Gramm Slam
Phil Gramm slipped into town last week virtually unnoticed — except by the 100 or so influential folks who were invited to rub elbows with Texas’ senior U.S. senator at the downtown condo of lobbyist Stan Schlueter. And, between noshing and sipping, the guests scribbled out campaign contribution checks for judicial candidate Ernest Garcia. Now why would Gramm visit not-so-friendly Travis County to headline a fundraiser for a down-ballot candidate on the GOP ticket? “He did this because he is so impressed with Judge Garcia, and he happened to be able to fit it into his schedule,” explained Travis County GOP party chair Alan Sager, who cheerfully served as Gramm’s driver to and from the event.
Until December 1998, Garcia was just a little-known guy with an impressive résumé, but then George W. Bush appointed him to fill a vacancy in the 126th District Court, and Garcia’s political career took off. Now he’s lining up powerful GOP players like Gramm to headline his fundraisers. The hosts of last week’s event — Schlueter and lawyer-lobbyist Jack Erskine — are pretty powerful in their own right. Schlueter, a former state representative, was an intimidating force as the chairman of the House Calendars Committee. The conservative Democrat from Killeen (an Austin-bashing legislator, no less) abruptly resigned in 1989 after coming under fire for allegedly using campaign contributions to supplement his living expenses. So Schlueter went the way of other ex-reps and took up lobbying for a living.
On the campaign trail, the attention given this particular courthouse race is almost unprecedented in Travis County. As a Bush appointee, Garcia is under tremendous pressure to fend off his Democratic opponent, Darlene Byrne, a civil trial lawyer. From a purely superficial standpoint, Garcia has several factors working in his favor: He’s Hispanic, he’s the incumbent, and he has a war chest in excess of $200,000 — a dizzying amount that’s raising eyebrows all around. “I think it’s pretty unseemly for a judge to have to raise $200,000,” snorted one Democratic powerbroker. (Garcia says he’s ready to call it quits on the fundraising front. “I think we’ve raised enough money and we don’t need to raise any more,” he said.)
Endorsements are coming in at a pretty good clip as well. Garcia has the backing of, among others, the Hispanic Bar Association of Austin and the Travis County Family PAC, which is made up of attorneys who practice family law. Last week, though, Garcia showed signs of being both a sore loser and a tad naive when he challenged the Travis County Sheriff’s Officers Association “to articulate one reason” why it chose to endorse Byrne over him. And he felt particularly snubbed by the fact that neither the AFL-CIO nor the Austin Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus contacted him for an endorsement meeting. “Neither of them even bothered to call me,” the Bush appointee sniffed.
This article appears in September 1 • 2000.
