Follow the Money How George Bush And the Texas Republicans Hog-tied America

Chapter One The Changing of the Guard Flash back to the spring of 1994. Between then and now, a vast chasm yawns across the political surface of Texas. It's hard to believe, but what seems like an aeon of political change took place in little more than a decade. But change it did. Back then, Texas was a different place. This was the political landscape of Texas as the 1994 election cycle loomed: The state house of representatives was Democratic; the state senate was Democratic. The state supreme court and most of the lesser state courts were Democratic. All these too were Democrats: Governor Ann Richards; Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock; Attorney General Dan Morales; and Land Commissioner Garry Mauro. It was a deep bench the Democrats fielded -- and an ambitious one. Some among them dreamed of being governor themselves; others dreamed of the Senate; one, at least, might have had higher ambitions still. None of their dreams were to be fulfilled. The Texas congressional delegation stood at twenty-one Democrats and nine Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. Among these were some of the most powerful and senior members of Congress, led by the veteran Judiciary Committee chairman Jack Brooks of Beaumont. Only in the U.S. Senate were the Texas Republicans dominant. And the two serving senators from the Lone Star State were widely accorded to be among the least impressive of its members: the thin-lipped, whiny-voiced Phil Gramm, his native, nasal Georgia accent never having left him, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, elected only the year before in a special election to replace the long-serving mandarin Democrat Lloyd Bentsen. Gramm, with his delusions of grandeur unabated, yet with his presidential aspirations fast going up in smoke, was among the least liked by his fellow senators, while Hutchison, for all her personal charm, was a very junior senator. Neither had more than limited influence. Neither was ever going to be a major presence in the U.S. Senate. How then is it possible that such cataclysmic change came to Texas -- and in such a short time? True, Texas had had a Republican governor in its recent past -- the first since the post-Civil War age of Reconstruction, millionaire oilman William P. Clements of Dallas. Clements served two nonconsecutive terms as governor (1979-83 and 1987-91) and was widely judged a failure both times. Arrogant to the point of abrasiveness, Clements made few friends in Austin and proved a poor public face to put on the rise of Texas Republicanism, but he was colorful. The football-loving Clements had also served as chairman of the Southern Methodist University trustees. There, he helped preside over one of the worst scandals in NCAA history. Players on the SMU Mustangs football team -- 52-19-1 between 1980 and 1986 -- had, it turned out, been paid thousands of dollars from a slush fund run by boosters. The NCAA responded by handing SMU the so-called death penalty, barring the team from bowl games and television appearances for two years and reducing football scholarships by fifty-five over four years -- and mandating an entire year's absence (1987) from the playing field. Ironically, Clements's political comeback could be traced to football. His pallid successor as governor, Democrat Mark White, following the advice of Dallas billionaire Ross Perot, had rammed a "no-pass, no-play" law through the state legislature -- and had lived to pay for it with his political hide. Football-loving Texans of the Clements variety were horrified to learn that high school athletes would be barred from playing when the only sin they had committed was earning a failing grade or two in class. Largely on the basis of public resentment over no-pass, no-play, Mark White found himself bounced from office. After his second term, Clements called it a day. His handpicked successor, multimillionAnderson, John is the author of 'Follow the Money How George Bush And the Texas Republicans Hog-tied America', published 2007 under ISBN 9780743286435 and ISBN 074328643X.