25 Stories About Bob Bullock
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Bailey:
Once I got a call that the governor had appointed this former senator to chair a large state agency. The next morning, Bullock called me in and told his secretary to get the man on the phone. He told him, "I want you to know that I remember you were one of the senators who voted to bust my appointment to the insurance board back in '72, and I haven't forgotten it, and I also want you to know that that was one of the very worst things that ever happened to me in my life—to be busted by the Senate of Texas. I went home and cried like a baby. It upset my children. It upset my wife. No man should have to go through what I went through. And because of that, I will support your nomination." And I thought, "Here is somebody who has the power and let this man know he has the power, but he did the right thing." It sort of epitomized what Bullock could do when he wanted to.
Ratliff:
He was an information freak. I saw him eat staffers alive if he felt they weren't telling him everything they knew. He'd pick up the phone or call one in and say, "Why didn't you tell me that Senator So-and-so was dating that little ol' girl that clerks for such and such committee? I'm the last one to learn anything around this building. Why in the world have y'all been keeping me in the dark?" He wanted to know everything, because he figured that would be a pressure point that he could use sometime down the road.
Claudia Stravato:
He always kept people on guard. He knew things about them that he hung over their heads. He always had us report everything. I couldn't go out to eat, I couldn't go to a bar, if I didn't come back and give a full report: who I saw, who they were with, what was said. So that when he got lobbyists together, or legislators together, he knew something on them. And he'd get them all in a room, and he wouldn't let them leave until they compromised. He would make them talk and talk and talk until they found some common ground. He leveraged people and issues and sought consensus—where everybody left the room with something. He had been a lobbyist himself. He knew you had to have something. Everybody had to win, some way.
[the blood of travis]
Roberts:
All of us who were close to him realized that in spite of our pleading, in spite of our prayers, in spite of all the news stories about his drinking, he marched to his own drummer. We believed that, number one, he would address it at some point, and number two, he would address it effectively on his own terms. Which he did. When he came back, there was renewed energy, increased focus—truly a rededication to Texas. He made up his mind that he was going to devote his life to the betterment of the state of Texas.
Stravato:
Certainly there were days when he wouldn't speak to me or he might throw a hamburger at me. There was no telling what he might do. I stayed because I thought I was helping Texas. He made each person who worked for him believe that. The state would collapse if you left him. If you didn't do what he wanted you to do, the state would collapse. Well, you couldn't have that on your conscience.
Gibson:
The worst chewing-out I ever heard him give anybody was to a communications director who wanted to quit after one week. The way you quit was that you turned in your pager. You turned in your leash. And I said, "You are not giving it to me. You are giving it to him. Let's go see him right now." We walked in, and the guy said he was quitting, and Bullock said, "What?" and just roared at him for thirty minutes. It was so bad, it was like a car wreck—you can't remember it. Except the last line: Bullock said, "You're not from Texas, are you?" The guy didn't even offer an answer. Bullock said, "I can tell the blood of William Barret Travis is not in your body. If you'd been at the Alamo, you'd have been over the back wall."
[soft as mud]
Whitmire:
Once I hired a guy with a drinking problem. I told him there was one condition: He had to stop drinking. And so one day during the session, another staff member called me and told me that this guy had come back from lunch with liquor on his breath. I didn't know what to do, so I called Bullock. He said, "Bring him over here. Don't tell him why." We waited in the conference room, and Bullock came in and said, "I understand you have a drinking problem." The guy said, "No, I have it under control." And Bullock said, "When did you have your last drink?" The guy said, "A few months ago." And Bullock said, "Well, you are a goddam liar." Then he proceeded to tear this guy apart for the next forty-five minutes. It was just relentless. It was the meanest thing I have ever heard, and I will never forget it. The guy was devastated. And then Bullock got real quiet and said, "But you don't have to be that way. I have been sitting where you are sitting and I am the lieutenant governor of Texas. You can change. And if you want to change, I will be the best friend you ever had." And he got up and arranged for an airplane to take this guy to drunk school.
Stravato:
Because of my experience with alcoholism—I've been in Al-Anon for years—I assisted with all of his interventions. It could be somebody working for him; it could be anybody somebody called him about. And he would get them in his office and he would just lambaste them. By the time he'd get them crying, he'd have called me in and flipped open his briefcase and he would hand them one of his pistols and say, "You know, it just seems to me you ought to go ahead and end your life right now, because what you are doing is committing suicide." And he'd say, "Claudia, don't you agree?" I always knew we were both going to get shot in one of those deals, but we never did. We saved lots of people.
Earle:
My dad worked at General Dynamics for forty years on the assembly line and ranched in his off time. When he retired, he and my mother moved down here. He got a little bored and was looking for something to do and decided he wanted to be a Capitol parking guard. It was the happiest thing he'd ever done in his life. He got to know all the people in the Senate and the lobbyists, and he and Bullock got to be friends. He and Bullock would eat lunch nearly every Friday. Bullock would have him come up to the [lieutenant governor's] apartment, and they would have lunch. Bullock told him, "You're a pretty good guy, Charles, but you did a piss-poor job of raising that boy of yours."
Wayne:
When I was working for Bullock, my daughter was killed in a car wreck. Fourteen years old. And when I came home, there was a big Sony television set with a note in there from Bullock: "I know you won't be sleeping much, so I thought this might help." One time right after my daughter died, I got in my plane and went down to South Padre Island and rented a condo there. I carried about twenty books with me to read. It was raining, and I'd been out on the jetty, just enjoying the solace of being there. And I stayed up all night—went to bed around six in the morning. About ten-thirty there's somebody banging on the door. I open the door and it's Bullock. He said, "You all right? Family's looking for you. Hell, everybody's looking for you." And I said, "Yeah, I'm all right." And he got up and left. He knew the numbers on my airplane and tracked me down. Found it at the Cameron County airport. Called everywhere he thought I might be. That's just the kind of guy he was. 
