3.—25.
The 23 other most powerful people in Texas politics.
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SOME PEOPLE SEEK power. In Jack Martin’s case, power seeks him. He is the preeminent wise man of Texas politics, the person who gives the best advice in town, whether it is to politicians, reporters, or business clients of Public Strategies, which he founded in 1988 to counsel companies about the mysteries of politics and the public sector. At the time, Martin was a high-profile political consultant who had served as executive assistant to U.S. senator Lloyd Bentsen and had run campaigns for leading Texas Democrats, including Bentsen and Bob Bullock. Today the company Martin chairs has employees in 21 international cities, including New York, London, and Mexico City, and national and international issues dominate its agenda. Still, Texas business leaders such as Ross Perot Jr. and SBC Communications CEO Ed Whitacre keep up to date on the Capitol through Martin, whose firm’s principals include lobbyist Rusty Kelley and George W. Bush’s media guru, Mark McKinnon. But it isn’t knowledge alone that makes a wise man. Like the late George Christian, who wore the mantle until his death, in 2002, Martin gives advice that is best for the seeker, not for himself.
THE LAW OF THE LAND
Nathan Hecht, 55, Austin
HE EXEMPLIFIES our criterion that power depends not on your position alone but also on what you do with it. Hecht is one of nine justices on the Texas Supreme Court, but in intellectual heft he is first among equals. He’s a one-man tort reform movement who, as one law review article put it, “has made no secret of his belief that a jury should not be permitted to consider certain issues.” He has revolutionized Texas law by enhancing the Supreme Court’s power to review jury findings, such as whether an insurance company acted in bad faith. Hecht is also poised to revolutionize the biggest issue in Texas politics: school finance. Attorney General Greg Abbott has appealed Austin judge John Dietz’s ruling that the state’s method of funding public schools is unconstitutional. This is the second time the case has reached the high court; the first resulted in an opinion by Hecht, who wrote that if the Legislature provides an adequate school system for the state, local districts are free to supplement state spending with local tax dollars, without limitation. And who decides if the system is adequate? Hecht and his fellow judges, of course. This is the holy grail for rich districts like Highland Park. It would take Texas back to the days when there was no equity between school districts that were property-rich and property-poor. Is there a chance it could happen? To borrow from a certain judge’s campaign slogan: Hecht yes!
THE CONNECTOR
Bruce Gibson, 51, Austin
THE NEW YORKER essayist Malcolm Gladwell once speculated that the people who really run the world don’t have important titles, but “in a very down-to-earth, day-to-day way, they make the world work. They spread ideas and information. They connect varied and isolated parts of society.” If you “connect all the dots that constitute the vast apparatus of government and influence and interest groups” in a place, you’ll come back to these people, whom Gladwell called “connectors.” In Texas, there’s no better connector than Bruce Gibson, the chief of staff to Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst. He has an uncanny ability to bring together good ideas and the people who can get them done—and make his boss look great; he is a prime example of Machiavelli’s dictum that the best way to judge a leader is by the quality of the people he chooses for his advisers. Dewhurst’s choice of Gibson paid off big when the lieutenant governor seized the initiative on the crucial school finance issue in 2003 by shepherding a Gibson-influenced plan through the Senate with unanimous support; although the House ignored it, the Senate plan still defines the debate. The school finance battle typified Dewhurst’s rookie session: While he didn’t win a lot of legislative battles against Rick Perry and Tom Craddick, he won all the PR battles—until redistricting made everybody look bad. Gibson has a laundry list of credentials—lawyer, dairy farmer, legislator, lobbyist, chief of staff for the late lieutenant governor Bob Bullock, senior vice president of Reliant Energy—but his best attribute is natural-born: He is a great listener. People with problems in the Capitol seek him out. And they end up connected to Dewhurst.
THE MONEY MEN
Louis Beecherl Jr., 78, Dallas
Bob Perry, 71, Houston
Dick Weekley, 59, Houston
THEY’RE THE HEAVIEST OF the heavy hitters—big donors to political campaigns whose money often comes with strings attached (though never explicitly). They help determine not only who gets elected but also the agenda that the officeholders will be expected to enact. Although all three have been hugely successful in business (Beecherl in energy and Perry and Weekley in homebuilding), they are different from the business leaders who were active in politics a generation ago. They act as individuals rather than as representatives of powerful corporate institutions, and, therefore, while they have significant influence in the Capitol, they and others who aspire to be like them do not constitute an all-powerful business establishment of the kind that ruled the state in the sixties and seventies.
When George W. Bush held a fundraiser at the Fairmont Dallas Hotel last July, the first person he mentioned after his wife and Dick Cheney—but before Governor Rick Perry—was Louis Beecherl Jr., his regional finance chairman. “You can count on Louis,” he told the crowd, and indeed, Texas Republican candidates have been counting on Beecherl for a long time. In July 2004 the Perry campaign reported receiving $25,000 from Beecherl. His wealth comes from the 1985 sale of Texas Oil and Gas—he was chairman and CEO for twenty years—to U.S. Steel for $3.8 billion. Beecherl’s influence in state government first surfaced in 1987, when he chaired the University of Texas Board of Regents. Texas Parks and Wildlife transferred forty pronghorn antelope from West Texas to Beecherl’s ranch near Waco, despite questions about whether the animals could find suitable food. All but one starved to death. More recently, he has been a strong advocate of property-tax relief—and you’d want it too, if your Beverly Drive residence in Highland Park was on the tax rolls for more than $2.8 million. Another issue dear to Beecherl’s heart is tuition deregulation, which became law in 2003 at the insistence of Speaker Tom Craddick. How close are Beecherl and Craddick? Last fall Beecherl and his wife, Julia, formed a Dallas group that funded an endowed chair at Southwestern Medical Center in the names of Tom and his wife, Nadine.
No one in America contributed more political money in 2004 than Bob Perry. The $100,000 that the builder gave to Governor Perry (no relation) last spring is pocket change. The Houston Chronicle recently reported that Perry and his wife, Doylene, made $9.6 million in personal contributions last year. Perry famously provided $100,000 for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s first TV ad, but that was only the beginning; his total donations to the group topped $5 million. More Perry millions ended up in the coffers of Republican legislative and judicial candidates, and he also led all individual contributors to the pro-business Texans for Lawsuit Reform ($300,000). But the contribution that best demonstrates Perry’s clout was a $10,000 donation to Patrick Rose, of Dripping Springs, a freshman Democratic representative who had supported Republican-backed tort reform legislation. Rose was expected to have a tough campaign against a Republican challenger, but when Perry signaled his support, that was that. Rose won by six thousand votes.
Money can accomplish a lot in politics: It can decide the fates of candidates and legislation; it can buy influence and access to power. But it can’t change the world—or so people thought until Dick Weekley came along. In 1994 he was the driving force behind the founding of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which was created to fight for curbing excessive damage awards and changing procedural rules that unfairly favored plaintiffs. At least that’s how Weekley saw the legal system, from his perspective as the co-founder (with his brother David) of Weekley Homes. Other tort reform advocates followed the unwritten rule of the day: Work with key Democratic leaders and legislators and be satisfied with evolutionary change. Weekley’s approach was revolutionary. He declared war on legislators whose campaigns were funded by trial lawyers and who kept tort reform issues from being voted on. TLR raised a huge pot of campaign cash, targeted three Democratic senators, beat them all—and changed the world. Republicans grabbed control of the Senate for the first time since Reconstruction. The 1995 legislative session imposed strict limits on punitive damages, but TLR would have to wait until 2003 before its wish list was fulfilled. With Republicans—many of them elected with the help of TLR contributions—in control of both houses, the Legislature passed the strongest tort reform law in the country. Is Weekley ready to rest on his laurels? Not a chance. TLR’s next goal is to make the world safe from asbestos. Lawsuits, that is.
THE CONSIGLIERE
Andy Taylor, 43, Houston
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