Sen. Judith Zaffirini
D Laredo
TO REBUT THE CHARGE that the Ten Best list is simply a popularity contest, we present Exhibit A. Imperious with her colleagues, brutal to her staff, cool to lobbyists, Zaffirini arrives before dawn to pursue her goals of improving health care for the poor and enhancing higher education opportunities with the relentlessness of a robot; session after session, she is at the top of the list of lawmakers who do the most good. This spring she restored funding for the Children’s Health Insurance and Medicaid programs in the Senate budget. When state health czar Albert Hawkins’s plan to use HMOs to lower Medicaid costs put millions of dollars in federal funding for urban hospitals at risk, she joined forces with Republican representative Dianne Delisi, of Temple, to find a workable alternative over the objections of the governor’s office.
Zaffirini’s iron resolve could wear out even the late Bob Bullock, who once advised senators: “Save yourself a lot of heartache. Just give her whatever she wants.” Says a colleague: “She’s as good as she is maddening—and she is really good.” When asked to roast Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst at an event in his honor, she arrived armed with a notebook of color-coded research. She brings equal intensity to solving complex state issues and amassing perks, such as her own 24-hour parking space, complete with a Reserved sign. Does she ever drop her steely exterior? Sure, when it suits her purpose. At a marathon meeting with House health budget negotiators, Republican representative Dan Gattis, of Georgetown, conceded a point with the magic words, “We’ll go with the Senate.” A beaming Zaffirini gushed, “You look just like Tom Cruise when you say that.”
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