State Secrets
Wright is wrong in the Houston mayor’s race; the medical establishment beats the state budget crunch; capital punishment faces death by bureaucracy; will defense put John Tower on the defensive?
Former senior executive editor Paul Burka joined the staff of Texas Monthly in 1974, one year after the magazine’s founding. He led TM’s political coverage for nearly forty years and spearheaded its storied roundup of the Best and Worst Legislators each biennium. A lifelong Texan, he was born in Galveston, graduated from Rice University with a BA in history, and received a JD from the University of Texas School of Law.
Burka spent five years as an attorney with the Texas Legislature, where he served as counsel to the Senate Natural Resources Committee. He won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award in 1981. He also received a National Magazine Award in 1985, for his two-part profile of Clinton Manges. After retiring from Texas Monthly in 2015, he taught at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He died in 2022.
Wright is wrong in the Houston mayor’s race; the medical establishment beats the state budget crunch; capital punishment faces death by bureaucracy; will defense put John Tower on the defensive?
By Paul Burka
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.
By Paul Burka
Treasure hunters want state booty; Republicans aren’t so hot about Phil Gramm; there’s hope for Texans with money in Mexico; Texas newspapers worry about USA Today.
By Paul Burka
One giant step for wives; one small step for John Glenn; why oilmen will never rule the world; why the new Texas congressmen won’t either.
By Paul Burka
In The Path to Power Robert Caro brings the Texas of the twenties and thirties to hot, scrubby life, but tries to fit the young Lyndon Johnson into a prefabricated and constricting mold.
By Paul Burka
Brown & Root looks for a way out; Mark White looks for a way in; who’s number one at UT; the Court of Criminal Appeals blows another one.
By Paul Burka
Making a mountain out of a Greenhill; Dallas versus Houston in the governor’s race; Post time at the Chronicle; the Yankees are after our oil money again.
By Paul Burka
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.
By Paul Burka
West Texas' Indian motels; dueling fundraisers; a not-so-sweet deal; adventures in the legal trade.
By Paul Burka
Taller-than-thou in Houston; Bullock and his feelings; the fate of the Boll Weevils; yellow journalism in Dallas.
By Paul Burka
Heads-up journalism; expensive mileage; the balkanization of the Sunbelt; wars in the oil patch.
By Paul Burka
He’s Arthur Temple, Jr., ruler of a million acres of East Texas and the last of the timber barons.
By Paul Burka
Slums for sale, hardball at the Herald; bye-bye, Nueces Bay; hello, mudslinging.
By Paul Burka
Detroit attacks Houston; UT defends agains the NCAA; Texas loses 59 parks to Reaganomics; voter apathy—who cares?
By Paul Burka
A new market for unstable oil; Colorado joins the hate-Texas club; Houston lawyers invade Dallas; a Republican litmus test.
By Paul Burka
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals confirms your worst fears about lawyers and judges and the impotence of the criminal justice system.
By Paul Burka
The New Federalism gets the old raspberry; will Jim Baker run the country or the bank?; a political test for Texas labor; a law Houston’s new police chief would love to break.
By Paul Burka
Drilling for oil on hallowed ground; nannies invade Dallas; McKnight of the living dead; does the Voting Rights Act really help Mexican Americans?
By Paul Burka
Selling the streets of Laredo; the next big oil play; the bar breaks up over a Supreme Court race; it’s true what they say about office Christmas parties.
By Paul Burka
Whenever you buy or sell a house, hundreds of dollars of your money goes for something called title insurance. Title insurance is a great deal—for the title company.
By Paul Burka
Poor Bunker Hunt; hogging the airwaves; why the establishment likes Hightower; worries in the Hobby camp.
By Paul Burka
Dreaming Democrats; juicy news about the News; shake-ups brewing in UT; whey Reagan can’t decontrol gas.
By Paul Burka
Everybody knows the story about the young Texan who goes into business, works hard, and makes millions. But what happens when his luck runs out?
By Paul Burka
Muse’s shaky takeoff; Mark White on the sport; Bob Bullock’s special grace; aging Texas money.
By Paul Burka
What the future holds for artificial hearts, utility customers, Phil Gramm, and the Republican party.
By Paul Burka
Bombs away on the Franklin Mountains; why pro-nukes belong in the Nutt House; the Dallas News goes public; sportfishermen change their minds about redfish.
By Paul Burka
A deal that failed; macho political ads, the unhappiest man in Texas; a big time legal goof.
By Paul Burka
Nineteen people you voted for and one you didn't.
By Paul Burka, Kaye Northcott and Victoria Loe
Farmers and oilmen fight over water; a Houston gold rush for TV licenses; houses multiply faster than people; security for brokers.
By Paul Burka
The most expensive, amazing, dynamic, futuristic, and sexy way not to solve a transit crisis.
By Paul Burka
Fines for political signs; big changes in the Valley; UT bursting at the seams; the failure of consultants; Arlington, an unlikely newspaper town.
By Paul Burka
Cutting up in the Big Thicket Association; uranium mines get the shaft; the Light at the end of the tunnel; how to make Yankees pay for our oil.
By Paul Burka
In a city known for its tough ethnic politics, Henry Cisneros is out to prove that a Mexican Emerican can be elected mayor of San Antonio.
By Paul Burka
State highway patrolmen hate the 55 mph speed limit almost as much as other Texas motorists do, and for better reasons.
By Paul Burka
Sex in the classifieds; looking out for farmer’s welfare; everybody wants to be land commissioner; what ever happened to the tax revolt?
By Paul Burka
Roughhouse on the Red River; the inside skinny on who’s In and Out; the Census Bureau giveth and the Census Bureau taketh away; circulatory ailments for Dallas newspapers; the last warpath.
By Paul Burka
It’s time to stop taking care of the Arabs and start taking care of ourselves.
By Paul Burka
Clements is ready for the Legislature, but is the Legislature ready for him?
By Paul Burka
That’s what the Legislature is here to do, and unless we’re lucky, it just may.
By Paul Burka
Discount medicine needles doctors; open season on Democrats; meanwhile, back at Southfork; Dallas blacks are fed up—with busing.
By Paul Burka
What’s in store for ‘88; riding Reagan’s coattails; welcome to the great El Paso gold rush; Yankee lawyers invade Dallas.
By Paul Burka
The Astros were going to the World Series. But—
By Paul Burka
Because nobody at city hall is doing his job, that’s why.
By Paul Burka
A ground swell of support for booting Howard Cosell; here come the judges; who will fill the UT power vacuum.
By Paul Burka
The press keeps telling us how bad Carter and Reagan are, but let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
By Paul Burka
Hurricane Allen proved that everyone talks about the weather but nobody knows much about it—least of all the National Weather Service.
By Paul Burka
Football has degenerated into a routine encounter between two sets of programmed, steroid-stuffed robots. These trick plays could change all that.
By Paul Burka
Texas chic hits bottom; bak error pinches UT law school; carter alienates Texas again; a test for teachers.
By Paul Burka
What you don’t know about your fire department could burn you up.
By Paul Burka
Summer in the city; publisher’s power play; biting the handout that feeds you; will Oscar Wyatt abandon America?
By Paul Burka