The Kathy Ratings
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.
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.
If you think Texas is pretty much the same as it was ten years ago, you’re wrong. Nineteen seventy-three remade the state overnight.
Twelve ran, Mike Andrews won. A saga of ambition, money, power, courage, and the nature of urban politics in Texas.
Every year communities scattered across Texas hold wet-dry elections. Each one pits the forces of fundamentalism against the forces of realism. This is the story of one such election.
Jim Collins is running for the Senate on the claim that it’s better to be right (wing) than to pass bills. If he wins, it will change Texas politics.
When an Amarillo bishop decried the nearby H-bomb plant, he wooed the press, alienated the city, and picked on his parishioners.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals confirms your worst fears about lawyers and judges and the impotence of the criminal justice system.
On the surface, Mexico’s presidential election looks a lot like ours—rallies, placards, speeches—but the outcome there is never in doubt.
Big Oil no longer holds political sway in Washington, and wildcatters are celebrating a new Texas independents’ day.
Rusty Hardin is a prosecutor. Most of the time, his job is to put people in jail. This time, he wants a man dead.
Time was when Texas Republicans had to stand united. But now their party's in power and there's rivalry in the ranks.
The big boom.
The water problem; or, Texas is not all wet.
In defense of failure—and success.
Vesta Cawley turned to the city bureaucracy for help with a problem that didn’t matter to any of the other 900,000 residents of Dallas. But it should have mattered more to city hall.
Parceling out three new seats in Congress sounds like an easy job, but the Texas Legislature tried for two months and couldn’t do it.
Texas Fathers for Equal Rights joined divorced men from all over the country to protest family courts that have always favored mothers in child custody cases.
The war that won’t go away.
West of Fort Worth, General Dynamics builds the F-16, a good little fighter plane that could have been great if the Air Force brass had kept their hands off it.