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boomerang wrote:

‘I wish we had four days instead of 140. I really am a pass-the-budget-and get-out-of-here guy,’ Straus said.

He's welcome to get a private sector job.

Straus learns fast on managing House

By GARY SCHARRER AUSTIN BUREAU

June 6, 2009, 8:09PM

AUSTIN — He was so green when veteran legislative colleagues selected him to become speaker of the Texas House of Representatives that one Sunday night back in January, Joe Straus locked himself out of his Capitol apartment.

The half-dressed speaker had to prop open an outer door with one shoe to avoid also getting locked out of a corridor between his apartment and the House chamber as he went limping through the deserted building looking for help.

Four months later, Straus seemed ready for prime time. He survived a showdown over a contentious Republican-backed Voter ID bill. House Democrats went into a five-day stall to prevent the bill from debate after it passed the Senate. They got what they wanted.

And Straus elevated his stature among fellow Republicans by holding firm against rule suspensions to bring up important Democrat-favored bills that died along with the Voter ID measure.

On the very last day, Straus and his allies engineered a clever, if not controversial, way to extend the lives of several state agencies. Meanwhile, the dazed and confused state Senate stayed in session hours after the House declared the 140-day long session over and adjourned.

Straus, 49, landed in the office by circumstance, not ambition — and only had one full legislative term under his belt. In contrast, his two immediate predecessors were House veterans. Tom Craddick had 17 terms and Pete Laney had 12 terms before they became speakers of the 150-member body.

“When I first started I had no idea,” Straus acknowledged a day after the session ended. “I had no idea what the day would be like and toward the end, even though the days were much more crucial to the outcome, I felt much more confident. The heavier lifting in the end was easier than the lighter stuff at the beginning. I just had a feel for it toward the end.

“I’m still not a master of the game, but I know who to rely on to help,” Straus said. “And I found that being calm and patient — nine times out of 10, things get worked out if you just relax and wait.”

Straus spoke about his surprise elevation to the post, and the challenges of the five-month legislative session, in a series of weekly interviews with the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle. The eight-hours of interviews provided an opportunity to assess and contrast Straus’ perspectives as an inexperienced leader in January to his outlook in June after the session ended.

The newspapers agreed to embargo the material until after the session.

Straus waited out the speaker contest last year after a number of former Craddick lieutenants peeled away from Craddick, some turning into candidates themselves for the top job. Straus waited until the last day when 11 anti-Craddick Republicans met to choose a nominee to take on Craddick. They turned to the freshest face of the bunch. Within two days, Straus had clinched the speaker’s job.

“The surprise continues to be that I’m doing this job,” Straus said in the opening days of the session.

His first test

Straus’ first test came in the appointment of legislative committees and their leaders.

The best appointments went to the other 10 Republicans who nominated him as their choice for speaker. Some Democrats complained they should have been treated better since they provided 72 of the first 88 pledges — and it takes 76 to win a speaker’s race.

“Some members have reacted in ways that disappointed me. It’s probably my fault that I have not communicated better with some of them,” Straus said of some bruised feelings in the early weeks.

It didn’t take long for Straus to brand his leadership as distinctly different than that of his predecessor. Many members thought Craddick was autocratic and stifling. Some of Craddick’s committee chairs saw themselves as little more than figureheads.

Straus vowed to be more of a bipartisan leader who would trust members to carry out their assignments without interference.

“He (Craddick) knew exactly where he wanted to go, and he was willing to do it in any manner he saw fit because he believed that what he was doing was right for Texas,” said Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, who was close to Craddick.

Straus put Kolkhorst in charge of the House Public Health Committee.

“Speaker Craddick always wanted you to run things by him and basically get his blessing or his acceptance. Speaker Straus is very laissez-faire, very much a hands-off kind of speaker. He says, ‘It’s your committee, run the committee as you see fit. How is it going? I hear good things about you. Keep up the good work. I trust you to do the best job you can. Use good judgment and be fair.’ ”

But some lawmakers who held leadership spots under Craddick have been slow to warm up to Straus.

“If you grade a speaker on the basis of being absent from the process, I think you probably have to give him an A,” said Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston. “After Tom Craddick, the House wanted somebody who was kind of invisible, so that’s what they got.”

Fairly early in the session, Straus still seemed surprised to be occupying the speaker’s office.

“If I really thought I had a chance, I wouldn’t have done it,” he said about offering his candidacy at the last minute. “I just thought I was being chicken ... by not putting my name on the list.”

In early March, Straus invited four top Democrats into the speaker’s apartment at the end of the day for casual chatter. Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, Rep. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco, Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston and Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, had never stepped foot in that place during the six tumultuous years of Craddick when they were considered little more that mischief-makers.

“I have been very appreciative and delighted with Coleman and Gallego being as helpful as they have been,” Straus said midway through the session. “They’ve really been good team players. They have been very helpful procedurally ... Garnet Coleman is really energized.”

One of those Democratic leaders, in mid-April, complimented Straus for listening to them but saw little response to their advice. They considered Straus averse to risk, overly timid and fearful of his party’s right-wingers.

“Some of them wanted me to be a Democrat,” Straus responded. “They wanted to project their party on me. I am a Republican, but I’m willing to do work with Democrats who want to negotiate and work things out.

“I typically don’t utter the words, but I am a centrist Republican. I am kind of a limited-government type of Republican — not from the social right wing. But if there’s a strong consensus for some of those issues on their agenda, I’m not going to stand in their way of it.”

The biggest issue

Straus’ biggest focus stayed on the state budget.

“The budget is what we have to pass. The rest of it in a closely divided house, it is unrealistic to expect agreement on many, many things, and it’s going to be coming at us pretty soon now,” Straus said in late March — two weeks before the budget would reach the House floor. “Being here and not having campaigned for this job and not knowing who my 70 or 80 strongest do-or-die backers are out there, it’s a challenge.”

For the first time in modern history, the House approved a tentative budget plan by a unanimous, 149-0 vote. In an office pool, Straus guessed that 120 members would support the bill.

Three months into the job, Straus finally showed a little bit of swagger.

“The Senate thinks they are going to run over us (on the budget). I don’t mind being underestimated. It’s worked so far,” he said, laughing.

Gov. Rick Perry, Dewhurst and Straus held weekly breakfast meetings to assess the session.

After one such gathering, Straus recounted “their parting words were – both of them – ‘we have sympathy for you. This has to be the most difficult session to be serving as speaker of the House.’ ”

By mid-session, Straus detected an emerging theme from those meetings. Some bills passed through the Senate that Perry considered objectionable, such as Unemployment Insurance.

“And Perry looks at me and says, ‘you are going to kill it, aren’t you?’

““I’ve got 74 Democrats here and (some) Republicans who don’t care for the other Republican leadership, so I’m sitting here, saying, ‘well, I’ll see what I can do,’ ” Straus told the governor.

Left unsaid was the fact that Straus had an evenly divided House: “I shouldn’t have the expectations here to get a lot of things done.”

Heading into the final month, Voter ID was still percolating, and Democrats were pushing several tort-related bills.

He was ready for the session to end.

“I wish we had four days instead of 140. I really am a pass-the-budget-and get-out-of-here guy,” Straus said. “Guns on campus, guns somewhere else? Are we really fixing problems or do we just think we do? And voter ID?”

Straus took the speaker’s job with little legislative experience and no expectations on what it would be like.

“I didn’t know how to do it. I just knew that it needed to be done. And outside the session (during the interim and campaign season), there was just as much concern, in my mind, about the scorched earth politics and that spills over for both parties,” said Straus.

Building credibility

A day after the session ended, Straus laughed about where it started in January.

“Here it is; ‘it’s yours.’ It feels like I’ve been doing it for years,” Straus said nearly five months later. “Once I recharge my batteries a bit and reach out to the members ... I will be developing interim charges and studies and maybe creating a few new legislative select committees to assess our issues.”

Much of the actual legislative work is done in the 18 months leading up to the next session.

“I think we did remarkably well with all the challenges in essentially an even house and no real training,” Straus said. “We’ll have something to build on. There will be more continuity. Next session, it will be easier for me to have credibility.”

And he’s also learned not to close the speaker’s apartment door to the kitchen behind him without having a key in hand.

gsharrer@express-news.net