Charlie Geren
R Fort Worth
THIS IS GEREN’S second experience with a Texas Monthly best list. In 2003 his restaurant the Railhead Smokehouse was selected as one of the top fifty barbecue joints in the state. There’s more of a connection to politics than you might think: In one of the key battles of the session, Geren carved up and reduced to mush a sweeping proposal for school vouchers backed by Governor Rick Perry, Speaker Craddick, and billionaire conservative panjandrum James Leininger.
An anti-voucher coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans had the votes to defeat the proposal until those three went to work. Word spread on the House floor that reluctant Republicans were being threatened with career-ending political retaliation. By the time the debate began, the vote count was deadlocked. Twice Craddick cast a rare vote from the podium to defeat amendments that would have scuttled the bill. But opponents had exposed a weakness in the bill: The bill sponsors of the pro-voucher forces had not included their own school districts, Arlington and Irving, in the plan. If vouchers are good for our schools, their opponents kept asking, why aren’t they good for yours?
The stage was set for Geren’s lethal amendment. “[It] removes Fort Worth ISD and replaces it with Arlington ISD,” he told the House. “It takes Dallas out and puts Irving in…All I did was swap the districts so the authors of the bill could participate in the bill.” The genius of the amendment was that it allowed the anti-voucher Republicans to vote for it without voting against vouchers. This and a second Geren amendment fatally wounded the voucher plan. It took guts to stand up to raw power, but a professional barbecuer can stand the heat and not get out of the kitchen.
My Library
