The Best & Worst Legislators 2011

by Nate Blakeslee and Paul Burka. With additional research by Katherine Stevens. Photographs by Bob Daemmrich

July 2011

(Page 7 of 7)

Jeff Wentworth never wanted to come back this session, and many of his colleagues wish he hadn’t. Wentworth wanted instead to be named chancellor of the Texas State University System, but he lost out last summer to then state representative Brian McCall. His decidedly unstatesman-like letter of protest to the Texas State board of regents—he was “personally offended” that a “Johnny-come-lately opportunist” was chosen over him—offered a hint of the type of legislator we would see this session: not the respected independent thinker of past years but a more obstinate, irascible, and angry version of 
his former self.

Deprived of his committee chairmanship—Dewhurst gave it to somebody else when Wentworth told him, somewhat too hopefully, that he’d be moving on—Wentworth had nothing to occupy his attention this session, aside from a strange obsession with allowing college students to carry concealed handguns on campus. “Campus carry,” as it became known, was opposed by most university administrators and would have affected only a small minority of students anyway, since you have to be 21 to get a concealed handgun permit. But Wentworth, who was on the UT campus during the Charles Whitman shootings, clung to the bill as if it were his life’s work. After a failed attempt to get the bill to the floor—two of his yes votes flipped on him unexpectedly—he tried for weeks to bring it back up, even refusing to pause for 24 hours so that Senator Wendy Davis, who opposed the bill, could leave town to see her daughter graduate from college. (In a display of the collegiality the Senate is supposed to be known for, Senator Kevin Eltife offered to change his vote temporarily so Davis could leave.)

Unable to get the bill to the floor, Wentworth tacked it onto Judith Zaffirini’s major higher education reform bill, forcing her to temporarily pull it down rather than see his amendment become law. Wentworth then hijacked one of Senator Steve Ogden’s fiscal matters bills, a painstakingly crafted compromise weeks in the making that had to pass in order for the budget to balance. When the House declared Wentworth’s amendment non-germane, Ogden was obliged to ask his conservative colleagues, all big supporters of the Second Amendment, to vote to strip it off—in essence, to make an anti-gun vote.

Even Wentworth recognized how tiresome his crusade had grown by the end of the session. “I never would have taken up so much of the Senate’s time if I had been allowed to bring it up the first time,” Wentworth told the press table. Yes, and if the board of regents had just given him that job, we wouldn’t have taken up your time with this sad story.

 

BILL ZEDLER R–Arlington

You sometimes have to wonder what keeps a guy like Bill Zedler going. The 67-year-old health care consultant made a name for himself in 2001 by organizing against the opening of a Hooters restaurant near his southwest Arlington neighborhood. Zedler lost that battle but won himself a spot in the Legislature, where he accomplished very little before being ousted in 2008. He returned to the House this year to find a Republican supermajority poised to impose its will on the state. Surely this was his year to shine.

And yet somehow Zedler managed to pass only three bills. It seems his agenda remained too kooky even for this Legislature. His bill prohibiting discrimination against creationists on college campuses never got a hearing, though it did gin up the requisite “crazy Texans” story in the national press. His bill preventing judges from considering “foreign and international laws” in their jurisprudence might have prompted another round of chuckling, if anybody had understood just what exactly he was talking about: making extra, extra sure that Islamic sharia law did not become the law of the land in Texas. Ditto his two bills taking on the Texas Medical Board, against which Zedler has launched a quixotic campaign on behalf of doctors he claims have been wrongly investigated. (Perhaps “quixotic” is too generous; the Texas Tribune reported that Zedler used his authority as a legislator to obtain disciplinary files on two doctors who happened to be contributors to his campaign.)

When the House was meeting, Zedler spent much of his time at his desk talking on his Blue­tooth or heckling whichever Democrat was at the front mike, smiling his odd little mortician’s smile. You’d think that someone who launched his political career in a group called Decency for Arlington would try a little harder to spread some of that decency in Austin. Even his effort to get in on the fun of the free-for-all that was the House budget debate—371 amendments were prefiled—was largely joyless. On a night when almost anything went, Zedler managed to define “too far”: How about moving $550,000 from a program for students with disabilities and putting it toward property tax relief? In a word, no.

 

Dishonorable Mentions

Senfronia Thompson D–Houston
For misusing her power as chair of the Local and Consent Calendars Committee to garner support for and silence opposition to her own bills, at times by forcing a vote on them before she set the next calendar. 

John Davis R–Houston
For trying to pass a sales tax cap on yachts while the state was cutting $4 billion from public ed. 

Gary Elkins R–Houston
For giving us the spectacle of a payday lender attacking payday-lending regulation on the House floor.

Senator Mario Gallegos D–Houston 
For his vituperative attack on the superintendent of the Houston ISD during a committee hearing. It was beyond the pale, but also par for the Mario course.

Ryan Guillen D–Rio Grande City; Mike “Tuffy” Hamilton R–Mauriceville; Richard Peña Raymond D–Laredo
For ungentlemanly conduct on the floor of the House. 

 

Furniture

The term “furniture” was born to describe those lawmakers whose level of participation in the legislative process was indistinguishable from that of their desks and chairs.

Marva Beck R–Centerville

Barbara Mallory Caraway D–Dallas

Senator Mike Jackson R–La Porte

Inocente “Chente” Quintanilla D–Tornillo

Ralph Sheffield R–Temple

Raul Torres R–Corpus Christi

 

•••••

Tweets

1/11 Joe Straus (@SpeakerStraus): @JohnCornyn Thanks Senator, and thank you to all my colleagues and supporters. Looking forward to a successful session. #txlege

1/19 Linda Harper-Brown (@lhbcampaign): State spending must be controlled. The budget must be cut. This process has begun. We will continue to look at what we cut.

1/25 Dan Patrick (@DanPatrick): Still on Senate floor nearing 13 hrs in Voter I.D. League of Women Voters testifying against bill- & you thought they were a neutral group

2/28 Rick Perry (@GovernorPerry): Governors will lay out medicaid fix for POTUS this AM. Help balance the budget, deliver more and better services. Flexibilty..Block grants!

3/16 Eddie Rodriguez (@TXRepERodriguez): Gov. Perry supports $3.1B from Rainy Day Fund to pay debt, but this won’t curb school or nursing home closures. http://tinyurl.com/4fu3w2m

3/23 Trey Martinez Fischer (@TMF116): I see I’m ticking off a few R Staffers-consider it a down payment... Because y’all are gonna get rolled... straight to the DOJ. #txphotoid

4/4 Leticia Van de Putte (@leticiavdp): At the gym w/ @SenRoyceWest b4 heading to Capitol. Oh. Monday

4/4 Wayne Christian (@waynechristian): Proud Joint Author of Rep. Sid Miller’s bill to allow ‘the taking of certain feral hogs and coyotes using a helicopter.’ Passed the House.

5/2 Aaron Peña (@AaronPena): As luck would have it, the “Sanctuary Cities bill” is scheduled on the “Cinco De Mayo” (Spanish for “fifth of May”) holiday. ¡Ay, caramba!

5/5 David Simpson (@davidsimpsontx): We now have 87 co-authors for the bill to stop the #TSA from #groping travelers! http://fb.me/11ndlAC6b

5/6 David Dewhurst (@dewhurst4texas): Great way to end the week! Texas Senate passed a balanced budget, sonogram bill headed to @TexGov and @dallasmavs can take Game 3 tonight!

5/24 Debbie Riddle (@debbieriddle): SB 694 passed and will now go to conference committee - this is regarding regulation of scrap metal. Theft of... http://fb.me/tUx6zhDQ

5/28 Joaquin Castro (@joaquincastrotx): HB 1 is the worst Texas budget in more than a generation

5/29 Kel Seliger (@kseliger): SB 1811 eligible at about 9:40. Rumor of a filibuster which would go to midnight and end all legislation for the session. More in a few min

5/30 Joe Deshotel (@RepJoeDeshotel): Theres 140 characters in a tweet and 140 days in a session but it’s not enough for the 150 characters on the floor. #TxLege

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