The Best and the Worst Legislators
For 140 days the seventy-seventh legislature searched for its personality without finding it. This was a budget-trimming session in which money was tight. No, it was a free-spending session in which state expenditures increased by $14 billion.
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Mario Gallegos
A retired firefighter who threw gasoline on every combustible issue, Mario Gallegos confused ranting with representing. Content to let other senators do the real work, the voluble Gallegos contributed hot-tempered speeches when cool reason was needed. It seemed nothing could escape the racist tag: a traffic-safety bill banning teens from riding in the bed of a pickup (forget about saving lives; all Gallegos cared about was whether the police would have an excuse to stop Hispanic drivers); a bill limiting teens from late-night driving unless an adult is in the car (ditto); a bill requiring high school students to take the the college-bound curriculum if they planned to seek the automatic college admission awarded to top 10 percenters (obviously a trick to keep minorities out of college); even a proposal to move back the birth date for entering kindergartners (somehow, in Gallegos' mind, an idea that would affect minority kids more than other kids). Some lawmakers always seem to have an ace up their sleeve; with Gallegos, it's an entire pack of race cards.
His indifference to the legislative process was highlighted the day two senators, Democrat Royce West and Republican Robert Duncan, offered a carefully negotiated compromise on a bill to ban racial profiling, the practice of police officers making traffic stops based on race. When Duncan offered an amendment that won badly needed Republican support, Gallegos petulantly declared, "I don't like your amendment." How helpful. Thanks for letting us know how to make it better. Meanwhile, in the real world of problem-solving rather than just griping, Texas police departments will soon begin installing video equipment that will shed light on the nefarious practice and, hopefully, reduce it, thanks to West and Duncan's hard work.
At least he could be counted on for comic relief—what Republican observers took to calling "Mario moments." When the GOP's David Sibley unveiled a redistricting map with new Senate boundary lines, Gallegos mentioned his own previous experience as a co-chair of the redistricting committee. In other words, he's a guy who knows what's going on. Then he asked Sibley if his plan complied with court rulings, "you know, Miranda rules."
Yes, Senator Gallegos, you have the right to remain silent—and everyone fervently wishes you would.
Domingo Garcia
Domingo Garcia is a one-man leper colony. Nobody wants to be around him. What's worse, the disease is self-inflicted. He set out to make himself the most despised member of the House, and it is about the only thing of note he has accomplished in his three terms.
To achieve absolute-zero status, you have to do something really special. Garcia was up to the challenge. In the spring of 2000 he set out to end the careers of four of his Democratic colleagues from Dallas and one from Fort Worth. He sought Hispanic opponents in the Democratic primary for Steve Wolens, Dale Tillery, Harryette Ehrhardt, and Lon Burnam, all of whom are white, and Terri Hodge, who is African American. None of Garcia's agents were successful, but it didn't matter: He had violated an ancient legislative taboo against actively seeking the defeat of one's colleagues. The taboo exists for a good reason, which is that the legislative process cannot function without underlying goodwill and civility, and nothing destroys goodwill and civility faster than trying to end someone's career.
The contempt for Garcia erupted for all to see during the debate over the ill-fated campaign-finance bill. He offered an amendment to impose a $500 fine on candidates who published or broadcast false information about an opponent. Uh-oh. Up came Wolens to the microphone with a question: "Can I make your amendment retroactive fifteen years, to the last time you ran against me?" Uh-oh again. Up came Hodge: "Are you saying that if I put on my campaign literature that you are a great guy and an outstanding representative that I could be charged a five-hundred-dollar fine?"
The irony is that Garcia, who apparently believes that Hispanics ought to represent Hispanics, cannot effectively represent his constituents. He wants a law school and a pharmacy school for South Dallas; he wants state universities to de-emphasize standardized test scores in admitting students; he wants the state's electoral votes in presidential elections to be awarded by congressional district instead of winner-take-all. But he is such a marked man that he has no hope of getting anything done; indeed, he acknowledged to the Dallas Morning News that he had to farm out several of his bills to other legislators. And he has no one to blame but himself.
Rick Green
I do not like thee, Mr. Green
Exactly why I cannot ween.
But this I say, although it's mean:
I do not like thee, Mr. Green.
Something about Rick Green just drives his house colleagues nuts. Maybe it's things like his bill to let parents opt out of required immunizations for their children (currently allowed only for religious reasons). Maybe it's things like the way he introduced his bill in committee: "If you had told me a year ago I would spend this much time dealing with shots, I would have assumed it was a gun bill." Maybe it's things like his argument for his bill, that three times as many kids are injured by shots as have gotten the disease the shot is intended to prevent. (Could it be that immunizations are the reason so few children get the disease?)
Still, one bad bill and an annoying style does not a Worst legislator make. No, Green had to go out and earn his notoriety. No problem. He spent the session embroiled in ethical pratfalls. First he sponsored a fundraiser for the Torch of Freedom Foundation, which he founded, and sold tickets to lobbyists; solicitations for charitable foundations do not violate prohibitions against fundraising during a session—but the executive director of Common Cause told the Dallas Morning News that such activity smacks of a "lobbyist shakedown." Next, published reports revealed that lawyer Green had worked successfully to secure a state parole for a family friend and associate of a Green family business who had been convicted of defrauding investors of $30 million (the Greens were not linked to the fraud). The man had loaned $400,000 to the Green family, most of which had been forgiven in various transactions. Finally, Green appeared in an infomercial, sitting in his Capitol office and walking through the halls of state, for Focus Factor, a company that sells nutritional supplements to "supercharge your brain." When word of this made the rounds, he asked that he be edited out of the infomercial. Forget the ethical issues; the real scandal is, Who decided that Rick Green was the exemplar of a supercharged brain?
Suzanna Gratia Hupp
Suzanna Gratia Hupp is articulate, striking, and charismatic. She gives a rousing speech. She has had to cope with sudden tragedy in her life, the death of her parents in the 1991 Luby's Cafeteria massacre in Killeen. She ought to be an inspiration to her House colleagues and a rising political star. Sad to say, she is on a different path.
When Hupp has a bad idea, it's a doozy. One of her bills would have sealed from the public (including potential employers) the list of persons who are licensed to carry concealed handguns. Another proposal would have created a right to privacy in the Texas Constitution that critics said would negate open-meetings and open-records laws. And these bills weren't even close to being her worst. That dubious honor goes to one that would have let principals and superintendents in counties with fewer than 20,000 people pack heat in school. Mercifully, the only bill she was able to pass concerned the Clearwater Underground Water Conservation District.
Hupp can be a tenacious adversary in debate, but she has a tendency toward the melodramatic, playing the role of a Greek chorus commenting on the action. "Many of you may find it difficult to vote against this," she said during the hate crimes battle, as she offered an amendment to increase the penalties not just for hate crimes but for all crimes of violence. The gratuitous remark made clear that her amendment was just a "gotcha!" ploy to force the bill's supporters to cast a politically dangerous vote against increasing penalties for heinous offenses.
The problem with Hupp is that she would rather have the adoration of the fringe than the respect of the mainstream. She is the belle of the Black Helicopter Caucus, the name given by mainstream Republicans to a small group of their dissident and alienated brethren. All of this flared up in the session's final week, when Hupp attacked a fellow Republican's bill to electronically read driver's licenses for the bearer's age only, to prevent teenagers from buying alcohol. Said Hupp: "This poses a huge threat to our privacy . . . We have absolutely no way of knowing what the person behind the counter is keeping." The response: "I agree. There are black helicopters flying all over Texas."
What a waste.
Chris Harris
An unwritten but fervent addition to modern theology this session was the Prayer of the Committee Witness Under Questioning by Chris Harris: "Why me, Lord?" Time and again, Harris violated common courtesy in his mean-spirited treatment of members of the public who testified before one of his Senate committees. Lowly state employees, a hapless businessman who opposed one of his bills, an unpaid state board member—all were subjected to painful public tongue-lashings that would have tried even Job's patience.
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