Let the People In

by Jan Reid

  Almost immediately the happy family of the Democrats’ class of ’82 began to bicker. The previous land commissioner, Ann’s friend Bob Armstrong, had won a multibillion-dollar settlement after suing the federal government over royalties from oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. (Texas’s ownership of mineral rights extended miles farther offshore than that of other states because of its origin as an independent republic.) Armstrong and his successor Garry Mauro believed the windfall belonged to the Permanent School Fund, the endowment for public education. But Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby directed Ann to put it in general revenue, which meant it could be spent on anything. Mauro consulted Bob Bullock and Jim Mattox, who said they agreed with him in principle, but wanted to stay out of his plan of action—which was to sue Hobby and Ann with a writ of mandamus. Both were livid and let Mauro know it. Ann particularly felt it was insulting and treacherous. She told Mauro that Hobby was going to crush him like an ant, or words to that effect. Mauro knew he might not be able to win the lawsuit, so he offered, and won, a settlement in which a third of the money went to general revenue and two thirds to the permanent school endowment and another fund reserved for public education. It would take a while for the hard feelings to heal.

  Elsewhere in the Capitol complex, politics got off to an uncommonly fast start in 1983. As one would expect, the primary focus in the press was on Mark White’s surprising ouster of Bill Clements. But White was not an exciting media figure, and before he could get his family settled in the Governor’s Mansion and orient his staff, Bob Bullock announced that he would be running against White in 1986. Some of Bullock’s aides said he declared his candidacy the day the winners in 1982 were inaugurated. Of White’s performance as attorney general, Bullock asserted that some “dumb” legal opinions handed down by White made “about as much sense as a square bowling ball.”

  With the Texas economy tanking at the rate the price of West Texas crude plummeted, the comptroller battled White over revenue estimates and the governor’s ideas of education reform and finance. But Bullock’s marathon campaign lasted just a year and a half. By July 1984, his hope of wearing down and ousting White had dwindled to a brooding sigh. He acknowledged that his dream of being governor was over in an interview with Raul Reyes of the Houston Chronicle. “Here’s a guy who’s an alcoholic,” Bullock said. “He’s been a lobbyist. Divorced. The subject of a grand jury investigation that was crippling. . . . Would [Texans] want that type of individual in the governor’s office?” In self-pity he said in quitting his race, “No one really gave a doggone whether I ran or not.”

  The comptroller’s office shared a building on North Congress with the Treasury. Ann and Bullock parked their cars in the same lot. There were times when they cracked jokes like the buddies they once had been. But Bullock’s ego was bruised, and he had begun to see her as a rival. He sniped at Ann as her positive press clippings grew, saying that he could do the job of the state treasurer with one telephone and two clerks. Remarks like that annoyed her, and she had ways of paying him back. Ann had the antiquated authority to commission and pin old-style badges on Treasury agents and declare them peace officers. Bullock knew this—he seemed to know all things about Texas government—and he decided he wanted such a badge. He pestered her for it, and he never took kindly to anyone turning him down. “I can’t commission him as a peace officer and license him to carry a gun,” she said with a laugh. “He’d be dangerous.”

  At that point in her political career, Ann had not given a great deal of thought to Jim Mattox. As attorney general, he issued opinions that affected Treasury operations, and for any kind of litigation, his office provided lawyers, but that was about it. She liked John Hannah and Max Sherman, but Mattox had beaten them; he seemed able, he was an unabashed liberal, and she had no reason to think he would ever be an enemy. In 1977, when he was in Congress, she had helped him out in a boisterous and well-attended fund-raiser in Dallas. Among the participants that day were Jim Wright, the congressman and future Speaker of the House from Fort Worth, and Hamilton Jordan, President Carter’s chief of staff. Liz Carpenter kicked off the event in her usual drawling, uproarious manner. They had gathered, she declared, “not to praise Jim Mattox, but to bury him with greenbacks.” Ann spoke next. “I didn’t know there were this many Democrats in Dallas County,” she bantered, “or this many reasonable facsimiles.”

  But then David accepted a job as executive assistant attorney general, the chief litigator on Mattox’s staff. He had no more talent with a crystal ball than Ann did, and he foresaw no conflict of interest. The Democrats had rolled back Republican designs on state government, and a good number of the winners were liberals. In a way, Austin in 1983 resembled Washington in 1961. Jim Mattox was charting an urban populist agenda that David supported, and he thought it was time for him to get involved.

  To the outrage of conservatives and the emerging Christian Right, Mattox and his legal team chose not to appeal a federal court ruling that voided a state law making sodomy a crime. And for the first time, an attorney general interpreted consumer rights as a responsibility of state government. He called himself the “People’s Lawyer.” During Mattox’s terms as attorney general, his staff would handle and win judgments of more than $2.5 billion for the state. But he did have some unsettling personality quirks. After the Supreme Court lifted a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in 1976 (as a result of its ruling in Gregg v. Georgia), Texas became the country’s busiest implementer of the death penalty, starting in 1982, and Mattox attended every execution. His presence in Huntsville seemed ghoulish: the attorney general had almost no authority in capital punishment cases, certainly not at the point when a convict was strapped to a gurney and someone was poking his arm with a needle and trying to find a vein and release the poisons.

  Mattox looked like the comedian Buddy Hackett, but there was nothing lighthearted or funny about his approach to winning elections. His top political minions were notorious for shaking down people for contributions, and that promptly got him in a load of trouble. An investigation by Travis County district attorney Ronnie Earle and his Public Integrity Unit resulted in a 1983 grand-jury indictment of Mattox for commercial bribery.

  The investigation came about because Mattox had jointly sued giant Mobil Oil with one of his major contributors, a South Texan named Clinton Manges. They were trying to void an oil and gas lease, an action that, if successful, would greatly benefit Manges and also earn the state some royalties. Mattox’s brother and sister had given him $125,000 in campaign contributions, and a Seattle bank with links to Manges had lent them a large amount of money. Mobil’s lawyers went after all those parties as well as the attorney general. Outraged by the attack on his siblings, Mattox threatened those lawyers, who belonged to the famous Houston firm Fulbright and Jaworski. Even though Leon Jaworski was the special prosecutor who helped bring down Richard Nixon, no Texas law firm was more aligned with the old moneyed establishment. In retaliation, Mattox threatened to take away the firm’s tax-exempt status and its immensely profitable share of the state’s bond business. It was open warfare. Ronnie Earle and his prosecutors did not bring the case to trial until 1985, and Mattox became a full-time defendant. David Richards functioned as Texas’s de facto attorney general for nearly two years.

  At the Austin trial, Mattox and his attorneys did not deny that he had threatened the Houston lawyers. But the prosecutors were never able to explain what commercial bribery was. The public and the press came to believe that Earle’s crew had invented the crime in order to get the indictment. The jury walked Mattox, and when he strode out of the courthouse with that acquittal, he pulled a boxing glove on his left hand and in triumph thrust it high in the air. That was the man’s style of political theater.

  Ann had sworn on her first day in office that treasurer was the only job she wanted, period. But she was surveying the field of possible Democratic opportunities just a year and a half into her first term at the Treasury. Bill Cryer, the tall and wry forme
r newspaper reporter who was her press aide, delivered in July 1984 a wide-ranging assessment of her prospects. The memo read in part:

  It seems to me that your choices for political office (other than state treasurer) are, in descending order:

  1. Comptroller

  2. Lieutenant Governor

  3. U.S. Senator

  4. Governor, if White does not run again for some reason, or in six years if he does.

  5. U.S. Congress upon the retirement of Jake Pickle [a folksy, popular man who had represented Austin and been part of Lyndon Johnson’s political team]

  Politically, you are probably the strongest statewide office-holder at the present time, with the possible exception of Mark White and Bill Hobby. Mark White because of his strong showing in the special session is at a crest right now. . . . I think personally Hobby could be defeated in a tough primary [challenge for his seat] or for the governorship if his opponent were articulate and aggressive. I doubt, however, if anyone would be willing to take him on. He is one of those politicians whose name has a chilling effect on other people’s political ambitions.

  Jim Hightower is perceived to be strong, but his liberal image will be a big handicap in a high profile race at the top of the ballot . . .

  Mattox is lucky to still be in office.

  Mauro has an image of being thin-skinned, “spoiled,” and tainted . . .

  Bullock is tainted with his past beyond redemption. That, plus his early announcement for governor, has hurt him badly. He has never really had a hard-fought race and I think White would have rolled him over in any primary. . . . The betting right now is that Bob Bullock has made his last hurrah and is going to retire . . .

  Ann Richards could probably win any race she ran for. She is seen as likeable, tough and honest. Her record at the Treasury is perceived as outstanding and her leadership in the national party [has] marked her as a winner and a Democratic darling. Furthermore, it is believed that it would be difficult for a male candidate to attack her.

  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an office open right now. She can keep the Treasury as long as she wants it. While comptroller is obviously a more powerful office, it is seen by most as a lateral transfer. She can bide her time until a senator retires. . . . The lieutenant governor’s office is hers, if she wants it, and is willing to run against a rather large field, should Hobby retire.

  Her option seems to be to hold on at Treasury, raise a bunch of money, and wait.

  Almost nothing over the next several months played out the way Cryer predicted. For one thing, a major Democratic rival he neglected to mention was San Antonio’s handsome and charismatic mayor, Henry Cisneros. Not long after Cryer wrote that memo, Cisneros was one of the politicians whom Walter Mondale seriously considered as a vice presidential running mate. In the end, Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro, making her the first woman on a major-party ticket, but the episode emphasized that Cisneros was the elephant in the living room of Texas Democrats—he commanded the Hispanic vote. In a crowded field of Democrats who might run for governor, Capitol pundits, consultants, and pollsters generally ranked Ann no better than fourth.

  For Ann and her team, the 1984 presidential election would have few high points. Mary Beth Rogers laughed that, for her, it was when they got a close look at the movie star Warren Beatty on the floor of the national convention in San Francisco. Ann learned something valuable when she got to make one of the speeches nominating Ferraro. Her performance caught the eyes of some party insiders, but she was not enthralled by it, and she put down a marker in her store of recollections: the lights of the Moscone Center were not turned down while she was making her speech, and the crowd talked all the way through it.

  From right, Attorney General Jim Mattox and Treasurer Ann Richards stump in Texas for Geraldine Ferraro and Walter Mondale, the Democratic nominees for vice president and president in the 1984 election. Ann made a speech seconding the nomination of Ferraro at the national convention, exposure that contributed to her selection as keynote speaker four years later.

  In the election that November, Reagan and Bush carried Texas and forty-eight other states, with the Democrats winning only in Mondale’s native Minnesota and the District of Columbia. The Mondale-Ferraro ticket suffered the second-worst blowout in a presidential election, gaining just 40.6 percent of the vote.

  Whatever the future held in store for Ann, she and her team had a troubled and outmoded agency to run. During the 1982 campaign, Mary Beth Rogers had a full-time job working for the outgoing land commissioner, Bob Armstrong. When Ann won, Mary Beth talked to Armstrong about what she should expect. “He said, ‘The legislature will be going into session, she’ll have to compile a budget, and she’d better get an audit of the Treasury first.’ So I relayed that to Ann,” Mary Beth said with a laugh, “and she said, ‘Well, then you have to come work for me, and do all that.’

  “I didn’t know anything about money, and she didn’t either! I went to the university bookstore and bought a big old thick volume called The Financial Handbook. I took it home every night to learn those financial terms. We joked about how many terms we could throw around in meetings. God, it was interesting, and it was a lot of fun—and real hard. We worked our tails off.”

  Jane Hickie chaired the transition team. The state provided no budget for such a thing, and the changeover wasn’t like the one that occurred at the land office across the street, where Bob Armstrong did all he could to make things easier for the newly elected Garry Mauro. Hickie described the surreal experience of their official first tour of the Treasury to Lynn Whitten, a student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs who was conducting in-house interviews at the Treasury.

  Warren G. Harding took us around to meet everybody and see all the departments, and as he introduced us in every department, he had our names written on a piece of paper—Ann Richards, Chula Reynolds, and Jane Hickie, and there were about seven departments, and as he introduced us in every department, he would read our names off the piece of paper, and not once in seven departments did he get our names right. The protocol in terms of dealing with Mr. Harding was pretty elaborate. We didn’t want to upset anybody and inconvenience him, and we didn’t want it to be awkward. But we found an atmosphere of real fear and distrust. . . . And the office was much more archaic than anything we had ever been led to believe. There was no mailroom, no mail processing system, and the data processing was like something out of an old movie. . . . And with people who had little to no experience with state bureaucracy, how in the world do you get a handle on what was without a doubt the last little backwater of state government?

  When we interviewed the department heads, we would be sitting there and the clock came to a quarter till five, and I swear if we had walked out of that door we’d have been stampeded by a hundred people rushing down the hallway. And we couldn’t come during the lunch hour, because everybody got off from noon to one. It was the same stampede.

  Mary Beth was organizing a fund-raiser to provide some operating cushion and reduce Ann’s campaign debt. She also drafted a proposal that laid out the necessity of Ann taking command of the agency with a firm and confident show of control. “We thought that it really mattered that the first day we were here that this agency felt impact that we were in charge,” Ann told Lynn Whitten, “and that it should not appear in the least to be business as it had been conducted in the past.”

  During recruitment interviews, they discovered Paul Williams, a twenty-seven-year-old prodigy on policy issues of banking and government finance. With Paul in charge, they could stop bluffing with big words out of an introductory college text. Now they had someone who really knew what he was doing. By the end of the month, Ann had made Williams deputy treasurer in charge of fiscal operations. She gave him no time to feel heady about his new position. She told him to talk to every department head and report back by the end of his first week on how they could install security measures in all those departments. The Treasury was handling a great deal of mon
ey, Ann told Whitten, but there had never been an internal audit system or a way to check off the procedures of one department against another’s.

  At the same time, they didn’t want to heighten fear among Harding’s employees. Department heads who wished to stay on were asked to fill out questionnaires that required writing short essays: “What were your responsibilities under Mr. Harding? Have they changed since Mrs. Richards took office? What were your first impressions of Mrs. Richards?” Note that the style used was “Mrs.,” not “Ms.” They took pains not to fuel rumors that the new treasurer and her executive staff were fanatical feminist ideologues. Ann and her team discovered some things that were just stunning. A man named Anthony Haynes had been the agency’s chief accountant for ten years. Yet Haynes, an African American, had never been allowed to ride the elevator. Other discoveries left Ann just as speechless. A woman came in her office and asked, “Mrs. Richards, is it all right if we have doughnuts in our office tomorrow?”

  “Of course it is,” the new treasurer replied. “But why in the world would you ask me?”

  The employee hesitated. “Well, Mr. Harding always thought it best to ask first.” Every Thursday for years she had been coming in and asking the same question—could they please have their Friday-morning doughnuts?

  The historian Ruthe Winegarten, another of Ann’s friends from the Dallas days, arrived and took over the wide-ranging internal interviews. Ann told her about the quandaries her team had encountered at the start. “Day before yesterday, one of the employees came to tell me that we had $495,000 that had been willed to the State of Texas from a man in California in 1975, and the money had been in an escrow account since then, and my question was: Why hadn’t any questions about it been resolved so that it had gone into the General Fund and the legislature could use and spend it? Okay? When we find out that we’ve got half a million dollars at rest somewhere and has not been acted on, previous experience tells us that there’s a whole lot more we don’t know about.”