Carole Keeton Strayhorn Has Guts. Carole Keeton Strayhorn Is Nuts. Discuss.
If anyone wants to tell us what the bomb-throwing, slogan-spouting, governor-antagonizing comptroller of public accounts is up to, we’re all ears.
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But her critics believe her responsibility is to the Legislature—the proper fiscal watchdogs, who are accountable to the people through their votes. Whether to dip into the Rainy Day Fund or to use accounting gimmicks or to manage the economy through new laws is no business of the comptroller’s. The check and balance in the system is not the comptroller but the collective wisdom of 150 representatives and 31 state senators, with the governor having the final say through his veto power.
The battle lines were set, and Strayhorn was no match for the firepower of the Legislature. Lawmakers killed her pet project, TexasNextStep, which, like most of her proposals, is an idea that would be good for Texas: free tuition and books for all students attending community colleges, helping ensure an educated workforce for the future. But Bullock himself couldn’t have gotten legislators to pass a $150 million spending program in a year when his own revenue estimate put them $10 billion in the hole—especially if he had previously criticized lawmakers for going on a spending spree.
The next crisis was the certification of the new budget, which Strayhorn declared did not balance. She was right: Inadvertently, budget writers had removed almost $200 million from a fund for highways. For a day or two, well after the session was over, there was frantic lobbying and maneuvering and threats of getting Attorney General Greg Abbott to ask the Texas Supreme Court to compel her to certify it. “They wanted me to look the other way,” she told me. In the end, a compromise was reached and she certified the budget—but not before getting letters from Perry and Abbott validating her claims that the budget was not balanced and that she was fully authorized to act as she did.
The payback was not long in coming. In the summer of 2003, Perry called the Legislature back to the Capitol to tackle congressional redistricting, giving rise to an epic battle that stretched into the fall. But another item on the agenda was a catch-all bill that proved to be the vehicle for the leadership’s revenge on Strayhorn, with Dewhurst in the driver’s seat. He inserted a provision to strip the comptroller’s office of two of its most visible and successful programs: reviewing state agencies for ways to save money and scrutinizing local school districts for the same purpose. Strayhorn testified against the proposal in the Senate, defiant to the end: “I believe that Texas taxpayers and Texas schoolchildren and the Texas comptroller’s office are being penalized for me telling the truth,” she said. “I was telling the truth when I said we had a budget shortfall. I was telling the truth when I said the budget did not balance.…And I was telling the truth when I said new fees, charges, and out-of-pocket expenses were going to cost Texans 2.7 billion dollars over the next two years.…And you can take away every desk and every chair and every program in the Texas comptroller’s office, and I will still tell the people of Texas the truth.” Unmoved, the Senate passed the bill easily. The House was harder—Perry made a personal plea for the votes of reluctant Republicans—but in the end, the bill passed. The power base that Bullock and Sharp had built was dismantled.
STRAYHORN LOST THE BATTLE, but the war goes on. As the current legislative session nears its conclusion, speculation in the halls of the Capitol has already focused on how she might try to strike back at the leadership by busting the budget and forcing a special session. Perry would be under tremendous pressure to demonstrate leadership on his promise to cut property taxes, with a GOP primary looming next March against…none other than Carole Keeton Strayhorn. The Legislature, however, has plan B in place if she should fail to certify the budget: a provision that triggers an automatic across-the-board cut for all expenditures, down to the level of available revenue. Strayhorn scoffs at the tactic. “It makes certification meaningless,” she told me. “The only way they can oppose the independent comptroller is to change the constitution. I’d just be delighted to take that position to the people of Texas.”
Just how easily the comptroller can throw sand in the gears became apparent—as if anyone in the Capitol needed reminding—back in March. Craddick and several of his lieutenants were working behind the scenes on a new business tax structure with members of the comptroller’s staff, who were figuring out how much money various proposals would raise. Much of what happened next is disputed: on what terms the comptroller’s staffers left Craddick’s office, whether they had seen everything that was in the bill (including amendments), and, most important, whether they had given assurances that the bill raised sufficient revenue to balance $6 billion in property tax reductions. At one point, early in the process, the comptroller’s office did affirm that the tax increase and the tax cut balanced, but the bill changed several times before the House passed it. All was well—until Strayhorn sent Craddick a letter the following week. The House bill, she informed him, fell $4 billion short of the mark. That isn’t just missing the target. That’s missing the barn.
Craddick felt ambushed. Later, the two principals issued dueling press statements. “Maybe she is playing politics,” Craddick’s said, “or maybe she and her staff are inept.” Strayhorn fired back: “Last week I told the members of the Texas House of Representatives the truth about the tax increase bill they approved.…My heart truly does go out to those lawmakers. They passed the largest tax increase in Texas history and it does not balance.” I have barely scratched the surface of all the intrigue that surrounded this episode, which was the talk of the Capitol for days. Only the result is certain: Craddick was the one person in the Republican leadership who hadn’t been mad at Strayhorn—and now he is.
THIS BRINGS US BACK to the original question: Crazy—or crazy like a fox? On one level, Strayhorn’s antagonistic stance toward the Republican leadership makes perfect sense. Call it the martyr strategy. It worked for Phil Gramm back in the early eighties, when he was a young Democratic congressman who broke with his party’s leadership to work for Ronald Reagan’s budget cuts. The Democratic leadership was so enraged that they vowed to punish him, and they stripped him of his position on the House Budget Committee. But Gramm had the last laugh. He resigned from his congressional seat and ran for the vacant post in a special election as a Republican. When he won, he was ideally situated to run statewide, and he went on to serve three terms in the U.S. Senate.
Starting in 2003, Strayhorn has been following a similar path, consistently criticizing the leadership of her own party and positioning herself as a staunch fiscal conservative who has been pilloried for telling the truth about reckless budgets. It makes for compelling copy, but there are three problems. First, it’s not clear how widely her martyrdom is known, or whether this is just inside baseball. Second, her game plan sounds like a great general election strategy, not a great primary election strategy; it appeals to independents, the kinds of voters who don’t show up for primaries and who care more about messages like “one tough grandma” than ideology. Finally, Gramm wanted to be run out of the Democratic party so he could switch. It’s hard to imagine the mother of White House press secretary Scott McClellan and chief Medicare and Medicaid administrator Mark McClellan switching parties to run as a Democrat, although you can find people in the Capitol who think she will—or even run as an independent. (At a recent Republican state convention, delegates were greeted with “Switch Back, Carole” placards, presumably placed by pro-Perry forces. Strayhorn insists she never was a Democrat, that all her races prior to the one against Pickle were for nonpartisan offices. But she was on the Travis County steering committee of Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign in Texas. Doesn’t that count?)
In the past year, except for the incident involving the House tax bill, Strayhorn has redirected her attacks from the Legislature to the governor, accusing Perry of “callous disregard” for children and assailing him for not seeking $1.6 billion in federal funds that could have alleviated some of the cuts of 2003. After his State of the State speech in January, she quoted herself as having said previously, “[There is] not a shortfall in the budget this session but a shortfall in leadership from the governor.…In a time that cries out for substance, this governor’s speech is a stone skipping on the surface of the state’s most critical issues.”
But how can she beat him? I pointed out that she has raised $5.7 million, whereas he’ll have four times that much if he wants it. And he has the support of the Republican party base, which is likely to be decisive in the primary.
“Hogwash on Perry having the base locked up,” she said, interrupting my speculations. “They’re believing their own news releases. I do not mind rough-and-tumble. Texans are ashamed of what is going on now in their state.”
But hasn’t she been reduced to seeking contributions from trial lawyers?
“Hogwash on trial lawyers,” she said.
“When are you going to announce?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager for the answer.
She stared at me. “We view ourselves on the eve of battle,” she said. “We are nerved for the contest and must conquer or perish.” I should have recognized it, but I didn’t. Sam Houston, before San Jacinto.
Well, they said Sam Houston was crazy too.
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