Susan Combs
The 59-year-old state agriculture commissioner— and wannabe comptroller—on what a school- finance fix will really cost, what she's learned from ranching, and what it will be like to have a son fighting in Iraq.
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I consider myself a conservative on all issues. But I have a certain amount of energy to expend, and I expend it on the things that are dearest to my heart: my family and their well-being and, obviously, this agency and all the farmers and ranchers out there and then this whole issue of children's health. That's a fairly large menu of things for me to worry about. I believe that it is a distraction, and I use that word carefully. I don't have time to go off on rabbit trails.
Do you worry about those distracting social issues coming up in your race for comptroller? Specifically, as someone who describes herself as "pro-choice with exceptions," would you have any problem with the mainstream of the Republican party on the question of abortion?
I hope people who differ with me on one issue would take a look at the entire Susan. Who is she? What does she do? Is she honest? Responsive? Genuine? Does she have the best interest of Texas at heart? I think they would say "yeah" to all of those.
Okay, enough politics. Now let's talk about the entire Susan. You are, famously, a rancher.
Yes! And I buy high and sell low!
I wonder how you were shaped by your experience growing up on your family's ranch, in West Texas, how you continue to be shaped by the time you spend there today, and how, as a result, your values might be different from those of people who've had a big-city upbringing.
There are at least three ways. One is that you learn to be really flexible. The weather is so beyond your control that if you're not prepared to be flexible, you're gonna get killed. Second thing, your word has to be your bond. The third thing—and you can get this from the city, but it's harder—is you get a sense of place. I'm so lucky that I get to listen to the wind out on the ranch. You can hear the grass blow, and you can see the country. You can look off for miles and miles and miles, and you can dream big and think big, but it places you in perspective. Every time I'm at the ranch, I think about my great-grandfather and the people before him thousands of years ago. There have been people walking this land for a very long time, and they've seen the same sky, the same stars, and the same mountains. It's something that gives me a tremendous reality check.
And it places you square in the middle of the issues that you care about, since so much of what you do as ag commissioner is advocate for rural Texas.
For instance, it means I have a different view of water than some folks. When I was in the House, in the mid-nineties, I wrote a bill that said that if you're figuring out whether the water stays in one river basin or goes someplace else, you have to have good information before you can make long-term decisions about moving it. That's why I've worried about some of the things that I'm seeing around the state. I'll give you an example. The Water Development Board and I and some others went out to Dell City to testify about a proposal to lease state water. I started by saying precisely the thing I just said, that you have to have information before you make decisions. It's not that you shouldn't lease water; just do it with full knowledge. The Water Development Board said that they believed it would take five years and $20 million to gather sufficient data to do it right. So if you know that you need that much time and money, but you still make decisions in the near-term, it's not with the state's best interests at heart.
From water, then, to an issue that you raised earlier: obesity, which I know has been a big focus of yours. Did the fact that you're a mother bring you to the issue?
Actually, I was barely a mother: My oldest son was nine months old when I went to work in the Dallas DA's office. It was the cases that I got, the cases on child abuse and neglect. I was such a naive person. I thought, "Well, gosh, people are going to raise their kids right." I was unprepared for the levels of abuse and neglect that I had to deal with. In some cases the neglect was indifference, but many times it was ignorance. The same with obesity. What I've been looking at on the state level, specifically, is not just the physical impact but the psychological impact of obesity. You see children who are grossly overweight, and they are in second and third grade. Their mental life is not fun, they're the butt of jokes, and they don't know yet how awful their life's going to be, when they may have to face amputations, heart attacks, strokes. In my view, we, the state, are in loco parentis when it comes to schools. We're a collective parent. And if we're not doing everything we can, it's criminal.
It's interesting, because the philosophy of some in politics and some in your party is that the government should stay out of the private lives of individuals. This would be an instance in which I think you're advocating the opposite.
And I'll tell you why: We make kids go to our schools. If I'm going to make you send your kid into a room someplace, and I'm going to put razor blades and guns and cocaine in there, would you say that was a bad idea? I won't say that vending machines are the same as razor blades, guns, and cocaine—
The good people at Coca-Cola might have an issue with that.
I didn't mention anybody by name. But I would say that, in a life-threatening sense, some of the things that we allow in schools aren't good for our kids.
Your own children are not obese.
No. And the middle one, Blaise, the Marine, who has been helping me on this research—evidently he says "glycemic index" so often that his friends are a little tired of hearing it. But they've all changed their eating habits. We're now the brown-rice family.
You mention your Marine son—he's being sent to Iraq, isn't he? I want you to talk about that, because for so many of us the war is impersonal. We know what we read in the paper, we hear about the horrors, we celebrate successes and mourn deaths, and yet it's all at a remove. Only for you it won't be. You're now going to be in a situation that so many parents across the country find themselves in—sending your boy into harm's way.
When he told me, I wasn't sure I heard him right. He said, "They've called. I'm being activated." I thought, "Well, okay, maybe he'll go to Cuba." And then he said, "Iraq." And I thought, "Oh, my God. He's a Marine infantryman." I can tell myself that he'll be fine. Of course, I don't ever want the doorbell to ring. I'll dread every day that he's gone, because I'll be waiting for a call. And that's being totally self-centered. I don't want to be a drag on him. I don't want to send him off any other way than really focused, so that he's both effective and safe. That's the real challenge for mothers throughout history. Your son went off to Greece, your son went off to Rome, you equipped him mentally, psychologically, to do his best. But if something should happen, how do you survive? A friend of ours, we found out, lost her son. They were our neighbors, and her son and my son were best friends for years and years and years. He was in an ambush in Iraq and died in October. This little guy, David Bernstein—I just can't believe what happened to him. He was so proud of being in the Army. He wanted to do this for his country. My son feels the same way, so there's part of me that says, "I'm so proud that we have people who will go overseas to keep terror from our doors." It always takes people to do it. And it's not right for me to say I wish it was somebody else's kid. It is my kid. The call has come. But it doesn't mean that it's not hard.
You've been a supporter of the war. Do you look at it any differently as the mother of someone fighting?
I'm now gonna be more murderous. My son's over there. I want 'em all blown away. But I really don't want to think about it. The tendency is to obsess about it, as opposed to sort of sending positive messages, and I really believe in ESP. I think he'll know that his mom is saying, "Go, go, go, go, go. We're with you, we love you, we support you."
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