It was nearly 10 o’clock on Tuesday night and Travis County District Attorney
Ronnie Earle had yet to put in an obligatory appearance at Palmer Auditorium.
Instead, Earle was hanging out with guys in gimme caps down at the Texas
AFL-CIO. It was his victory party — he had just won his re-election bid for
district attorney — but beneath the red, white and blue ballons floating
merrily about, Earle wore the look of a shell-shocked soldier home from war.
The 20-year-incumbent survived one of the hardest-fought battles of his career
in the run against Republican candidate Shane Phelps. The state Republican
party had very badly wanted to oust Earle from office, even betting the farm on
Phelps with upwards of $100,000 in campaign money. In the end, the stakes on
both sides totalled more than a half-million dollars. But Earle tallied up 55%
of the vote, compared to Phelps’ 45%.
In his victory speech before heading over to Palmer, Earle let go of some
pent-up venom and aimed it squarely at his opponent and the Republican Party.
Likening the contest to taking a bath in napalm, Earle said, “This is a victory
over anger and hatred and a victory for the community.” What the outcome of the
race illustrates, he said, “is the power of community, not the power of
gunslingers. Gunslingers suck, right?” The remark drew whoops and hollers from
the audience of labor leaders and long-time Democrats.
“Every time we jump on somebody they get pissed about it, and they start
looking at me like they’re making a detailed autopsy,” Earle told his
supporters, who were all grins by this time. “They know more about my underwear
drawer than I do.”
Even Phelps acknowledges that the Republicans have wanted Earle’s head on a
platter ever since the district attorney brought charges against one of their
own — U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison — in 1994. And Phelps, who quit his job
with the Texas Attorney General’s office to run for office, was the candidate
who could make that happen, the Republicans believed.
He couldn’t, and as the hours ticked by Tuesday night, Phelps never showed his
face. On Wednesday, Phelps did not return phone calls to The Austin
Chronicle, and his campaign manager could not be reached.
Perhaps Phelps could have made a stronger showing if he had been more widely
known in the community, said Earle’s campaign manager, David Butts. “The reason
he came as close as he did is because this was an effort by a group of
Republicans — primarily Kay Bailey Hutchison and [husband] Ray Hutchison and
some other high-placed Republicans around the state who decided it was payback
time for Ronnie Earle. “But Ronnie has been around for a long time; a lot of
people like Ronnie and, part of the reason he made a good showing is because
Ronnie refused to go negative.” At least not until after the votes were
counted. — Amy Smith
Belle of the Ball
New Sheriff-elect Margo Frasier was bouncing off the walls of PalmerAuditorium as she awaited the slow returns Tuesday night. As the first
candidate in a hotly contested race to show up at the unusually ho-hum affair,
desperate-for-news TV anchors courted Frasier like she was Cinderella at the
ball. After she hit all four stations, Channel 7 asked her to come on again. “I
told them there’s nothing new to say,” laughed Frasier.
By the time Frasier’s Republican opponent Travis County Chief Deputy Alvin
Shaw hit Palmer to make the network rounds at 10:15pm, he was losing. Still,
Channel 36 talking heads didn’t ask him about that unpleasant fact, and instead
allowed him to ramble on about what he was going to do in the unlikely event he
should become sheriff.
At Frasier’s victory party steps away from Palmer at Aussie’s bar, Travis
County’s first female sheriff gave hugs all around: to her family — which
consists of her adopted 3-year-old daughter and her longtime partner, who is an
officer with the Austin Police Department — and to the dozens of volunteers
from her church and the Travis County Sheriff’s office. The Sheriff’s employees
in particular seemed relieved to have overthrown the current-in-command Terry
Keel/Alvin Shaw regime. “Margo will deal fairly with individual employees and
problems as they come up, rather than how it relates to some political agenda,”
predicted Shane Poole, a corrections sergeant at the Travis County Sheriff’s
Office. “I think there’ll be a lot of happy people at work tomorrow — except
for one (Shaw). Maybe two. (Keel)”
Shaw, who throughout the campaign denied there were morale problems among his
employees, gamely refused to concede defeat until after midnight when all the
precinct boxes were counted. — Audrey Duff
Mail-Out Misfire
This one was a real squeaker until the end, the closest State Board ofEducation race in Texas, in fact. Davis, the Democratic incumbent, won with 49%
of the vote; Weaver, the Republican challenger, garnered almost 46%. Natural
Law Party candidate Catherine Randolph chipped away at Davis’ and Weaver’s
tallies, coming in with 5% of the vote. As expected, Davis’ strongest support
came from Travis County, where he won 57% of the vote, but he also took a
majority in Bastrop, Burleson, Caldwell, and Milam Counties. Weaver fared best
in the more conservative hinterlands — Austin, Colorado, Fayette, Fort Bend,
Washington, and Williamson Counties — but those numbers were not quite enough
to overcome the clout that Travis carries.
“I feel good that I won against the conservative Republican trend,” said
Davis, who had braced himself for a late attack on him via direct mail. In
1994, that particular tactic had worked well for two East Texas-area GOP
candidates, who falsely accused their Democratic opponents of being pro-gay,
anti-family extremists who wanted Texas schoolchildren to be instructed in
masturbation.
Indeed, though the content was not nearly so harsh as it was two years ago, a
similar-looking, tabloid-sized mailing was issued from the Republican Party of
Texas early last week, erroneously charging that Davis “supports condom
distribution in public schools,” and that he does not support “error-free
textbooks” or “the fundamental rights of parents.”
A similar flier, supporting GOP candidate David Bradley in the Beaumont-area
District 7 race, screamed that Democratic candidate Rema Lou Brown enjoyed
support from “radical groups like ACT-UP and Queer Nation” and that she had
“recently participated in an event with the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws and the ACLU.” (Bradley ultimately won that race.)
But the screeds did not reach their intended targets. A bizarre mix-up in the
mail-out may have actually helped derail the slam effort in Davis’ case — for
District 10 fliers went out to voters in District 7, and vice versa. Not only
that, many of the GOP fliers inexplicably arrived at the addresses of stalwart
Democrats. Davis said he thought the screw-up, “terribly funny, I laughed out
loud when I heard,” adding that it shocked him to be attacked in such a manner
for the first time in his 30 years of public life.
Elsewhere around the state, Democrat Joe Bernal easily knocked off GOP
incumbent Jose Garcia de Lara in the San Antonio-area District 3 race —
remarkable for the fact that Gov. George W. Bush had appointed de Lara to fill
the seat when it was vacated by an ailing board member. All told, this season’s
eight State Board elections yielded only three Democratic victors. Nine
Republicans, at least six of whom are quite conservative, now hold seats on the
board; the remaining six seats are in the hands of Democrats. — Roseana
Auten
Doggett Style
To the surprise of few, Doggett prevailed. Lloyd Doggett, that is, andpretty darn handily, too. He took his Republican counterpart and unrelated
opponent, Teresa Doggett, to task by a 15-point margin. Large enough, one could
presume, to make it seem that District 10 could be Lloyd’s for the taking long
into the future. But that was not the predominant sentiment of his victory
speech at Bertram’s. Flanked by wife and daughter and as wooden as ever, the
sophomore representative made a respectable attempt to lighten up: “I hope
there’s no truth to the rumor that the Republicans are already searching for
someone named Lloyd to run next time.”
No, they can still rely on Teresa, who is unbowed by defeat. “I’m gonna start
running [against Lloyd] tomorrow. We built a huge organization that’s ready to
roll for the next time. We ran a substantive, hard-hitting race that brought
forth information about his record that people didn’t know was out there. He
talked about balancing the budget, then voted against it twice.”
Lloyd’s making that same promise again, as well as refining the Endangered
Species Act, increasing financial assistance for higher education, and of
course, continuing to “speak out vigorously and pointing out the incredible
inconsistencies” of Newt and the gang. “I’m ready to work together with
Congress but if Newt Gingrich and his extremist philosophy will harm Austin
families, I’m going to be there fighting whether they like it or not.”
And they certainly didn’t during his freshman term; it was his speaking out
that almost sparked a retaliatory threat to cut funding for the Sematech
consortium. And with the Republicans retaining control of the House, Austinites
can expect more of the same. In fact, during his speech, Lloyd essentially
admitted that his effectiveness depends not on his consensus-building, but on
the number of Democrats in the House: “I’ve established myself and hopefully
with the Republican majority reduced, we can solve some problems.” (The
Democrats did manage a net gain of nine seats overall, with six races still too
close to call as we go to press; but the GOP still looks to hold a 227-207
majority.) — Alex de Marban
Riding on Write-Ins
If you checked Travis County election totals on television or the World WideWeb Tuesday night, you may have wondered what happened to all those lefties who
were going to vote for Ralph Nader. Actually, they made a respectable showing,
but didn’t register in the results because Nader and his running mate Winona
LaDuke were not actually on the ballot in Texas, and write-in ballots were not
counted here until Wednesday afternoon. Nader actually received 2,135 votes in
Travis County, giving him almost all of the write-in ballots and placing him
fourth behind Ross Perot and ahead of the Libertarian (1,851 votes), Natural
Law Party (660) and U.S. Taxpayers Party (187) candidates who did get a place
on the ballot. Nationally, Nader also came in fourth, with more than half a
million people awarding him .6% of the vote. — Lee Nichols
The Election from Home: Stick with the NBA. It’s More Exciting.
The polls had been closed for just 30 minutes and already Texas was firmly inthe pocket of Bob Dole and Phil Gramm was the winner over Victor Morales. And
just 31 minutes later, CNN had also called Bill Clinton the victor in the race
for the White House.
The only thing interesting about the election coverage on Tuesday night was
how the different television networks covered the event. Everyone knew that
Clinton would win. The only question was how quickly the exit pollsters and TV
commentators would call it. In that regard, CNN was nearly an hour ahead of
CBS, ABC and NBC. While Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw talked to
pundits about various Congressional races, CNN commentators were interviewing
Clinton allies like Vernon Jordan and asking how Clinton would fare over the
next four years.
Perhaps the most entertaining coverage of the election was on Comedy Central,
where correspondent Chris Rock interviewed Dr. Joyce Brothers, who, oblivious
to Rock’s mocking face gestures, began telling the audience about the
“incentive disengagement” that occurs in a losing candidate. Did you know,
asked Brothers, that the life expectancy of “presidents is 3.1 years less than
their contemporaries?”
The networks also supplied their own unwitting moments of levity. For
instance, Brokaw opined that the “Sad thing is there always has to be a winner
and a loser.” On ABC, U.S. Rep. Dick Armey went into a long tirade during an
interview with Jennings about how the networks were predicting winners. “We
always knew that the media gave the Democrats the benefit of the doubt,” said
Armey. “Now they are getting the benefit of the speculation.” When Armey
finally stopped, Jennings deadpanned, “Your lecture is certainly noted,” and
then went on to ask about the political landscape in Texas.
At 7:45pm, Rather noted that polls throughout the central and western U.S.
were closing soon. “This could be the hour of decision,” he said. Wow. What
drama.
After 8:30pm, the only real contest on TV was between the Lakers and the
Knicks, who were playing in Madison Square Garden. There too, the confident and
brash young upstart (Shaquille O’Neal, playing the Clinton role) beat the dour
and snaggle-toothed veteran (Patrick Ewing). But the good thing about the
basketball game was that even though the Lakers were winning at halftime,
neither Verne Lundquist nor Doc Rivers was predicting which team would
win.
(It was the Lakers). — Robert Bryce
Goodnight, David
The media highlight of the night, hands down, was ABC’s sign-off segment, a“surprise” farewell to retiring octogenarian David Brinkley. It began with
Brinkley launching into what was apparently going to be an off-color joke about
Ross Perot, and Tom Brokaw nervously interrupting him not once, but twice, to
note that, ummm, you know, we are on the air, really. When at
last the doddering icon understood that Brokaw wasn’t kidding, that he was in
fact live coast-to-coast, Brinkley settled back in his chair and exhaled:
“Well, then, I have nothing at all to say.”
He did have one more thing to add, though, when they gave him the night’s last
word: He remarked that each of his colleagues had a remarkable amount of
“creativeness” — which was a quality utterly lacking in Bill Clinton, he said,
which was why the President “is a bore. And he’ll always be a bore.” Upon which
Brokaw cut in again to thank David and put a merciful end to the night’s
coverage, and Brinkley’s illustrious career. — Nick Barbaro
Frasier 48,064, Shaw 44,354 Earle 51,553, Phelps 40,659
Those were the numbers reported on all four local news shows as early votingtotals in the Travis County Sheriff and D.A. races. That was shortly after the
polls closed at 7pm, and officially, 0% of the precincts were reporting at that
point. As the evening progressed, however, and votes started trickling, then
pouring, into Palmer Auditorium, Travis County’s election headquarters, the
reported margins in those races and others around Travis County stayed
mysteriously the same.
As the percentage of precincts reporting began to climb — 7%, 22%, 43%, 62%
— reporters on all four stations came back time and again to those races to
report that they were still neck-and-neck — still too close to call. What
nobody apparently noticed — none of the newsfolk, anyway — was that the vote
totals they were reporting hadn’t actually changed; it was still Frasier
48,064, Shaw 44,354; Earle 51,553, Phelps 40,659, until somewhere around 10pm,
when the tally was finally updated. — Nick Barbaro
This article appears in November 8 • 1996 and November 8 • 1996 (Cover).