The Enforcer
He's rough! He's tough! He won't take any guff! He's Rick Perry's chief of staff! He cuts Democrats—and Republicans—in half! Mike Toomey is The Enforcer.
FOR THE PAST TWENTY YEARS, Mike Toomey has loomed large in state government, as imposing and immovable—and some would say as cold—as the pink-granite Capitol itself. First as a Republican legislator, then as the Capitol's premier business lobbyist, and now as chief of staff to his longtime friend Governor Rick Perry, the intense 53-year-old Houston lawyer has promoted a steadfast conservative agenda with little tolerance for compromise with—or mercy for—his adversaries. These include Democrats, plaintiffs lawyers, opposing lobbyists, and anybody else who stands in his way. His nickname, Mike the Knife, originally referred to his budget-cutting proposals as a legislator but now conveniently describes his propensity to carve up his enemies. With his encyclopedic knowledge of state government and his reputation as a ruthless political operative, he is positioned to help Perry challenge the old saw that the governorship of Texas is a constitutionally weak office. He is unquestionably the most powerful—and the most feared—nonelected person in Texas politics today.
And so, at the beginning of my interview with Toomey in his oak-paneled Capitol office, I was surprised when he mentioned how much he had enjoyed a job he had held to put himself through Baylor University, working as an aide in a treatment center for emotionally disturbed teenagers. Mike Toomey providing solace for troubled youths? The same Mike Toomey who is determined to slash social programs in the state budget, who as a hard-nosed business lobbyist campaigned to defeat lawmakers who dared vote against him, who is credited with getting his enemies in the lobby fired? Had I missed something in my research? I was struggling to conjure a mental picture of Toomey comforting adolescents when he explained: "I was basically in charge of discipline," he said, fixing his steady gaze on me, "the heavy when the kids got out of hand. I was the enforcer of the rules."
Of course. The enforcer.
THE STAKES IN THIS FIRST legislative session of the Republican era are sky-high. The state faces a mammoth $9.9 billion budget shortfall, for which the Perry-Toomey solution has been to cut spending rather than raise taxes. Perry is also pushing for a sweeping reform of tort laws that will make it harder for injured people to win big jury awards against business. Sometime in the next few weeks, Perry is likely to find himself in a battle with Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, a fellow Republican and the leader of the state Senate, who favors more spending, with the help of "non-tax revenue," and a more balanced, though still strongly pro-business, approach to tort reform. The winner will determine whether the primary power over legislation in general and the budget in particular remains with the Legislature, as the authors of the 127-year-old state constitution intended, or flows to the governor—a development that was unthinkable as recently as the previous legislative session, in 2001.
The old ideas about Texas government are in jeopardy. They may prove to be relics of a dead political tradition, one that was rural, Democratic, and loosely organized. Today, a new political tradition is being established, one that is suburban, Republican, and tightly controlled. At the heart of that new tradition are Rick Perry and his enforcer, Mike Toomey. With a huge mandate from the voters, unassailable Republican majorities in both the state House and the Senate, and a major budget crisis that justifies gubernatorial intervention, Perry is poised to become the most powerful governor of modern times. And Toomey is providing the brains and the muscle.
In the Capitol game of Clue this year, he is everyone's favorite suspect: Mike Toomey did it, in the governor's office, with—what else?—the knife. Why did the Texas Medical Association part company with its longtime lobbyist, Kim Ross, last December? Because Perry told the doctors' group that his office would not work with them as long as Ross was around. (The TMA backed Perry's Democratic opponent, Tony Sanchez, in the 2002 governor's race after Perry, at Toomey's urging on behalf of two clients, vetoed the doctors' top-priority bill in 2001.) Why did the State Preservation Board, dominated by Perry appointees, fire its executive director, former GOP legislator Rick Crawford, whose tenure included the construction of the highly regarded Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum? Because Crawford refused Toomey's request for his resignation, his apparent sin being friendship with Perry's archenemy, former Democratic House Speaker Pete Laney. Why did several Democratic representatives have a change of heart in late March and vote for a proposed constitutional amendment limiting lawsuit awards? Could it be because the governor's office informed them that funding for a regional health center in the Rio Grande Valley and a medical school for El Paso depended upon local lawmakers' support for the tort-reform bill? Many more dark and dirty deeds are attributed to him without proof, as occurred with Karl Rove in the Bush years.
After two decades as one of the leading political operatives at the Capitol, Toomey has accumulated the skill and the will to influence every issue of consequence. And all the indicators are that Perry is ready to let him do so. The two men have been friends since they served in the House together, in the mid-eighties, when Perry was still a Democrat. As their career paths diverged in the late eighties—Perry leaving the Legislature to run statewide for agriculture commissioner as a Republican, Toomey leaving to operate behind the scenes—the friendship became even closer, as Toomey became Perry's most trusted adviser. (Their relationship transcends politics; Toomey served as Perry's attorney in a deal involving Perry's sale of prime residential land to computer magnate Michael Dell for a $330,000 profit.) When Perry stumbled through his first two years as governor, Toomey blamed bad staff work. Eventually, Perry prevailed on him last fall to give up an annual income that is widely thought to have been in the seven figures to take the job as chief of staff.
In addition to unquestioned loyalty, Toomey brings to the job a work ethic that has been legendary since 1985, when, as a new member of the House Appropriations Committee, he set about dissecting the state budget. "It was novel to see someone work that hard," recalled Jim Rudd, then chair of the committee. Toomey is all business; when he remarried seven years ago, friends noticed that he was wearing his beeper on his tuxedo—and conspired to set it off during the ceremony. Another asset is his connections. After he set up his lobbying practice, he landed a blue-chip client in Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), a group of influential Houston business leaders who were bent on changing state tort law to make it more favorable to defendants—a cause Toomey had championed as a legislator. He had a hand in dispensing more than $1 million in campaign contributions that the TLR donated every election cycle, almost all of which went to Republicans. In addition, Perry received some $3.2 million over five years from individual TLR members. By the time Toomey sold his lobby practice, in December, the new GOP majority in the House of Representatives included dozens of Republican legislators who had been bankrolled by Toomey and the TLR. Above all, Toomey brings to the governor's office a forbidding reputation that works to Perry's advantage. He approaches issues with a zeal and tenacity that even his detractors admire. Everything about him speaks of discipline. The day of our interview, he sat erect and spoke decisively. When he answered the phone, he paced behind his stand-up desk, in constant motion. He wore a white button-down shirt, a dark tie, dark pants—and two beepers. With his thin physique and thick, dark hair, he might be called youthful-looking, but his manner is brisk and businesslike.
As we retraced his career, I remarked about how often he had played the role of the "tough negotiator"; indeed, this phrase was the first description of him by nearly everyone I interviewed. He nodded in agreement. "I think I am used as the bad cop regularly because I don't mind doing it," he acknowledged unapologetically. "I do feel very strongly about certain things, and I do feel very passionately about a limited role for government. That's why I'm a tough negotiator, and to tell you the truth, that's why I came back here to help Governor Perry."
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