughout town, but the residents are responsible for getting the water to the individual homes. "I had to pay to personalize my water-sewer," says Berzina. "It's an established water policy that meets the state law, and more important, it meets the custom and practice that built this city." He says that increased tax revenue from the coliseum will more than offset the lost water funds and that Shine does not have a conflict of interest because his company's contract would not be with the city but with a construction manager working as the city's general contractor. City attorney Humbach, on the other hand, says that there is no conflict because there is no contract: A recent petition drive supported by Mayor Lueck has forced a January vote on the coliseum. If the referendum goes through and the contract is awarded, Humbach says Shine will have to resign, but, as Berzina points out, "Dan's term is up in May anyway."
Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it's the lingering drought, but these answers have not helped the mayor and Drummond to more completely form their perception of the way things should be in Wichita Falls. Nor have the explanations worked for some other people, judging from the reaction the mayor received at a recent midweek barbecue commemorating the grand reopening of a Ferguson Enterprises industrial supply superstore. Turnout for the lunch was decidedly not light ("Come hungry," advised the mayor the night before, "because there's going to be free food!"); and there among the plumbers, painters, electricians, and carpenters enjoying the culinary handiwork of Elks Lodge Number 1105, the mayor was actually cut some slack. "Don't let them give you any trouble, Mayor!" "Keep up the good work, Mayor!" Though the men chipping plastic golf balls at a ProFlo toilet bowl in hopes of winning a Ferguson gimme cap were too busy to pat Lueck on the back, most of the rest of the two hundred or so folks assembled were not only friendly but also downright appreciative that someone at city hall shared their views.
The sentiment showed up again that afternoon at a business expo at the town's Multi-Purpose Events Center. As Mayor Lueck walked the hall, stopping at nearly every booth to pick up the available freebies—pens, pencils, plastic rain bonnets, emery boards—he heard plenty of "Attaboys!" But for every person who cheered him on, another would take his hand to say hello and look over his shoulder to wink at me, as if we were in on some joke that was sailing over the mayor's head.
"You know, I learned some things during the campaign," Lueck said as he picked up an emery board with the name of the local funeral home on it. "I learned that if you hand out business cards at a function, you're going to see a lot of them on the floor around the trash can by the exit when you leave. And if you put your name on bumper stickers, you'll end up with a big stack of them after the election is over. But if you give people a fingernail file with your name on it, their eyes will light up like Christmas trees."
At a software vendor's booth, a sales rep asked the mayor if he needed to upgrade his Internet connection. "I'd probably need to get a computer first," Lueck said. "Maybe I'll buy it from you." But at the next table he picked up free mouse pads for himself and his girlfriend.
"Mayor, what are you going to do with those?" I asked. "You just said you don't have a computer."
Add your comment »