Cowboys and Iranians
What do Odessa beer joints and the Iran-contra hearings have in common? Everything.
Reporting and commentary on the Legislature, campaigns, and elected officials
What do Odessa beer joints and the Iran-contra hearings have in common? Everything.
Highly partisan justices are at the center of the Supreme Court scandal.
Should a judge’s friendships survive his election to the Supreme Court of Texas?
The biggest legislative bloodbath in 31 years is shaping up between Clements and Hobby. At stake: not only the state’s education budget but the economic and political future of Texas as well.
Caught between the budget crisis and the power of Bob Bullock, politicos are hiring the comptroller’s savvy ex-employees in self-defense.
For the first time since Sam Rayburn’s day, the Speaker of the House will be a Texan. And if Jim Wright of Fort Worth is to be successful, he’ll have to remember what Rayburn taught him.
The governor has a good record, good ideas, and good intentions. So why is he in danger of losing his job to a man he already beat once?.
In boom times, John Connally and Ben Barnes used their political magic to build a sprawling real estate empire. Now they’re in a desperate struggle to keep themselves afloat.
She unmasked the Klan and worried about the role of women, but she listened more to her husband than to the suffragettes.
Mix election time, South Texas, and barbecue, and you get the pachanga circuit, where politics and barbecue are served with equal reverence.
Tapped by destiny, one man in Austin is forging an unlikely alliance between Texas oilmen and the friends of Israel.
Subtract Democratic voters, add new Republicans, and it equals realignment.
Pancho Barrio, an ex-accountant, a charismatic Catholic, and the mayor of Juarez, hopes to topple the ruling party in a July governor’s race.
Hank Milam was a businessman with $20,000 in equipment and a firm faith in the rules of the game.He took on the union that had ruled the Houston docks for fifty years and beat it on its own turf.
A look at Houston’s Meyerland, Dallas’ Munger Place, El Paso’s Sunset Heights, and Austin’s Hyde Park shows that few fights get the blood boiling like a good fight with a neighbor.
In 1969 a young man from Baytown decided, after a struggle, to fight in Vietnam.
Helmut Newton, world famous for his bizarre, sometimes shocking erotic photographs, turns his lens on another exotic subject—Texas tycoons.
In parts of Texas drought is a steady boarder who may stray but always comes home for supper.
Kathy Whitmire’s substantial achievements as mayor of Houston are overshadowed by her bad public image and political ineptitude—not a good situation for a candidate seeking a third term.
Just how good were the good ol' days, when Louie Welch was mayor of Houston?
We just rate them. You voted for them.
The six freshman Republican congressmen from Texas are young, angry, and energetic. The only question is, can they be effective too?
San Antonio city councilman Bernardo Eureste took a paltry arts budget and built it into a $3 million power base. Then he got mad and tore it all apart.
The computer industry in Texas has a new lobby organized by three lobbyists who were in the right place at the right time—and knew it.
Council tells mayor her budget stinks! Mayor tells council to like it or lump it! Both sides twist arms, trade insults! Read all about it!
The inside skinny on the elections.
He had it all: a wife and a mistress, a limousine and a motorcycle, the second-highest job at the Pentagon and some good-time Dallas buddies. Then the SEC took an interest in his life.
Where to find a life-size statue of businessmen shaking hands, the best right-wing burgers, and other landmarks of Republican life.
How Texas became a two-party state in spite of the GOP.
Turn off the TV. Go fishing. Here’s the inside story of what will happen at the convention, complete with Nancy Reagan’s tacky visit to a bowling alley.
Mark White has finally earned high marks in lobbying the Legislature.
On Sunday it is legal to buy beer but not baby bottles, screws but not screwdrivers, disposable diapers but not cloth ones. No place but Texas.
With the help of a friendly banker and some friendlier politicians, Clinton Manges conquered might Mobil Oil and saved his empire. But not for long—it’s in jeopardy again.
Clinton Manges built his empire on brushland and oil wells, political contributions and lawsuits. His influence extends to the state capitol and oil company boardrooms. To get where he is, he studied under three masters of South Texas.
Behind the scenes at regional headquarters—a sometime part-timer tells all.
What do drunks, prostitutes, lunatics, and elevators have in common? They’re all part of the weird 24-hour-a-day world of the Dallas County courthouse.
Austin’s Roy Spence parlayed his success in Mark White’s campaign into a job selling Walter Mondale to the American people.
Dropping the aristocratic burden.
Crosbytown and Texas Tech wanted to harvest a major local resource: the sun. But then the feds stepped in, and the issue switched from energy to power.
Great moments in the conspiracy time line.
After twenty years these are the assassination theories that still survive.
Assassination buffs come in all shapes and convictions—archivists, technologists, mob-hit theorists, and more—but they are all obsessed with Lee Harvey Oswald, and his crime is the focus of their lives.
A great man was dead and an outraged world desperately wanted someplace to lay blame. It chose Dallas and changed the city forever.
Twenty years ago he thrust himself into our lives; he is there yet.
To become more than a perpetual boom town, Dallas needs a foresighted leader and astute politician. Is Starke Taylor the man?
Independent oilmen are still for free enterprise, but these days they also expect a little favoritism from Uncle Sam.
Like the hero of a boys’ novel, George Bush moved from the East to the wild and woolly West. He wanted to prove himself, by golly, to Yale, Procter & Gamble, and the old man.
The new governor’s first hundred days were great theater, but now come taxes.
Today’s desperadoes are in the bays of the Texas coast, roping redfish and cursing the Parks and Wildlife Department.
Meet some of Texas' secular latter-day saints: volunteers.