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Politics & Policy|
January 1, 1998

President and Accounted For

BUSH VERSUS GORE: Is it the battle for president in 2000? No, it was the Houston mayoral runoff in December. When Vice President Al Gore, with his eye on the Democratic nomination two years hence, came to a fundraiser for eventual winner Lee Brown, Bill Clinton’s first drug czar, the

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Politics & Policy|
January 1, 1998

Who killed the Texas Democratic party?

AT LEAST DAN MORALES knew that the mere proclamation he was going to have a press conference was not likely to stop the world in its tracks. The night before and all that morning, some supporters, as well as the attorney general himself, were busy calling around to say that

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Politics & Policy|
December 1, 1997

Brown in Front

Ten reasons why former police chief Lee Brown is well positioned to be elected Houston’s first black mayor on December 6: (1) He ran stronger than expected in the November 4 primary, with 42 percent to Rob Mosbacher’s 29 percent. Both were projected to poll in the 30’s. (2) The

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Politics & Policy|
November 1, 1997

Taking a Chance

The Texas Legislature may have killed the goose that laid the golden egg—and Governor George W. Bush’s goose could be cooked—if dire forecasts about state lottery revenue prove to be correct. To balance the state budget this past spring, lawmakers cut the winners’ share of lottery revenue from 55.5 percent

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Politics & Policy|
November 1, 1997

The Revision Thing

The opening of the George Bush presidential library at Texas A&M is a good occasion to ask two questions on the mind of everyone but Bush himself: How good a president was he? And what sort of ex-president has he been?

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Politics & Policy|
September 30, 1997

The (Non)candidate

George W. Bush faces a dilemma. What’s a poor front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination supposed to do when all anyone in the media wants to talk about is when he’s going to announce his intentions? Why don’t interviewers ask him about shoes or ships or sealing wax—anything but that?

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Politics & Policy|
June 30, 1997

The Lighter Side of the Lege

Now that the 75th session of the Texas Legislature has officially come to a close, we constituents are left to reflect on some serious key issues — questions of abortion notification, property taxes, water quality, electric deregulation, and the zero tolerance laws concerning teen smoking and drinking — until the

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Commonsense Conservatism

Remember the Sherlock Holmes story in which the great detective solves a mysterious death case because a dog did not bark at a thief in the night? The lesson is that what doesn’t happen can be just as important as what does happen—in crime or in the Legislature. (Please, no

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Family Man

With his spectacles and bushy mustache, he looks like everybody’s favorite uncle, and appropriately, his niche in the Legislature is to take care of the kids: juvenile justice, safe schools, and adoption laws. In the age of family-values politics, Goodman brings a quiet rationality to issues that have been known

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

The Bill Doctor

Caught in a real-life episode of E.R., Senator Teel Bivins spent the final week of the legislative session performing triage on bills that were at death’s door. As our story begins, a perspiring Bivins frantically tries to revive Governor Bush’s charter schools program, which is among the 52 bills that

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Master of the Playground

Hugo Berlanga said at the start of the session that he was tired. The time had come to do something else. He was burned-out.Mark it down that this burnout had a long fuse. Hugo—he’s a first-name figure—had a session for the ages. Through behind-the-scenes negotiations and timely amendments, he influenced

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Special Awards

Best PunGovernor George W. Bush. Explaining at a pre-session gridiron dinner how he had turned a deaf ear to his wife’s entreaties that he purchase new formal wear for the event, Bush said he told her, “Read my lips. No new tuxes.”Going…Going…GoneThe legislative leadership team had a lot more on

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Politics & Policy|
June 30, 1997

The Worst of the Worst

Say what you will about Arlene Wohlgemuth (and everybody did), but she will go down in legislative history. Way down. Wohlgemuth was the perpetrator of the Memorial Day Massacre, when in a fit of rage she killed 52 bills and managed to unite a previously divided House—against her.It is the

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

The One Hundred Club

Most legislators who land on the Worst list do so through ineptitude or blunder. John Shields is different: He actively auditioned for the role. He performed as if he had researched the bad old days and come up with a surefire course of action that the greenest freshman would know

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Without Shame

Ask not what Senator Eddie Lucio’s bills do for the public; ask what they do for him. Lucio is a poster child for the kind of legislator whose primal urge is to please his friends, punish his enemies, and promote himself.What, do you suppose, lay behind his proposal to restrict

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Zero Zero Zero

Bless his heart, he’s just in the wrong place. The Legislature is not right for him. His conservative beliefs are too extreme, his suspicions are too easily aroused, his learning curve is too flat. The man isn’t dumb. He’s got an MBA from Harvard. They read books there. But he

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Radioactive

“If you’ve got me in your sights, I’d like to talk to you before you write anything,” said Kent Grusendorf in the closing hours of the session. He deserved a fair hearing. He is a thoughtful man who was once a fine legislator. But he has become the most radioactive

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Dumb and Dumber, the Sequel

Last session, passionate debate raged through the Capitol over which of these two East Texas freshmen was the worst member of the Senate. Given a second chance, Galloway and Nixon showed that they had learned…absolutely zero.“He doesn’t have two sessions of experience,” a Republican colleague said of Galloway. “He’s had

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Comic Relief

His true peers are not members of the Legislature but rather Thomas Chippendale, George Hepplewhite, and Duncan Phyfe: Like these names, that of Charles Finnell has become synonymous with “furniture”—a term that in Capitol parlance refers to those members who, by dint of their inactivity or incapacity to grasp what

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

A License to Be Bad

The best that can be said about him is that he could have been worse—and was, just last session. Faults ranging from pettiness to mendacity, which landed him on the Worst list in 1995 (when we described him as “one of the more dismal products of democracy to reach the

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Seldom Right

Before Kevin Bailey erupted this session, sixteen years had passed since the House had seen an outspoken liberal leader in action. An extra two years would have been a blessing. Bailey is a demagogue straight from the old school—disposed to make personal attacks, preferring cliché to argument, always righteous in

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Little Miss Perfect

Every Catholic girls’ school has one student who is Little Miss Perfect. To the endless irritation of her peers, she never misses class, always does her homework, raises her hand to answer every question, bosses her classmates around, and is as prudish and humorless as the nuns. But don’t

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Why? Why? Why?

Two veteran warriors are facing off, and the House is enjoying it immensely. Kim Brimer of Arlington, a former University of Houston football player and one of Speaker Laney’s chief lieutenants, is trying to pass his sports arena bill, which will let local governments use tax dollars to build stadiums

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Play of the Year

Did he change the world? It’s too soon to tell. But this much is certain: Ron Wilson’s bill requiring scholarship athletes to meet regular admissions criteria at state universities was a stroke of legislative genius. Wilson, of course, was trying to make a point about the Hopwood decision, which

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Mr. Clout

The best tributes are the unexpected ones. As Senator David Sibley argued for his bill to halt the costly practice of school districts’ granting property-tax breaks to businesses, a seldom heard-from San Antonio Democrat named Greg Luna joined in the debate. “I’m so glad that a senator of your esteem

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Best and Worst Legislators|
June 30, 1997

Voting for the Children

At least he tried. He was the dominant figure in the session’s dominant issue, Governor Bush’s drive for significant property-tax relief, and he drove it farther than anyone thought possible, though not quite far enough. But the mere recapitulation of his role only begins to reflect what Paul Sadler

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Politics & Policy|
June 30, 1997

Obi-Wan Kenobi

It is late in the session, and a sticky procedural issue has brought Senate debate to a momentary halt. Senators Teel Bivins of Amarillo and Royce West of Dallas are huddled beside a desk, puzzled about what to do. West, a Democrat, nods in the direction of Bill Ratliff, who

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Politics & Policy|
June 30, 1997

Israel Hernandez

Officially, Israel Hernandez is an aide to George W. Bush, but the 26-year-old is used to hearing all sorts of less-than-glamorous descriptions of his job, such as professional schlepper and purse carrier. But while it’s true he totes around the black canvas bag containing the governor’s stuff—personal numbers, signature cards,

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Politics & Policy|
May 31, 1997

Lights! Camera! No Action!

GEORGE W. BUSH may have the most power in the Capitol, but when it comes to power over the Capitol, he’s just number two. In one of the strangest rivalries of a contentious legislative session, the Texas Film Commission, an arm of the governor’s office, squared off against the State

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