Let the People In

by Jan Reid

  Joy came into the group by way of a friendship with Mary Beth’s sister in Dallas. “We first talked about some kind of researcher’s position,” Joy told me, “but we agreed that what they had available then was not really a good fit for me. So I took a job working for Ben Barnes. When I called Ann to tell her, she said, ‘Oh, that’s great, you go ahead and see how the big boys do it, and then we’ll talk when you get done with that.’ Then I worked on a congressional campaign in Fort Worth. Our candidate lost, but I learned a lot about legislative districts and voter precincts. So Ann asked me to come work for them as the legislative liaison. I said, ‘Ann, I have no idea how to do that.’ She said, ‘Oh, don’t worry. We just want someone who’s loyal and talented and that we know we can trust. We can teach you all you need to know about working with the legislature.’”

  See how the big boys do it. That flip remark was such a revealing thing for Ann to say. Joy shared a handsome office with Dorothy—working knee to knee, as they put it. From that point on, Joy was a permanent part of Ann’s team. She and Jim Anderson were our close friends before and after their divorce.

  I had finished a couple of books and wanted a breather from the freelance scuffle, so I took a part-time job writing speeches for Garry Mauro. The General Land Office resembled the federal Department of the Interior, but with an elected director and almost no surface public land. (When Texas joined the United States in 1845, one of the conditions it negotiated was the retention of all public land by the state, but about 90 percent had been sold or given away to retire the republic’s debts, pay veterans of its army, and attract settlers and railroad construction.) As land commissioner, Mauro framed his initiatives to maximize the state’s oil and gas revenue—Texas wisely kept its mineral rights during the public-land fire sales—and its endowment of public education. He emphasized protection of the state’s beaches, wetlands, and extraterritorial waters—his lobbying led the U.S. Senate to ratify a treaty that banned the dumping of plastic debris in the ocean, which had been normal procedure for the shipping industry and even the navy. And the office devised an innovative way to enforce the MARPOL treaty (“MARPOL” is an acronym for “marine pollution”). Texas has huge reserves of natural gas, and he pushed plans to use the fuel in vehicles and industry as a way to bring cleaner air to its smog-afflicted cities. I enjoyed working there. Under the leadership of Mauro and his predecessor, Bob Armstrong, the land office was, in my view, the most progressive agency in state government for a quarter of a century. Ann liked Garry’s ideas, but the time would come when her support of them cost her dearly.

  Mauro was ambitious and made no bones about it. Reporters thought he was arrogant, that he cut too many ethical corners. Then one day late in his first term, as Mauro recounted it to me, he got a strange call from his mentor, Bob Bullock. They spoke by telephone almost daily, but the comptroller insisted that they go for a drive. “He told me, ‘Garry, Karl Rove is in league with a guy in the U.S. attorney’s office in San Antonio. He’s an FBI agent named Greg Rampton. Their sole job right now, their mission in life, is to figure out a way to indict you, me, Jim Mattox, Jim Hightower, and Ann Richards. They’re out to get us all.”

  Bullock had a paranoid side to his personality, but his political intelligence was renowned, and Garry had never seen the tough little guy so spooked. Mauro feared he was going to be the first one indicted when the FBI suddenly subpoenaed 70,000 pages of land office records. “There were fourteen of them,” he said of the agents. “They showed up first thing in the morning, and we had rows and rows of boxes waiting. They’d demanded that we provide two computers, and they installed their software and started looking. They must not have found much, because by ten o’clock they were gone. Rampton’s thesis was that any contribution from a veteran or a developer had to be quid pro quo.”

  Garry added: “I saw Rampton one time after that. I walked out in the hall, and he was just standing there. He handed me his card, and I asked him into my office, and we had a little chat. I never found out what he was doing there. I assume he was trying to intimidate me.”

  The investigation went away without any official notice that it was over or that Mauro’s name had been cleared. Garry defeated an undistinguished GOP candidate in 1986, but gone was any perception of him as the Texas Democrats’ Adonis. Trashed as well were his fairly well-developed plans to run for attorney general, if and when Mattox left office in his quest to be governor. Garry had been keeping his options open for a dark-horse race for governor himself. He didn’t share Ann’s assessment of Bill Hobby as a candidate and campaigner. Garry got along well with Mattox, or at least thought he did. As Clements’s second term fizzled, Garry asked me to write a speech in which he claimed that nothing good would come of an all-out three-year race for governor. At once Mattox snapped to the press, “I heard about that silly speech that Garry Mauro made.” Later he came over and asked Garry whether he was going to run. Garry said he wasn’t. Mattox then said he hoped to have Garry’s endorsement. Garry replied that he couldn’t promise that because he didn’t know what Ann was going to do. In Garry’s words: “Mattox said, ‘I think I’d be a better governor than Ann.’ I said, ‘Hell, Jim, I think I’d be a better governor than either one of you. The question is, who can win?’” His chuckle in telling me that story was older and wiser. “I guess I was a little arrogant back then.”

  Such were some of the egos, fears, and jealousies at play among the Class of ’82. And the enigmatic San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros was in a position to step out and become the immediate front-runner—he had charisma, he had the looks, he was an exceptional orator, he had built a fairly distinguished record as mayor, he had been short-listed as a vice presidential candidate by Walter Mondale, and he commanded absolute loyalty from the huge but never quite awakened Hispanic vote. But nobody in Austin had a clue about what was on Henry’s mind. Texas Democrats found themselves playing an endless game called “Waiting on Henry.” It was a reference to Samuel Beckett’s drama Waiting for Godot, in which characters hang about anticipating the arrival of someone who never shows up.

  But Jim Mattox was not waiting on anybody. If Cisneros did not make the race, the conventional wisdom was that Bill Hobby would move up and run for governor and win the Democratic nomination. Ann and many others on her team believed that Hobby, the son of a legendary governor and former editor of one of Texas’s major newspapers, was a powerhouse. But more than that, it was an emotional matter for Ann; she wasn’t going to run against her friend and mentor.

  Also, she loved the workings of the legislature. She liked the face-to-face negotiations, the swapping of yarns, and the horse-trading that got legislation passed. “I wasn’t involved in the day-to-day stuff then, but I thought all the political focus was on the lieutenant governor’s race,” said Mary Beth Rogers, who was on leave writing a book about the Hispanic activist Ernesto Cortés. But Ann was forever attuned to the practical facts of making a living. Divorced and on her own, she had to wonder whether she was enough of a businessperson to maintain her ethical standards while making the side deals necessitated by the lieutenant governor’s part-time salary. “I thought she was looking hard at the comptroller’s office,” said Bill Cryer. “The assumption was that Bullock would either retire or seek another office. Ann had learned so much about state finance in the Treasury, she’d done about all she could there, and the offices were so closely intertwined. Except the comptroller had much more power.”

  After fending off the indictment and trial for commercial bribery, Mattox crashed past his Republican opponent and won reelection as attorney general in 1986. He wasted no time in staking his claim to the governor’s prize in 1990, and the only way he knew how to wage a campaign was to go after it like a tank battalion.

  A political consultant named Kelly Fero was advising Mattox. They knew that Hobby kept a stable of fine horses in Houston, and every year he liked to vacation in England and ride in fox hunts. Unlike most Texans, Fero knew enough about the sport that
he was aware the equestrian hunters referred to donning the traditional red outfits they wore on the chase as “putting on the pinks.” Mattox got hold of that tidbit and raised an ongoing howl. “Do you know what putting on the pinks is?” he inquired in a speech to the League of United Latin American Citizens. “It’s probably not part of your heritage, nor mine either. Putting on the pinks is when you go out there and put on your little red riding coat, and your little pants, your high-top shoes, and chase the foxes through the woods. Then you go back and eat your wine and cheese. . . . Some of these people have had the gold spoon in their mouth so long that they forget what it’s like for the average person.”

  Just days after Mattox made that contemptuous speech, rumors started flying around the Capitol. As usual, Bob Bullock was the first to know: Hobby was about to announce that he would not be a candidate for governor—he was known to be weary of his battles with Clements and his staff, and he said the 1989 legislative session would be too critical for him to be a distracted and divisive figure.

  Hobby had been a conscientious and distinguished leader of the Senate for fifteen years, and the prospect of a race against Mattox was unsavory. Hobby deserves the benefit of the doubt for his explanation of why he was getting out, but that summer morning got stranger as it went along. David Richards had not gone to work for the attorney general in the hope or expectation of becoming part of the political operation, but with Mattox those lines were always blurred. David, who had worked closely with Hobby and his staff on a case involving Houston’s Hermann Hospital Estate, got a call from the lieutenant governor. Hobby asked David to send a message to Mattox—that he was also not going to seek reelection as lieutenant governor—and he desired some sense of what Mattox would say. David passed on the message to Steve Hall, Mattox’s good-natured and well-liked communications chief. Mattox sent word that, naturally, he would be gracious and complimentary. David called Hobby with Mattox’s assurances, but the weirdness that morning just kept coming.

  As recorded in Steve Hall’s personal diary, which he shared with me, he was walking down a corridor and encountered two members of the attorney general’s staff. One asked Hall whether he knew a man named Clyde. Hall answered that Clyde was a Houston private investigator who had worked with them on the suit involving the Hermann Hospital Estate. One of the men said that Clyde was in the building and was saying he had something important and urgent to tell Mattox directly. To Hall’s surprise, Mattox chose to greet the investigator in his office instead of delegating the matter to him. The language of Texas government has a certain courtliness; the lieutenant governor is addressed as “Governor,” the attorney general as “General.” Hall wrote that the Houston private eye said, “General, I’ve got a favor to ask of you, and I’ve stuck my neck out a little bit in telling someone that I knew you well enough to be able to get in to see you and talk straight with you.”

  Clyde went on that he had been asked to come and talk on behalf of the lieutenant governor. “Hobby asked me if I had a file on him, and I told him, ‘Well, Governor, you live in Houston, don’t you?’ He laughed, then he asked me if I’d done anything on him for you, and I said I hadn’t. Then he asked me to come talk to you about destroying a file. I told him I couldn’t do that. I didn’t have anything to bargain with.”

  The investigator looked closely at Mattox and said, “You do have a file, don’t you?”

  The attorney general replied, “I do.”

  “Well, I know you play tough, I knew you would. The only thing that disappoints me is that you didn’t call me to have me put it together for you.

  “General,” Clyde went on, “Bill Hobby is worried sick that file is going to follow him into private life. . . . I knew David Richards from the Hermann Hospital stuff, and I knew Hobby knew him. I said he ought to call Richards and have Richards talk to you. Now, General, I told him that after I did that, I’d be able to come talk to you, I’d have something to bargain with, and that I believed you were an honorable man.

  “He did what I asked him to do. Now I’m asking you to tear up that file, and let me keep my word and go back to him and say: ‘I told you Mattox was an honorable man. He tore it up in front of me and told me he would not use it against you.’”

  The conversation veered off to other subjects but kept coming back to Mattox tearing up documents in front of the investigator. Mattox finally turned to Hall and said, “Bring the file.”

  There was no file on Bill Hobby. Hall went outside and scrambled, looking for anything, and finally he just started stuffing one full of old and useless memos. He carried the package back to Mattox, who tore the papers into little pieces as the investigator watched. He handed them to Hall, who walked into the private john that was afforded the office of the attorney general, dropped in the shreds and tatters, and officiously flushed the toilet.

  Enormously pleased with his performance as a poker player and giant killer, Mattox didn’t miss a beat. Signals went out to Cisneros that he would get the same rough treatment if he even thought about getting in the governor’s race. Mattox knew that Cisneros was sitting on a personal time bomb. Cisneros had created a problem for himself that could be termed “Holier Than Thou.” He and his wife had a little boy with serious health problems. He had consented to be photographed by Texas Monthly with his son in an angelic cuddle of white clothing and sheets. But he had also been involved in an affair, and after it ended, he had sent his former lover regular checks that could be construed as hush money.

  Ann didn’t want any noses poking around her bedroom. But she was trying to calculate what she could and should do next. Ann had the most curious and trying relationship with Bob Bullock, both before and after they quit drinking. It was a stew of friendship, condescension, rivalry, admiration, sexism, and envy. The jockeying in anticipation of the 1990 races found their relationship on one of its upbeat swings. One day he sent her a note with a single line of friendly advice: “Say nothing often.”

  CHAPTER 14

  The Speech

  Ann turned fifty-five in 1988. She had finally been able to quit smoking. She watched her diet more when an annual physical gave her an elevated reading of her cholesterol. She walked for exercise. She took a great deal of pleasure in being a new grandmother. But she had absorbed more personal blows as she pushed the Treasury agenda and spoke to Lions and Rotary clubs around the state. Her great friend Virginia Whitten had been diagnosed with breast cancer not long after Sam died, and though she lasted longer than he had, until 1997, the dread illness claimed her too.

  Ann had periodontal problems that were getting worse by the month. She flew out to Seattle for difficult oral surgery that allowed her to avoid dentures by getting implants and bridges. She complained to her son Dan that the things made it difficult for her to carry on a normal conversation, much less deliver a rousing speech. “Dear Bud,” she wrote. “Happy belated Valentine’s Day. I went to Seattle and got a lot of teeth pulled and bought some new ones. They make me look like Mr. Ed”—television’s talking horse.

  She had recently taken part in a ceremony that honored Bud, Cartwright, Dan Jenkins, and Larry L. King with stars in a sidewalk in downtown Austin. A month after she sent him the Valentine, she got this letter from Bud.

  You have been on my mind a lot lately, too, and not just because I saw you hugging and kissing a bloodhound in the newspaper. I got to thinking about all the nice things you said at the 6th Street ceremony, and how much I appreciated what you did. Being kind to dogs and me is a sure way to get a front row seat in heaven, but let’s don’t go there until the last plane out. There are nights when I’d like to dress up like a dancing Tampax again and take you on a tour of Harlem. Can this be done sober? Yes, after you become president of the U.S. and make me culture exchange attaché. (Fletcher is too irritable for the job.) I miss seeing you.

  “I don’t believe it either, but I’m not going to turn them down,” Texas state treasurer Ann Richards said to a press aide when informed she had been chosen t
o give a career-making keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Here she fields local questions at a press conference following the announcement.

  “Speaking in public,” Ann would reflect in her book, “is a very personal piece of business. Giving a good speech, especially one with some passion and emotion, you’re revealing a lot about yourself. You’re putting yourself in a very vulnerable position. It’s sort of like Lady Godiva riding down Main Street without clothes on. Or stepping up on a scale and getting weighed. There’s every possibility in the world that you’ll be found wanting.”

  In the Democrats’ 1988 presidential race, Delaware senator Joe Biden had barely gotten started when he was found terribly wanting because of one speech. In September 1987, he had made a self-aggrandizing reference to his blue-collar origins in language lifted almost verbatim from a speech by Neil Kinnock, the British Labour Party leader. The plagiarism may have been the sin of the speech-writer, not the orator, but in any case that blunder knocked Biden out of the race.

  Another man hoping to challenge Vice President Bush was the former Colorado senator and initial frontrunner Gary Hart. He torpedoed himself when reporters annoyed him with questions about rumors of his possible adultery. “Follow me around,” he dared them. “I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.” A pair of reporters from the Miami Herald took him up on it, and the evidence of his affair with Donna Rice spelled the end of his campaign and career.