Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Mike Anderson: giving victims his best effort

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In the off chance that you haven’t heard, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos has a challenger in the Republican primary this year. At least one – with the filing deadline moved back a couple of days to December 19, there may be another one or two. For now, only former Judge Mike Anderson has officially filed and he was gracious enough to sit down with me and discuss the race and his reasons for challenging DA Lykos.

Who is Mike Anderson?

Imagine my surprise when I found out that we were from the same hood. That’s right; he’s a Pasadena boy, having lived there until his junior year in high school. He even spent his summers as a lifeguard at the Houston Yacht Club, which is just down the street from where I live now. He even recognized the name of the church I went to as a kid. Heck, most likely we threw elbows at each other playing basketball at the PAL (Police Athletic League) gym during the summer. Game, set, match – I’m voting for him! Just kidding. He actually looks like he could still play basketball. Me? Not so much.

We’re alike in another aspect as well – we both say that the most important thing that ever happened was meeting and marrying our wives. His wife is Devon and they married shortly after he became a judge in 1999. They have two children and live in Bellaire.

Mike Anderson, the prosecutor

After graduating from South Texas College of Law, he entered the Harris County District Attorney’s office at the tail end of the Carol Vance era and the beginning of the Johnny Holmes era. Through hard work he rose quickly in status, eventually landing in Special Crimes, where he spent 10 years prosecuting the worst of the worst.

It was easy to see that he loved being a prosecutor. He was single at the time and it wasn’t unusual for him to spend extra hours at the office or in the field trying to achieve justice for victims. He told of walking into low-rent bars with investigators trying to find witnesses to crimes and wondering if they were going to make it out alive. One of his fondest achievements was starting the gang unit at the DA’s office and working with the Vietnamese community to improve relations and gain their trust. Remember, these were fairly new immigrants to our country and certainly didn’t trust government after what they had seen in their country. His passion shines through on these subjects.

He told me that he wasn’t a very good politician but that he was working on getting better. If he can figure out a way to communicate the passion that I saw with the general public, he won’t need to worry about being a good politician.

Mike Anderson, the judge

I asked him why he gave up what was clearly his passion to become a judge. He told me that in working with judges through the years, he found that he related to them and liked them and that he thought that being a judge was the natural next step in his quest for justice. He first thought about running in 1996 but the timing wasn’t right, so he waited until 1998. To be honest, I got the impression that he became a judge more out of a sense of duty than passion. If you could have seen the passion in his eyes when talking about being a prosecutor, you’d understand what I am saying. Mind you, these are my words, not his.

Interestingly, when he talked about his time as a judge, it was more about justice for the whole, not just the victim. One of the first things he said was that the reason he worked so hard on his docket and efficiency was so that defendants didn’t spend unnecessary time in jail. That surprised me so much that I asked him about his reputation as being a “prosecuting judge”. He seemed just as surprised at my question, saying he would take issue with that characterization because it simply wasn’t true. He then told me about his philosophy as a judge in a way that I could relate – as a referee of a basketball game. Both “teams” want fairness and consistency – rule using the law and apply those rules in a consistent manner. No one likes a basketball referee that lets you bang elbows for 47 minutes of a game and then decides not to do that in the last minute, which creates confusion and anger. Very good way to put it.

His passion sparked again when he talked about his work in the “drug court”, which is designed to give addicts a second chance. I asked if he believed in rehabilitation for criminals or solely in punishment. He said he is a strong believer in rehab because he as seen it change lives and challenged me to attend a “drug court” graduation, saying that it would show me that rehab works. I might just take him up on that.

The reason he is running

Mike thinks that the number one issue in this race is DA Lykos’ lack of experience as a prosecutor. She has never tried a case, has never had to work through the process of trying a case, and has never looked a juror in the eye and asked them to sentence a person to death. He said that it wasn’t her fault, and gave her credit for running in 2008 and attempting to clean up the office after the problems of the previous administration, but that her efforts had failed because of that lack of experience.

I was skeptical and asked why would she need to have prosecuted a case in order to administer the office? He told me it was for the same reason he wouldn’t run for a job like County Sheriff after not being a law enforcement officer – you miss too many little things along way to be effective. Things like training – he told me that the prosecutors today are not receiving the level of training that they should be receiving. He thinks that DA Lykos simply doesn’t have the ability to make sound decisions because of this. Again, he was complimentary of her for trying but stated that 90{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the office despises her for this.

He also told me that her managerial style is not suited to being a manager of professionals like Assistant District Attorneys. He stated that she yells and curses at them in meetings and that she has surrounded herself with top staff that cower and say “Yes” instead of telling her what they really think about this initiative or that one. He noted that over 20 section chiefs had left the office, in addition to approximately 100 prosecutors. Once again his passion shined through when he told me a story about an ADA that was embarrassed to say he worked at the DA’s office and instead just told people that he was a lawyer. Mike seemed really, really upset by that, saying that no one should be embarrassed to say that they work at the Harris County District Attorney’s office.

I then asked him the bottom line: does he think that justice in Harris County…he stepped in and finished my sentence: “do I think that justice in Harris County has suffered because of DA Lykos? Yes, absolutely yes! And that is why I am running.”

The issues

There are several “issues” floating around that I wanted to know about. As you may remember, I wrote about a runaway Grand Jury a few weeks ago and that is certainly something I wanted to know about. As well, his comments on DIVERT (a DWI diversion program), and the “crack pipe” issue that has police so upset. So I started with the Grand Jury.

Obviously, the first question was about the foreperson, Patricia Pollard. How do you know her? Is she a friend? A neighbor? I think that relationship is critical because of the political implications brought about by the investigation the grand jury is undertaking.

Mike told me that he first met her about 10 years ago at a Habitat for Humanity event. She told him that she was a retired lawyer and would like to be on a grand jury. He thought that would be a great thing and appointed her to two grand juries during his term as a judge. He then told me that she excelled at the work and that any judge at the courthouse would fight to get her on their grand juries. He stated that she was very efficient and went out of her way to investigate cases. He mentioned one in particular in which she found out that an organization wasn’t doing criminal background checks on their volunteers, wrote a letter to the Governor, and got the policy changed. He also told me that Bellaire is a small community, so he runs into her from time to time but that was the extent of their relationship. I also asked him, if that was the extent of their relationship, why did his wife perform the duty of swearing Ms. Pollard in as a regent of Sam Houston State University? He told me he really didn’t know but in any case it had nothing to do with a grand jury.

I also asked him about the other players in this case, Stephen St. Martin, Jim Mount, and Chip Lewis. He said he knew all three men from the courthouse but that he had no special relationship with any of them. He said he completely understood my concerns about the appearance of impropriety with this Grand Jury but that he did not have anything to do with their investigation and had no inside information about it. He also noted that when he made the decision to run, the Grand Jury investigation did not factor in the decision – he only wants justice to return to Harris County.

About DIVERT, he states unequivocally that it is an illegal program and that if it ever gets to the appellate level, it will be ruled illegal. He says that you can accomplish the same thing legally through pre-trial diversion. In addition, he told me that the program undercuts the legislature’s intent to have offenders pay into the criminal justice system, costing the state approximately $10 million a year and the county approximately $3.5 million a year. I have to say that, in listening to him talk about this, I  get the impression that he and DA Lykos are not in major disagreement about the effectiveness of giving first time offenders a chance to redeem themselves – just on the method used. Again, those are my words, not his.

We then talked about the “crack pipe” issue, the one in which DA Lykos’ detractors are saying that she is ignoring the law because she has told prosecutors not to accept felony charges if there isn’t enough crack to test. Mike stated that the District Attorney is bound to follow the law – if there is an evidentiary problem, that is a different story but to make a blanket policy not to charge for possession is not following the law. He then mentioned “drug courts” again, almost begging me to go so that I could see how people’s lives get turned around if they take advantage of the opportunity presented them. He told me that he has had countless graduates of that court tell him that the best day of their lives was the day that they were arrested with a crack pipe and put into the “drug court” program. He said that crack addicts now know that if they smoke the entire rock, and only residue is left, they will not be charged and can return to smoking crack, which they have to do because crack is so addictive. And to fund their crack addiction, they break into homes and rob people, creating a cycle that isn’t broken until they are arrested. Once again, the passion flared in his eyes – he was fighting for both sides, the crack addict and the homeowner.

The takeaway

Pasadena boy or not, I’ve already said that I wish he hadn’t filed. And he told me last night that he wished he hadn’t been convinced that he had to file. After meeting him and hashing this out over an hour and a half, I’m convinced that his run isn’t a run against Pat Lykos as a person, as I thought previously. I had the impression that he was one of the bitter, ex-ADA, ex-Johnny Holmes devotees that take their vitriol to a new level each day not because of the performance of the office but simply out of hatred. I’m happy that he was able to convince me that wasn’t the case for him. He wants to “give victims his best effort” and to do that, he decided that he had to take on the monumental task of upending a sitting Republican District Attorney via a primary. If he and his team can find a way to communicate his passion in a positive way to the voters in the Republican primary, the task will become a little easier.

A special thanks to Mike for taking the time to visit with this voter from Shoreacres by way of Pasadena. I’m living the dream meeting some very fine people.

Website: AndersonDA.com

Facebook: Mike Anderson for Harris County District Attorney

Michael Kubosh mulls run for new CD34 seat

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Michael Kubosh, known best in Harris County for his efforts to force the City of Houston to turn off the revenue generating, accident creating red-light cameras, is seriously considering a run for the newly created 34th Congressional District, assuming that the court ordered interim map holds.

Here is a look at the district:

Mr. Kubosh has made many friends in Republican circles over the past couple of years and would be a serious contender for the seat should he decide to run. He is a proficient fundraiser and certainly has the people skills it takes to run for office. And pretty thick skin too. Plus he’ll bring a lot of fun to the race and, should he win, he’ll be a real representative of the people. I have a call in to him and hope to grab a quote about his decision soon.

UPDATE: I did speak with Michael this afternoon. He confirmed that he was seriously considering running – so seriously that he had already filled out the paperwork and all he had left to do was sign, drive to Austin, and file. He was born in Wharton County and the family still has a farm there. He ran for Constable in Matagorda County in 1988 and was one of two Republicans that ran. Now the county is Republican. He has a lot of contacts in the district having lived in it most of his life. He mentioned that he wouldn’t have the $3 million that another person has said that they were willing to spend but that he’d beaten the red-light camera people and was out spent 17-1 in that battle. I asked him if he’d ever heard that milquetoast speak and told him that he had my personal guarantee that he’d be a better candidate on the trail. He didn’t want to comment on that. 😉 It ain’t all about money, folks, and Michael is good people. So, there you go. Rumor confirmed, although it really wasn’t a rumor – it was a source. A very, very good source!

A Perry Supporter’s View of “Romney v. Gingrich”—Part II

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I promise that this third post on this topic since last week will be my last for a while.  However, given some of the comments that I have received to my last two posts that focused on Newt Gingrich—here, on Facebook, and in private emails—there are some additional points I want to address, and clarify, before I leave this topic.

First, I have not abandoned my support for Governor Perry.  The policies that he says he would promote most closely match my viewpoints about the immediate reforms that need to be made in Washington, and I believe his campaign during 2009-10 showed that he is the candidate who most understands the desires of the GOP base.  Add these qualities to the relative strength of the Texas economy more than 3 years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and, in my mind, you still have the best candidate in the field.

However, even considering the effectiveness of his recent ad campaign—which I believe has been very good—a realist must acknowledge the hole his candidacy is in right now.  Without rehashing a lot of painful detail here, suffice it to say that it is one thing to have low poll numbers because you’ve never engaged the attention of the electorate—from that position you always have a chance to improve.  It is another thing to have engaged such attention and have disappointed the electorate—it is very hard to get them to give you a second chance during the same election cycle.  If you don’t believe me, just ask Presidents Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani about their experiences in 2007-08.

Therefore, while I still support Rick Perry, I believe it is prudent to evaluate the remaining candidates and have a “second choice” for whom I am prepared to vote in the Texas Primary.

Second, one of the comments I received reminded me that my evaluation of the field left out former Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico.  I know very little about him, other than from what I have read and from what I have observed in a couple of TV interviews.  My impression is that he left office still well-regarded in New Mexico, but that he does not have any organizational ability to run a viable campaign for the Presidency.  Moreover, what little I have heard of his foreign-policy leads me to believe that I would have the same disagreements with him that I have with Dr. Paul on those issues.  The one thing I find interesting about his candidacy, together with the continued strength of support for Dr. Paul, is consistent with a trend I have been observing for a few years now:  libertarians in our party are competing aggressively with religious conservatives for the philosophical and ideological soul and future direction of our party.  How this battle will end, and how it will affect the whole conservative movement, is anyone’s guess at this time.

Third, I spent very little time in my previous posts addressing my views and concerns about Mitt Romney, so I want to share those with you now.  Mitt Romney appears to be a very fine man, who comes from a certain tradition within our party of pragmatic leaders, many of whom spent their formative years in the private sector or the military, who have provided capable leadership when we have needed effective management and stability from government at all levels.  Examples of such GOP leaders since World War II include Dwight Eisenhower; Gerald Ford; George Herbert Walker Bush; and even Romney’s father, George Romney, as the Governor of Michigan.  All of these men shared a conservative temperament honed through experiences that required pragmatic approaches to problem solving—as the Chief of Staff to Douglas MacArthur and then as Supreme Allied Commander of the European Theater in World War II, as Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, as an Oil Industry executive and founder of the modern Republican Party in Harris County and in Texas, and as the Chief Executive of a major Automotive manufacturer.  They brought the skills they developed from these experiences to manage and stabilize government and politics during difficult times, and were not pre-occupied with political philosophy or ideology.  These skills and strengths were also their weaknesses, as these men seemed to prioritize achieving stability over implementing principle, and that is why such men have often befuddled and disappointed those of us who desire more principled reformers over effective managers.

It is this very tendency in Mitt Romney that leads to our perception of him as an unprincipled “flip-flopper” without a political “core”.  However, the skills he honed outside of government, coupled with his management of a very liberal-leaning state government in Massachusetts, show that Romney has the skills to provide effective and stable management—if that is the only quality of leadership we want and need right now.  A close friend of mine, whose experience and judgment I trust, worked with Romney and his team when they took over the production of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.  He has told me a lot about the challenges they faced, both before and after September 11th, to get the facilities and operations ready for the Olympics.  He has told me that Romney was the finest manager of both business and people with whom he has ever worked.  I don’t take that recommendation lightly.  But, personally, I am looking for more this year than just an effective manager—I believe we are at a tipping point that requires fundamental reform.

Now this leads me back to Newt.  After I wrote my two posts, I saw an interview with Senator Coburn of Oklahoma, who is a serious man whose judgment I have come to respect.  Coburn was quite critical of Newt’s capability to be an effective leader, though he was not very specific as to the basis for his opinion.  Coupled with some of the responses I received over the last few days, I want to provide a little more detail to my evaluation of Newt for you to consider over the next few weeks and months.

I didn’t start out as a fan of Gingrich.  I spent most of my formative years living in the Congressional District in Central Illinois represented by Bob Michael, who rose to be the Minority Leader of the House during the 1980s and early ‘90s.  My parents knew Michael, and he gave me his recommendation to West Point (though I eventually decided to attend another school).  Because of my deep respect for Congressman Michael, I always viewed Newt Gingrich’s treatment of Michael during his rise through the GOP ranks as ungrateful and disloyal—I didn’t much like him.

But what he, Dick Armey, and others pulled-off in 1994 was miraculous.  After that, I started following Gingrich closer, and read some of his books.  I was impressed with his ideas, how he was willing to confront and discuss difficult social and political issues, how he was trying to make conservatism relevant to a technological revolution that was unfolding before our eyes, and with the legislative successes he was leading.  Then, he, and the movement he inspired, seemed to derail as ethics and fidelity charges came to light, and there was a deep sense of disappointment over opportunities squandered as he left office.  I didn’t pay much attention to him for a number of years after he resigned from the House.

When I began considering the problems with our local party organization back in late 2008 and early 2009, I looked again at some of Gingrich’s books, and studied the CDs of the “American Civilization” college course he taught in the mid-90s.  I was re-introduced to his fertile mind, and how spot-on many of his comments and ideas were to the problems we faced as a party and as a country.  I found that, among all of the leaders within the GOP, he was still thinking and discussing the issues and ideas that were most relevant to implementing conservatism successfully.  I came to the conclusion that Gingrich has been, and will continue to be a consequential public figure, but I still did not consider Gingrich as a viable candidate for President.

However, as the 2012 Presidential campaign has unfolded, I, like many of you, have had to do a lot of thinking—soul-searching—about the candidates, and especially about Gingrich.  As I’ve watched his debate performances and his interviews, I’ve ultimately asked myself these questions:

  • At the age of 68, and after having been in self-imposed exile from elected office for about 12 years, is the man we are seeing a Nixon, a Reagan, or a Churchill?
  • At this moment in time, can we afford to take the risk to find out the answer to that question?

Let’s address the first question.  Although it is difficult to ever pigeonhole a character like Newt by comparing him to other distinct historical figures, a comparison and contrast with Nixon, Reagan and Churchill has been helpful to me.

Nixon, like Newt, was a brilliant man.  Nixon, and Herbert Hoover, too, proved to be inexhaustible in their writing and thinking about government until virtually the day they died.  But as we learned to our detriment, Nixon had personal demons.  He rose to power so quickly (within 6 years he rose from a freshman Congressman to the Senate, and then to the Vice-Presidency; and his rise from the backbench to the Presidency spanned only 22 years), and in such tumultuous times, that he didn’t have the life experience from which to gain the perspective and wisdom needed to control his demons—and the country paid a dear price for that experience.  But, let’s also remember that by the time Nixon was Newt’s age now, he had become an elder statesman whose writings and diplomatic work were relied upon by Reagan, Bush and Clinton.  One can fairly ask, would the Nixon of the 1980s and 90s been a more mature and wise President?  I don’t know, do you?

As for Reagan, it is so hard for any of us who followed him to look at him objectively now, but let’s try for a moment.  Go back and look at the film of Reagan giving his famous televised speech in 1964, and other speeches during his first term as Governor, and you’ll see a man of deep intensity and seriousness that captivated, but also scared, many people.  Then look at the genial, confident man who, in his late 60s, debated Jimmy Carter on the eve of the 1980 election.  The maturity and wisdom that evolved over those 16 years is plain to see.  But Jimmy Carter couldn’t see it.  Instead, Carter tried to run against the Reagan of 1964, and he lost in a landslide.

Now, let’s consider Churchill—another brilliant man, whose historical importance was eclipsed only by his own elevated view of his historical importance.  That self-confidence caused him to participate in some of the most remarkable and consequential events of the late 19th and early 20th Century—from the Boar War to the division of the Middle East after World War I.  But, by the early 1920s, his mistakes and ego had caught up with him, and his contemporaries ostracized him to the backbench of British politics, where he languished for almost 20 years.  Then, a more measured and disciplined Churchill was there when his country needed him, and when it seemed only his unique talents could lead England through the battle it faced.  And it is that Churchill that we remember as perhaps the most consequential figure of the 20th Century.

So, as I’ve evaluated Newt, I’ve had to ask these questions—is he still the brilliant, undisciplined, and self-destructive political figure who had the ability and intensity of a young Nixon, a young Reagan, or a young Churchill, but who should not be handed the keys to the Oval Office?  Or, is he, at 68 (after working in the private sector for 12 years, becoming a grandparent, and converting to Catholicism), the elder, wiser Nixon, Reagan or Churchill who is ready to reform this government at precisely the time his imaginative talents are needed?  Although no one can answer these questions definitively, my observations have led me to answer the second question “yes”—at least to the point of elevating him to my second choice in the GOP field.

And that leads us ultimately to the second question I posed above:  at this moment in time, can we afford to take the risk to find out whether Newt has grown-up enough to be trusted with the keys to the Oval Office?  For me answering this question required me to weigh which quality at this time is more important—the short-term effective management of the government to establish stability for renewed economic prosperity that we would get from Romney, or the fundamental reform needed for long-term prosperity and national strength that we could get from a mature and disciplined Gingrich.

A lot of people I respect would choose, and are choosing, the Romney path as their second choice, and I don’t blame them.  But I feel we need to do more than what a Romney candidacy promises, and to do it sooner rather than later.  We need to tackle fundamental reform as we stabilize short-term economic performance, and, in the end, that is why, as between Romney and Gingrich, I would take the risk of voting for Gingrich.

Harris County DA's race, DIVERT program

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As much as I wish there would not have been a challenge to the sitting Harris County DA Pat Lykos, there is and now the Harris County Republican Party will have to deal with it. No, I’m not a huge supporter of DA Lykos, although I do think that she has done a decent job. I’m a supporter of Republicans in office and in the November 2012 election, it sure would have been nice to have a united party. It is bad enough that the HCRP itself is in shambles – in case you haven’t heard, it is very much in shambles, especially financially. And this time, there will be no Judge Emmett at the top of the ticket as in 2008 and 2010 – this time, the DA will be the featured race. And the primary will be, in political parlance, bloody. DA Lykos has already shown that she can get down and dirty – challenger Mike Anderson has indicated that he will have no problem matching her. Not gonna be a pretty sight. Who will pay for it? Republican judicial candidates (remember, Obama carried Harris County in 2008 and Bill White won in 2010). The only hope, if there is one, is that the Harris County Democratic Party is just as bad, maybe worse. A Christmas Party at an aboratorium?

Add to that an already nasty Sheriff’s primary and the probable entry by Houston City Councilman Mike Sullivan into the Tax Assessor/Collector’s race and you have a volatile primary. Heck, Bert Keller might as well get off the fence and challenge Jared Woodfill; who knows, this might get down and dirty enough to oust him. Even if Jared doesn’t have a challenger, he is going to be in over his head trying to bring the party together and better start thinking about that now. I’m sure that the plan is to once again make the judicial candidates carry the financial burden but if I were them, I’d look elsewhere for help. If they aren’t careful, we’re going to be saying hello to a lot more of the Judge Kevin Fine types.

But like I said, it is what it is. Now it is time to try and sort out the DA’s race, separate fact from fiction. I’ll start with the DIVERT program, which is described as:

DIVERT (Direct Intervention using Voluntary Education, Restitution and Treatment)  is a pre-trial diversion program for eligible first time DWI offenders in Harris County with no prior criminal history.   The program took its first clients in September of 2009.   From the inception,   HCCSCD has evaluated 2338 clients for entry into the DIVERT program.   As of May, there are currently 1392 clients who have signed an agreement with the District Attorney’s office for the DIVERT program.

The clients are assessed up front by Harris County Community Supervision and Corrections Department and a report is forwarded to the DA’s office and the Court for consideration into the program.  The DIVERT clients are currently being supervised at 49 San Jacinto as well as the North, South and West Region offices on a limited basis.   The clients are required to attend treatment as outlined in their recommendations, complete the DIVERT education classes designed to prevent driving under the influence,  have an ignition interlock installed on their vehicles for a minimum period of time,  and complete 16 hours of community service.

The program is an opportunity for a first time DWI offender to complete a program that promotes community safety and subsequently affords an opportunity to have the case dismissed upon successful completion.

I’ll let others worry about the legality of it. What concerns me as a citizen is the continued rumors that surround it. You know, those anonymous comments on websites or sent via email that claim the program is not being used as intended. Specifically, I’ve had people say that one famous person in particular has received preferential treatment, that the program is used to let influential people off and not used as described above for first time offenders, and that one judge that is against the program publicly recuses himself from cases so that his friends can be accepted into the program in other courts. Now, you might say, but those are just rumors, why bother with them? Because rumors bring down campaigns, that is why. So, let’s put these rumors under the microscope and see what the truth is, okay?

In that light, I filed a Public Information Act request this morning with Harris County District Clerk Chris Daniels seeking the following information:

  1. Any and all records pertaining to cause # 151428701010 – The State of Texas vs. JONES, JACOBY R (Court 8 ) as related to defendant’s acceptance into and completion of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office D.I.V.E.R.T. program.
  2. Statistics for the D.I.V.E.R.T. program from its inception through November 30, 2011, including the total number of referrals and/or requests to enter the program, the race/ethnicity of each defendant requesting entry, the total number of defendants accepted into the program, the race/ethnicity of each defendant accepted, and the the average and median time served under the program by race/ethnicity.
  3. The total number of DWI cases from which Judge Bill Harmon of Harris County County Criminal Court at Law No. 2 recused himself, the court to which these recusals were assigned, and the disposition of each case, including acceptance into the D.I.V.E.R.T. program.

I think that once we have this information publicly available, we can either confirm or dismiss those particular rumors. I’ll keep you updated. As an aside, the District Clerk’s office doesn’t send a confirmation email when PIA’s are submitted – I had to take a screenshot. You need to fix that Chris.

David Dewhurst: creating opportunity for everyone

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This past Wednesday I had the opportunity to meet Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and have a conversation about the current race to replace Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. To say that I came away with a different perception about him than I had when I started the conversation would be a gross understatement.

I think that, like many Texans, my perception of Mr. Dewhurst was one of an aloof, unpersonable, arrogant rich dude. If my hour with him is any indication of the true David Dewhurst, that perception is about 180 degrees off – he was engaging, witty, open, and “real”. I hope that I can convey to you some degree of our exchange without coming across as a cheerleader or an enemy.

Interestingly, I met a long-time Austin political reporter this week after my meeting with Mr. Dewhurst, told her that I had been able to interview him, and that he was completely different than I thought going into the meeting. She sort of rolled her eyes and said, yeah, as long as he stays on script, he’s okay. The thing is, there was no script that he could possibly have been following – even I didn’t know which way the conversation was headed and we were in a back room of a restaurant with no gawkers or passersby seeking to glad-hand him. I can safely guarantee you that there was no script and was left wondering why the media portrays him as they do.

As you probably know by now, my goal with these interviews is not to rehash campaign themes – I can get that information from campaign operatives. The goal is to understand the candidate from the perspective of a voter, which I am. So I started our conversation by explaining who I was, including noting the inherent bias I have against him after listening to radio talk show host Dan Patrick call him a “RINO”, a moderate, and even a liberal for the better part of twenty years. I think it is important to let each candidate know from which part of the spectrum I’m coming from when talking to them. If you will recall, for Tom Leppert, it was from a completely unknown perspective. For Ted Cruz, it was as one of his biggest cheerleaders for attorney general.

The drive = faith plus a mom’s wish

One of the first topics I broached, to gain a better understanding of who he is, was his drive to succeed. After all, here is a man that has been uber-successful in every facet of his adult life, which can be broken into three phases: military/federal government, business, and Texas public service. From where did he get that drive to succeed? His answer very much surprised me.

At first he looked at me like “what the heck kind of question is that” but then I suppose he remembered that I wasn’t a professional journalist and was sincerely trying to get to know him as a voter. He paused and then started talking about his upbringing and deep Christian faith. He told me that his father had been killed by a drunk driver when he was three years old and that his mother had raised him and his brothers by herself, not remarrying until he was in college. He talked about his mother walking them down the street to the Presbyterian church, where he learned the Bible under a Godly man that taught it from a perspective of love. Even as a small child, he knew deep inside that God had a plan for his life and that sometimes, as he looked back, he could understand why certain things happened the way they did. His grandfather had stepped into the breach for a short time but had passed away when he was five. Although he didn’t truly know either man, his mother kept their memories alive by telling him “if you can grow up to be half the man your father and grandfather were, I will consider my job well done”. He considers both of these, the deep abiding faith that was telling him God had a plan and his desire to fulfill his mother’s wish, to be the key to his success.

I then brought up an episode that had seemed to me to be an outlier when researching him. If you recall, there was a controversy involving a gay student at Tarleton State who was going to produce a one-act play entitled “Corpus Christi” for an end of course grade. The play portrays Jesus the Christ as a homosexual, along with his disciples. It had seemed to be an outlier to me because, unlike some of the more rhetorical conservatives, Mr. Dewhurst doesn’t wear his faith on his sleeve. So I asked him why he decided to get into the middle of that controversy and he replied simply, “because no one else was”. He stated that it was important to note that he didn’t force anything from an official capacity, he just said that in his opinion, it wasn’t right to use government resources to insult people. He didn’t hold a big press conference, didn’t get on the radio banging a drum, he just told the university what he thought. The play was cancelled shortly after he released his note. Whether or not the letter had was “the” reason for cancellation, it certainly had an impact on that decision. After talking with Mr. Dewhurst, I now understand that the only thing making it an “outlier” for me was that it was made public.

I find it interesting that part of his life story is very similar to Mr. Leppert’s. Both raised by single mothers. Both men with a deep Christian faith. Both driven to succeed and now, after much success, entering the political arena to give back to the society in which they prospered.

Why the Air Force?

I was curious as to why he went into the Air Force and not one of the other branches of the military. I had seen, but frankly not paid much attention to, reports that his father had been a pilot, so perhaps the question wasn’t all that great but it is what it is. Hey, I told you I’m not a journalist! He responded that he wanted to be a pilot, to which I responded, “aren’t you too tall for that?” He laughed and said no, height isn’t a issue to being a pilot for cargo planes or bombers, only fighters. Unfortunately, you have to have 20/20 vision upon entering the Air Force if you want a chance to be a pilot and he failed the vision test – he wears contacts. So instead he went into the intelligence arena, which accounts for his service in the CIA and the State Department.

During this part of our conversation, Mr. Dewhurst became very emotional. His reason for wanting to be a pilot was because that is what his father had been, although at the time he didn’t have a clue as to what his father’s service record actually was. He just wanted to live up to his mother’s wish. A couple of years ago, he and his brother went on a quest to find out more about his father and only then did he find out that his father had been an exceptional leader of men. Tom Brokaw did a short piece on this for NBC:

Mr. Dewhurst related how they had been able to track down one of the men who served under his father and that man remembered his father in such a positive light that he named his own son after him. Sitting in the back room of that restaurant, Mr. Dewhurst poured his heart out about his father, a mix of pride in what he had learned about him, and sadness that he wasn’t able to share his life with him and know him as a man. It is a moment that I’m thankful to have experienced, reminding me of our shared humanity, political campaign or not.

Why? Why would the (arguably) most powerful man in Texas state government give that up to be 1 of 100 U.S. Senators?

I think that is the foremost question for many Texans. It simply makes no sense from the outside. Texas Lt. Gov. to junior senator under John Cornyn? In the twilight of your career? It was certainly at the top of my list.

He told me that it was his chance to give all Americans the same opportunity that he’d had and that he has been able to give Texans. He ticked off a bullet list of items that he attributes the “Texas miracle” to: low taxes, low regulatory burdens, and tort reform. He talked of the massive increase in regulations that the Obama administration had imposed upon Americans and the need to reverse those. He became very animated when talking about the need to create an environment in which all Americans have the opportunity to succeed and make the most out of their lives. Thus, the title of this post.

Not “conservative” enough

Although I think this one is a joke, I had to ask the question because in my small circle of politics, i.e., tea party activists and the far-right, Mr. Dewhurst is characterized as not being a conservative. Some of these groups go so far as to call him a moderate, with the most cynical calling him a liberal. How can this be, I asked?

He bristled at the notion and ticked off so many conservative things that he’s done while in office that I didn’t have a chance to write them all down. Many are listed here. Some of them: cut his budget as Land Commissioner; 51 bills have been passed during his time as Lt. Gov. that have reduced taxes or cut spending; cut the most recent budget by $15 billion; increased funding for border security; passed several pro-life bills. He then said something unexpected – that he was a “movement conservative” before anyone coined the term (for details on that term, search for it in this post). I guess I was surprised because I didn’t think he would know the term. Talk about underestimating someone.

Look, I get that we have to push hard from the right to keep government in check. I get that sometimes groups like Empower Texans and their cohorts use half-truths and exaggerate claims in order to keep government in check. In today’s secular society, two wrongs make a right, as long as it is something you agree with. And the campaigns can argue about the 51 bills really being 33 or should have been 151. But anyone that truly thinks that Mr. Dewhurst is not a conservative is simply wrong on a factual basis. You might say that this candidate or that candidate is “more conservative” based upon your own personal views but if you want to be taken seriously, don’t say that he isn’t a conservative. Just my two cents.

What has been your greatest contribution to public policy as Lt. Gov.?

Immediately, Mr. Dewhurst was back to the creating a climate where people can succeed theme, creating opportunities for all Texans. As proof, he offered the ultimate: people are voting for Texas with their feet, moving here in droves as they search for opportunity. Well, that was easy.

What has been your biggest “failure” or regret as Lt. Gov.?

That although public education has improved during his term in office, he wishes that it would have improved more. Test scores are up but he thinks that for kids to have the maximum opportunity for success, then public education has to improve even further. And it isn’t solely about money, it is about accountability for administrators. He points out that even during the current economic conditions, the legislature was able to tighten the belt on other parts of the budget and was able to provide a slight increase in funding for K-12 education and tried to make certain that teachers were covered. And that is a fact, even though you wouldn’t know it if you only depended upon traditional media sources for your information. The legislature appropriated about $3.1 billion more in general revenue for education in the 2012-13 budget, which covered the lost revenue from the federal stimulus program that was part of the 2010-11 budget and even increased it slightly. The aforementioned Empower Texans has a brief piece on this.

“With all due respect, you are completely wrong.”

In my second piece on Ted Cruz, I said that Mr. Cruz was “either correct or close enough to correct” on three attacks on Mr. Dewhurst that I couldn’t argue with them. He had a copy of that post in his hand when he told me that, with all due respect, I was wrong on each. He explained each:

  • Dewhurst backed down on increasing the budget after being smacked around in public by Gov. Perry

This gets very complicated and you have to have been an insider to know the truth on this one, I think. And certainly, Mr. Dewhurst was there and I cannot argue with his version of the events. My only defense is that I wasn’t there and have to rely upon the multiple reports of the budget battle. Mr. Dewhurst said that the House budget and the Senate budgets as submitted were almost identical, within $200 million of each other. The two bodies placed different priorities on spending and in the reconciliation process decided to spend some of the Rainy Day fund to cover current budget needs (for the record, I advocated for this). He was never for spending the entire Rainy Day fund and guided the process to ensure that it wasn’t spent.

  • Sanctuary cities bill failed to pass during regular session

Because of the so-called “blocker bill”, it is true that the bill did not pass in the regular session. But it did pass in the special session: it was added to the call on June 7 by Gov. Perry and passed on June 15. So yes, people can say correctly that it failed to pass during the regular session, but the truth should also be told that it passed during the special session.

  • TSA bill did not pass

Mr. Dewhurst was really upset that I agreed with Mr. Cruz on this one. He said that in no way did he undermine its passage during the regular session, Sen. Patrick’s harsh words notwithstanding. Mr. Dewhurst explained that he called for Sen. Patrick’s bill to be voted on but Sen. Fraser notified him that Sen. Patrick didn’t have the votes. He told me that the next morning, he walked the halls with Sen. Patrick trying to garner the votes necessary but that some of the senators were spooked by the letter from U.S. Attorney John Murphy stating that the TSA would likely cancel commercial flights.

In the special session, Gov. Perry added it to the call on June 20. After conferring with Speaker Straus, it was decided that the House would carry the bill first because they had already approved it 149-0. On Friday, June 24, Speaker Straus told the press that without some revisions, the bill seemed to be nothing more than a publicity stunt and that the House would not take it up until the revisions were made. Mr. Dewhurst then decided to take the bill up in the Senate on Monday, June 27 and it was passed. The House adjourned on Wednesday, June 29, without passing the revised bill.

On not being at every single debate and forum

A couple of the candidates have taken Mr. Dewhurst to task for not attending the multitude of candidate debates and forums that have taken place thus far. He just said that it is early in the campaign and that the voters would have ample opportunity to hear his message. In fact, I was meeting with him shortly after he had been at a forum sponsored by the Greater Houston Partnership. I’m also going to be at one sponsored by the TPPF in January to which he has committed to attend. I guess ultimately the voters will decide if he has been accessible enough.

At some point I have to quit writing – I’m almost through, hang in there. I have one more question that I posed that I thought Mr. Dewhurst’s answer was interesting.

If there was any one thing that you could do to immediately stimulate the economy, what would it be?

I had asked this question of Mr. Leppert, Mr. Cruz, and Mr. Addison previously, so I thought it was something I should pose to Mr. Dewhurst. His answer? Certainty.

Mr. Dewhurst stated that he has talked to all types of business people about this question and that “certainty in the market” keeps coming up. No matter the business, be it offshore drilling, domestic energy, retail shopping, warehouse distribution, or wholesale operations, the one thing that is keeping business from expanding is that they just don’t have a clue what the future holds in terms of regulation and taxes. Mr. Dewhurst estimated that businesses have as much as $2 trillion in the bank waiting to be invested but are hesitant to do so.

The reason I thought this answer was interesting is that it almost mirrors that of Tom Leppert. So on the one hand you have the two successful businessmen agreeing on the way out of the recession and on the other hand you have the two tea party candidates, Ted Cruz and Glenn Addison, saying that repealing Obamacare is the quickest way to get the economy moving. I think that is a very clear contrast that voters can use when they are comparing candidates.

Takeaway

I’ll end with the way I started this post. My perception of Mr. Dewhurst as a person could not have been more wrong. The man I talked to wouldn’t, as I joked earlier, be afraid to share the stage with an opponent, be they an accomplished lawyer or an undertaker. Again, my goal in doing this series is not to be a “gotcha” journalist because I’d have to be a journalist in the first place and I’m not. My goal is to provide my readers with a view of the candidates that they might not get elsewhere. I hope to some extent that I have achieved that goal.

Many, many thanks to the army of BJP readers that reached out to Mr. Dewhurst and helped make this happen – I won’t name you but you know who you are. When I spoke to one of Mr. Dewhurst’s campaign staff, he told me he was tired of hearing my name! I told an acquaintance earlier this week that I was living a dream getting to meet so many good people during this process.

And of course, many thanks to Mr. Dewhurst for taking the time to sit down with an ordinary voter from Shoreacres and explain your vision and talk about your past. I learned an awful lot.

The Gingrich “Discipline” Issue, and the Filter of the Main Stream Media

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As I think any Republican who now is considering supporting Newt Gingrich a serious candidate for the Presidency would acknowledge, the primary concern is whether the Newt they are seeing is a more mature and disciplined leader emerging from a Churchillian exile to save the country, or is he the same Newt that challenged, yet disappointed so many of us during his rise to Speaker of the House.  How we each resolve this concern will determine whether Newt becomes the GOP nominee.

But in making this evaluation, I would caution all Republicans not to confuse Gingrich’s willingness to think and discuss deep and persistent problems facing this country with a lack of political discipline.  In an era when our country is craving someone who will seriously lead this country by persuading us to help to reform our government and politics, are we really looking for someone who will not think deeply, and challenge us to think deeply about the issues we face?  Are we simply looking for the person who will give us the best 10 to 30 second soundbites, or who thinks and speaks in poll-tested labels?  Did Reagan persuade us this way, or did he spend a political generation persuading us by challenging us to think about the direction of our country?

I say all of this because the media is making much of Newt’s comments this week about the problems caused by a lack of educational and employment opportunities in poor communities, which have created a vicious cycle that both causes, and is continued by dysfunctions in families, the institutions that serve those communities, and government policies (like those policies that inhibit the ability of young men and women to find jobs, learn skills and develop the self-reliance needed to succeed as adults).  What he said is consistent with concerns expressed by many influential people over the years, including Bill Cosby and Shelby Steele.

To digress for a moment, I personally encountered the problem Newt addressed almost 20 years ago, when I volunteered with the then-Houston Chamber of Commerce (now known as the Greater Houston Partnership), in its effort to create business partnerships with local schools.  During that effort, I spent a full day observing and talking to classes, and meeting with teachers and the principal at an HISD elementary school in the Fifth Ward, at which 90{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the students qualified for Title I support under federal law.  On the drive over to the school, one of the teachers prepared me for what I would observe, by saying that she had been at the school since it opened in the early 1970s, that in just 20 years she was already seeing the third generation of some families come through the school in which no men were involved, that there were few if any role models in the community who were employed, and that there were virtually no male adult role models other than those involved in criminal activity.  She told me that if they were not able to engage students to learn by the end of 3rd Grade, they found that the unengaged students would eventually drop-out of the school system.

I sat in on three classes and observed some of what this teacher had described in the attitudes and comments of the children.  I spoke to, and answered questions from a fourth grade class, at the end of a lesson about the U.S. Constitution.  When the students learned that I was a lawyer, the questions included:

  • “Will my mother go to jail if she can’t pay our bills?”
  • “If my brother goes to jail, will my mother have to go to jail if he can’t pay his lawyer?”
  • “My brother is about to get ‘probation’—what is that?”
  • “If my mother goes to jail, do I have to go to jail, too?”

Needless to say, I was stunned by these questions, but did my best to keep a poker face and answer these questions as nicely and simply as I could, while trying to make my answers relate to our Constitution, our democracy and our legal system.  But notice what was and wasn’t mentioned:  the topics they were learning in class about U.S. History and the Constitution weren’t mentioned; fathers weren’t mentioned; their parents’ jobs weren’t mentioned; and concerns about jail permeated every concern.

At the end of the day I met with the principal to discuss the needs of the school that could be addressed with a business partnership.  I tried to be as candid as possible by saying that I did not know what business I could match with the school because its needs were so great, and the financial commitments would be limited.  She then said something that has stuck with me all these years later:  “We don’t need money.  Not that we couldn’t spend every dime and more, like a sponge absorbs water.  But if money is all we get, our real needs will never be met.  What we need are men – black, white, or purple – just men.  We need men who, like you, have a job and can show these children that there is another way to live life than what they see the men do in this community.  They have no positive male role models, they are raised by mothers and grandmothers and the few men who live in this community hang out at the corners and recruit these kids into a life of crime.  We need men to mentor these kids before 3rd Grade to believe that education has a purpose.”

What Newt discussed this week is a real problem that we, as a society and as voters, must be willing to discuss and address as part of our reform of government.  It is not a lack of discipline to engage people in a candid discussion of this issue.  Just as in the 1990s it was not improper for Newt to challenge people to think about the unintended consequences to families and communities caused by the abolition of orphanages – do we really think that the needs of young people who found refuge in such institutions disappeared when the orphanages were closed?  Do we really think there are no Babe Ruth’s out there any more?  If so, how do you explain what happened not long ago in Nebraska when a distraught parent left an adolescent at a fire house under that state’s law that allowed parents to anonymously leave babies to be adopted through the public system?

Are we really so naïve, or so stupid, that we can’t address these issues?  Or, do we just no longer have the stomach to discuss problems that make us emotionally uncomfortable?  And if that is the case, do we have the stomach to reform this country?  If we had had this aversion to address such issues a generation ago, would we have ever listened to, and followed Reagan?

I think you know that the answers to these questions are obvious, we just need the courage to embrace the obvious.

So, as you evaluate that large, grandiose figure that is Newt, focus on his maturity and discipline carefully, but don’t evaluate him through the filter of NBC News or the rest of the Main Stream Media, or even the Republican Establishment that has always been scared of Newt – just as they were scarred of Reagan a generation ago.  And their fear of Newt – like their fear of Reagan – manifests itself in their derision of him, his ideas, and his electability.  Anyone with half a memory who listens to the chattering class’s criticism of Newt’s electability has to chuckle remembering how we were told that we would lose to Carter if we didn’t nominate Bush or Baker or Connally (or Anderson), instead of Reagan.

This year’s version of such elite opinion wants you to confuse Newt’s intellectual curiosity, imagination and enthusiasm for addressing important, difficult and persistent issues with a lack of discipline.  It’s not.  A willingness to candidly address issues and ask serious questions in a time that needs serious thought and reform is a sign of leadership – and that has always scarred people who thrive on the status quo.

Evaluate Newt seriously and carefully – but don’t be scared into making your decision for the wrong reasons.