Barry Smitherman at the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club

Texas Attorney General candidate Barry Smitherman made his way down to Houston last week and was the featured speaker at the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club.

Background

Smitherman started by reminding us that he was from the Houston area and that it was great to be home. He discussed his race in 2012 for Railroad Commissioner and said that the primary reason he won was the activists in Harris County supporting his first campaign for office. He is the only person in history that was the chairman of both the Public Utility Commission and the Railroad Commission.

Prosecutorial Career

He spent quite a bit of time talking about his time as a prosecutor with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, describing himself as a 43 year old baby prosecutor because it was supposed to be his second career. He liked being able to go home and when his kids asked what he did, he told them he put bad people in jail. He emphasized that he was the only one in the race that had been a prosecutor and had courtroom experience, saying that he met the victims, heard their stories, picked a jury, put the perp on the stand, and got a guilty verdict.

Smitherman also talked about the criminal side of the AG’s office, stating that his first act, should be be elected, would be to form a border security task force and help local DA’s prosecute criminals. He mentioned that one DA has over 500 hundred cases and only one ADA to prosecute them, using this example to discuss his plan to either help with or take over cases from local DA’s as needed. The Valley is a dangerous place and there is no law and order – people are afraid to leave their homes at night or to start businesses.

Agency Experience

Smitherman said that during his seven years with the Public Utility Commission, he reduced employees from 250 down to 175. After being appointed to the Railroad Commission in July, 2011, he said that he worked to improve the response time of the agency, creating a culture of treating permit applicants as customers. The agency now issues more oil and gas permits than anytime since the mid-80’s and has reduced the time to approve permit applications from weeks to days, taking only three days to approve an expedited permit. He noted that the U.S. will be energy independent in three years.

Of the many lawsuits the state has pending against the Obama administration, he is the complainant in seven of them, saying that he will always fight against boneheaded, poorly scienced  environmental regulations. He noted that one of his lawsuits about greenhouse gas regulations will be argued before the Supreme Court on February 24th, right in the middle of early voting.

Second Amendment

Smitherman stressed his commitment to the Second Amendment with two examples. First, he said that he is the only candidate in the race that has a CHL. Second, he said that when he arrived at the Railroad Commission, there was a policy in place that prohibited CHL holders from carrying their weapons in Railroad Commission buildings or vehicles. He got rid of that policy but took it further by provided firearms training to their employees in Austin and Houston, with San Antonio and Midland to follow. Now, if a bad person wants to hijack a Railroad Commission vehicle, they will think twice about it and probably go hijack a Texas Parks and Recreation vehicle instead.

Outsourcing

During a question about child support, Smitherman noted that the AG’s office has over 4,200 people working there and half of them are devoted to collecting child support in one form or another. After forming his border security task force, he is going to perform a study and see if any of those 2,100 jobs could be outsourced for more efficiency.

You can listen to his speech:

Commentary

Smitherman is an impressive candidate. He matched Rep. Dan Branch’s energy level and perhaps took it up a notch. He is an engaging speaker and knows how to work a room. It’s easy to see why he is at the top of most polls I’ve seen.

I do have a few questions about his presentation though. Why so little about the majority of his working career? He was an investment banker for 17 years but only made one small reference to that in this speech. He didn’t even mention the book he wrote about those days (click for a short preview). In contrast, he spent what seemed like an inordinate amount of time on his 15 months as a prosecutor in Harris County. Typically, a prosecutor in Harris County needs far more time on the job than 15 months before trying felony or high-profile cases. But Smitherman said that he earned a reputation as someone that was a go-to guy on hard cases that no one else wanted. And at the same time he was writing a book on his old life and serving on the board of the Texas Public Finance Authority. He must have been a very busy guy! I did ask him a question about his time as a prosecutor and will use his answer in a follow up post after I find more information on his time at the HCDAO.

So that’s my take on Barry Smitherman’s appearance at the Downtown Pachyderm Club. I predict that he is going to be very, very hard to beat.