by Jan Reid
A month later, in a drive called “Texas Commitment,” the governor, Mauro, and Cathy Bonner, Ann’s director of the Department of Commerce, invited chief executive officers to hear how both the people’s health and their companies’ prosperity could be strengthened by the plan to exploit the state’s proven natural gas reserves. The invited business leaders represented Southwest Airlines, Frito-Lay, Chevron, Sea World, the Houston Chronicle, Lone Star Steel, and Dow Chemical among other large corporations. She was trying to sell them on the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit of Texans. She was also trying to sell herself.
Ann strikes a characteristic pose while answering questions at a fund-raiser in Dallas. The man at right is unidentified.
She flew the next night to New York, where she explained the reason for her visit on Good Morning America and then met with executives of Chemical Bank. The next day she sat for interviews with Newsweek, Financial World, and Fortune. Then it was back to Dallas–Fort Worth and a day with business leaders, chamber of commerce officials, and reporters, where she emphasized the merits and profound importance of the Superconducting Super Collider, which if finished would be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. The quest to find the so-called secret of the universe had begun with research physicists courting the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. When the site, in the area of Waxahachie, was completed in 1999, the governor reported, it was going to trigger a surge in housing construction and other economic activity. Ann was making a hard pitch that the Super Collider’s promise was not a grandiose pipe dream.
Two days later, she was off to San Francisco, where she had lunch with executives and staffers of Chevron, trying to dissuade them from downsizing its Port Arthur refinery. That day she also met with the group president of Lockheed’s Missiles and Space Systems. She told the executive, who was a former deputy director of the CIA, that aerospace research and technology had product applications as varied as thermal insulation for the Alaska pipeline, solar energy collectors for drying grain, polarized sunglasses, graphite golf clubs, digital television, coatings to preserve works of art, fracture tests for steel in bridges, electronic deicing of aircraft wings, and weather satellites, among other things.
That night she had dinner with the president of Apple Computers, which had chosen the Austin suburb of Round Rock as the location for a customer service center. Ann’s briefing paper said, “Ask if we can do anything to make their move into Texas easier or more pleasant.”
Ann roamed the country armed with “Texas Facts,” which had been compiled by Bonner and the Commerce Department. The governor stressed that Texas had the fourteenth-largest economy in the world, comparable to that of Spain or Brazil. It employed more than 8.5 million workers. Texas was the third-largest producer of electronic components in the United States, the fourth-largest developer of software, and first in production of computer clones (200 million units a year). It was the largest producer of plastic materials and resins. It led the nation in the production of natural gas and possessed 30 percent of proven U.S. reserves. Its ranchers grazed 90 percent of the country’s Angora goats, and the seasonal shearing of their mohair fleece brought millions of dollars into Texas agriculture. (The ranchers also enjoyed an outlandish federal subsidy; when Congress took that away, most of the longhair goats vanished as well.) Texas farms, she went on, harvested a fourth of the nation’s bales of hay. Texas had no income tax, and it was a right-to-work state—workers could not be compelled to join labor unions. Her liberal supporters, including her former husband, could not have been thrilled by that gubernatorial endorsement; “right to work” also meant anyone could be fired or laid off at an employer’s whim. She was singing a very different song about labor unions since that contest to block the AFL-CIO’s endorsement of Jim Mattox in 1990.
Politically, all this seemed to be paying off for her. Ken Lay, the CEO and chairman of Enron, told the Wall Street Journal, “Overall, she has tried to do the things that would be helpful for business and the economic climate of the state. I have been somewhat surprised. I didn’t expect her to be quite as pro-business or as active in supporting business as she has been.”
Ken Lay. Enron. Neither of those were household names yet. Lay was one of the executives who agreed to join her advisory council of business leaders.
Ann supported the emerging North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a pact with Mexico and Canada. At the time, I happened to be working on a magazine assignment that took me one evening to a popular bar in Nuevo Laredo. She was making a speech on television to Mexican leaders and citizens about NAFTA’s promise to both countries, with a Spanish translator; the men standing around me at the bar seemed to hang on every word.
She explained her belief to American audiences that opposition to the trade agreement was built on a number of myths—that Mexicans could not afford to buy U.S. goods, that Mexico would export its horrendous environmental problems, and that NAFTA would cost the U.S. jobs and destroy its manufacturing base.
This is a lot like trying to put the blame for rain on the people who make umbrellas.
There is no question that during the eighties some American companies took manufacturing business overseas.
But when you buy clothes and VCRs and cars you see more “Made in Taiwan or Korea” than “Hecho en Mexico.”
The fact is that companies that want to go to Mexico because of wages—or for any other reason—will do so without NAFTA.
As many have pointed out, if low wages were the key to profitability, Bangladesh would rule the business world . . .
This is not an easy vote for many members of Congress.
They are scared. They face the loss of longtime friends and allies. . . . They face the loss of crucial financial and political support.
I honestly believe the well-intentioned people who oppose NAFTA have dumped their concerns about larger issues of the new international economy on this agreement.
The bottom line is this. We have been begging, badgering, and bashing Japan to give us a level playing field, open markets, and an opportunity of friendly competition and cooperation.
Now the Canadians and the Mexicans are freely offering us the same thing.
Now our friends are willing. And we ought to take them up on the offer.
Back in her Austin office, after remarking to Nancy Kohler how short the man was, she admonished the president of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who was soon to enter voluntary exile in Ireland because of corruption allegations, that his country had to respect and adapt to the very different environmental standards in the United States. He agreed enough, and they got along well enough, that he urged her to take a vacation at his retreat on a bay along the Pacific Ocean.
She took him up on the offer, inviting an entourage that included Jane Hickie, Suzanne Coleman, and her old friends Mike and Sue Sharlot. “Jane told us after we were there that we had to pay for it,” Mike told me. He smiled and said he understood it was good for Ann to maintain her positions on ethics and junkets. “You can tell from the pictures that it was a very swell place. There were mountains to the rear of it, and one day we made our way over them so we could see the ocean. We were surrounded by all these warships of the Mexican navy.”
CHAPTER 25
White Hot
In 1986, when Ann had just won her second term as treasurer and had little idea about her future in politics, she became acquainted with a young Californian named Marlene Saritzky, who was then working for an organization called the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee. She had grown up in the San Fernando Valley. She was in the business of knowing about women in politics, especially Democrats, and she was aware of the regional success and talent of Ann Richards. Through that organization Lily Tomlin had gotten in touch with Chula Reynolds and Jane Hickie. Later Reynolds contacted Marlene and said Ann wanted to come to California. Could Marlene set up some meetings with helpful people—and pick her up at the airport?
“You can imagine
how easy that was,” Marlene told me. “Many people I called in L.A. said, ‘A woman govenor in Texas? Sounds like a long shot.’” A number of people replied politely that their schedules would not allow them to make any time available for Richards, but Marlene was good at that kind of work, and she managed to schedule some meetings with well-heeled people in the movie business who made no bones about being leftish in their politics. According to Marlene: “When Ann walked in and started talking, it was like another set of lights came on.”
When Marlene was driving her around Los Angeles, they talked constantly about movies. And Ann had gotten her foot in the door with the liberal celebrities. The third time Ann went out there, a small crowd of movers and shakers invited her over for dinner. At the table that night, a woman wrote a check, handed it to Marlene, and whispered, “Do you think this is all right?” She had written the check for $10,000. Marlene whispered, “I think that will be fine.” Ann flew back to Austin with about $100,000 in contributions.
Governor Ann Richards receives a Harley-Davidson motorcycle from Texas dealers. Austin, 1992.
When asked by Savvy about her ethnic background, Ann had replied, “I am about three-quarters WASP—That’s Waco and Sure Poor—and twenty-five percent Brazos River Rural.” She was not poor by the time her parents moved to Waco. But how could she not be dazzled by being introduced to the stars of show business? For several months while Ann was treasurer and then through the ’90 campaign, Marlene Saritzky found herself being interviewed in a laid-back and curious fashion by Bud Shrake and Gary Cartwright. Ann had asked them to check her out. Ann wasn’t sure how she could manage to help build a Texas movie industry, but she had a hunch this young woman could help. During the governor’s race, when producer Stan Brooks brought out Bud and Jap’s Kris Kristofferson–Willie Nelson television movie A Pair of Aces, Bud went with Ann to Los Angeles for another dinner with the players. As the conversation ranged from Ann’s campaign to why more movies weren’t produced in Texas, Brooks remarked to Bud, “Marlene should be the film commissioner.”
After the election, in one brief conversation Ann told her, “I’m trying to get the Film Commission away from the Department of Commerce and in the Governor’s office. If that happens, I’ll call you.” When they spoke again, Ann offered her the job with the condition “I’ll give you a week to decide.” One week! That was how Ann operated. And when Marlene looked at the reasons why she should stay in California and pass up the opportunity, they didn’t add up to as much as her desire to work for and be around this woman. Marlene was chary about Texas, but she wound up living there for the next six years.
“I was young and made a lot of mistakes,” she later told me. “I knew nothing about Texas. I didn’t really speak the language. For a long time, nuances and rhythms that everybody else understood were mysteries to me. But a lot of that job consists of just calling up a mayor and the Department of Public Safety and asking them to reroute traffic for a few hours in some town.” And it wasn’t as if Ann had no case to make for films to be shot, and crews hired, in Texas. Texas productions had given the world classic movies like Giant, The Last Picture Show, and Tender Mercies. Bill Wittliff’s adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove as a miniseries had been a big hit; Terrence Malick, the artful director of Badlands and Days of Heaven, had long made his home base in Austin; and the year Ann took office as governor, the young director Richard Linklater launched his career with Slacker, followed months later by Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi.
These things were cyclical, Marlene said. The incentive dealing could be won by Canada or Louisiana—and often did—but Ann was determined that Texas was not going to lose out on getting a bite of the apple. And it was not a passing fancy. Southwest, American, and other airlines were soon providing nonstop flights between Austin and Los Angeles. Under her “Film Texas” initiative, she hosted receptions for Gary Goldberg, Cybill Shepherd, Lily Tomlin, Norman Lear, Richard Zanuck, and Jack Valenti. She sent letters of congratulations for their pictures and awards to Oliver Stone and Tommy Lee Jones, went on The Jay Leno Show and steered the chat around to the Texas film industry; at the end of her letter of gratitude to Leno was a handwritten “Get out of the hut and see the real world, we want you here.” She did, however, pass on Paramount’s invitation to cast her in Clear and Present Danger.
Despite the long hours and frenzied activity, she did what she could to ensure that Bud did not disappear from her life. She invited him to move his regular poker games with pals to the Governor’s Mansion. They had dates as often as their schedules permitted, even if it was just to a session of Alcoholics Anonymous. In their unremitting correspondence, they shared their impressions of movies they hadn’t viewed together. Ann had pronounced herself a movie-world groupie the first week of her campaign, when Bud took her to watch Dennis Hopper directing a movie on a Texas location, but she turned on the director with a vengeance after seeing the finished product. She had gotten Claire Korioth to go with her to see The Hot Spot, which starred the dimpled Miami Vice hunk Don Johnson and a young actress with a bright future, Jennifer Connelly. Johnson played a drifter turned used-car salesman who hatched a scheme to rob a small-town bank. Hopper indulged himself with a scene in which Connelly and a female friend went skinny-dipping and on the creek bank slid into a steamy nude sex entanglement.
Dear Mr. Shrake,
We regret that you have failed the Richards/Korioth movie review test. Hot Spot is not only a bad movie, it has space and time dimensions that make two hours seem like twelve and causes the theater walls to press inward. . . . Much like what real life must be like when you make the center of your life a used car lot office.
Ann
After she became governor, she had less time to enjoy Bud’s company, but their time together had never been constant. While she was speeding around being the governor, he embarked on a project that his agent had warned him would be a waste of time. A small, frail Austin Country Club golf pro named Harvey Penick had been the tutor of the University of Texas and pro tour stars Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite, among others. Penick was in his mideighties when Bud got to read the red notebook that the old pro was always scribbling in. Bud thought it was magic—secrets of golf, philosophy, life. He asked Penick for permission to help turn it into a book, and was disappointed when the old man frowned and declined, as if a friend had violated his privacy.
Then Penick explained that he and his wife couldn’t possibly dig deep enough in their savings to pay Bud to do such a thing. No, no, Bud clarified: “The idea is that I’ll write it and someone will pay us.” An editor and golf fanatic in New York snatched up the manuscript, and Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings from a Lifetime in Golf (1992) went on to become the best-selling sports book of all time.
Good deeds can be rewarded. Bud’s gesture on behalf of an old man he revered set him up for the rest of his life. He could write his novels and plays at his leisure. He didn’t need Hollywood anymore. But Ann did.
One thing Ann couldn’t abide in Mary Beth Rogers’s memo about running for reelection, quoted in the last chapter, was the suggestion to keep a low profile in national politics. Ann couldn’t do that; if she were going to work that hard being governor, she was also going to have some fun. In the midst of her 1991 coast-to-coast blitzkrieg in search of more jobs for Texans, Ann flew back to Austin to rehearse her appearance at the annual Washington Gridiron Show. The young Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, wondered whether sparks would fly between Ann and President Bush.
“So this is what you all do up here on Saturday nights,” she said to the celebrities of government and media. “I don’t know why anyone would think you’re out of touch. But Mr. President, distinguished guests, and stuffed shirts, I’m having a great time tonight. And what a good-looking audience you are. As my mama would say, ‘You look as good as a new-scraped carrot.’
“In any event, I’m proud to be out with such a high-class crowd. But I’ve been wondering, Mr. Pre
sident—to overcome the image of attending a white-tie dinner like this, how many pork rinds do you have to eat?
“And Mr. President, putting aside partisanship, I can say that in all honesty that it will be hard to beat the kind of strength, energy, and grace under pressure that we have in the White House today. You are really one of a kind, Barbara.”
One more shot across the Bush family’s bow.
Democrats in their twenties were thrilled to have a chance to work for Ann Richards. Shawn Morris, who was my wife’s administrative assistant, said that almost all of them spoke of “her constant ability to scare the daylights out of people.” The travel aide Chris Hughes recalled the angst of trying to frame the context of some mistake he had made. “Don’t get started,” Ann cut him off. “Just tell me what happened.”
And she didn’t unload only on the youngsters. One evening Bill Cryer, the communications chief, and David Talbot, the lead general counsel, were having dinner in a Washington restaurant, where they were relieved that no one in the classy place would know about some mistake they had made and the vocal and psychological pounding they had been taking from the boss all day. And then her voice boomed out, in reference to the popular animated series, “Well, if it’s not Beavis and Butthead!”
But she inspired her staff as much as she drove and, at times, belittled them. “Ann showed me how to focus on issues, on what I was trying to say,” said Joy Anderson. “She wanted you to have thought through the issue, to bring in all the pros and cons. She really taught me how to have more self-confidence. Nothing focused you like knowing you had to go in and talk to Ann. She would push back and question you. Every time she would come up with something you hadn’t thought of. And you’d do a better job the next time you had to go in. She was just as hard on herself. Wanting to be perfect, while knowing she couldn’t be.”