Edited by Louisa C. Brinsmade, with contributions this week by Andrea
Barnett,
Robert Bryce, and Daryl Slusher.
TERRORISM COMES HOME: On April 28, Sam Hamilton, the state
administrator of the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), left his job after receiving
numerous
death threats, he alleges, from property rights activists. Threats were
also
made against Hamilton’s wife and children.
“He could take the heat,” says one FWS employee. “But it got too
personal and
too nasty.” On the job in Austin for about three years, Hamilton was a
friendly
man. But he didn’t make any friends among the anti-environmentalists.
Yet the
chief property-rights booster, Marshall Kuykendall, the head of Take
Back
Texas, calls Hamilton’s allegations of death threats “a damn lie.”
Kuykendall, the most strident leader of the anti-environmental
groups, has
referred to Hamilton in the past as “a thief.” In a brief phone
interview last
week, Kuykendall said Hamilton was “not leaving because he had death
threats.
He’s leaving because he couldn’t do his job. And he couldn’t do his job
because
we have private property here in Texas.”
The threats against Hamilton are the latest incident in what appears
to be an
increasingly militant anti-government crusade. Over the past two years,
offices
of the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in Nevada were
bombed.
FWS law enforcement officers in Idaho were recently threatened not by
property-rights advocates, but by a local sheriff.
Many of the property-rights advocates, like the right-wing militia
groups, are
strident opponents of gun control. However, Kuykendall refuses to
believe that
any of his followers threatened Hamilton. He says the story was “cooked
up by
folks in the media.”
FWS officials say Hamilton’s position will probably not be filled.
Rather,
Jana Grote, the acting field supervisor, will take part of Hamilton’s
job.
Regional officials from the Albuquerque office of FWS will pick up the
rest of
the slack. Grote says she herself has received threats on a sporadic
basis. Now
that she is the head of the Austin office, does she worry about her own
safety?
“It’s always a concern,” she says. – R.B.
MAYORAL BATTLES MAKE HISTORY IN DALLAS; FORCE RUNOFF IN SAN
ANTONIO: Austin voters were spared a municipal election this year, but local
elections
were held in many Texas cities on Saturday, May 6. In San Antonio,
heavily
favored mayoral candidate Bill Thornton was forced into a runoff by
political
maverick Kay Turner. The two led a field of six in the race to replace
popular
Nelson Wolff, who can’t run again because of term limits. Thornton led
with 49%
of the vote, to Turner’s 43%, and was only 68 votes short of winning
outright.
But it wasn’t supposed to be nearly that close.
Thornton is a blatantly pro-developer councilmember who has the
support of
most of the city’s big business establishment. Earlier this year, he
led the
failed charge to weaken a historic aquifer water quality ordinance that
was
eventually passed unanimously by the council. Turner, on the other
hand, is a
long-time activist who was a leader in last year’s trouncing of the
Applewhite
Reservoir proposal.
Thornton has outspent Turner almost 20-1 in this race; as
of the
May 1 contribution reporting deadline, he had spent $576,000, compared
to only
$31,000 spent by Turner.
San Antonio City Clerk Norma Rodriguez announced that there
would
be a re-count because of potential voting irregularities. Turner says
Rodriguez
and Thornton are allies, and that she would be suspicious of any
re-count.
Rodriguez, however, claims suspicions are unfounded and
inappropriate.
In the San Antonio city council races, all incumbents won handily,
except for
westside Councilmember Helen Ayala, who has a big lead going into a
runoff.
Councilmember Howard Peak, the council leader on the aquifer ordinance,
faced
an aggressive challenge but won 71% of the vote.
San Antonio’s daily newspaper, the Express-News,
played the
mayoral results as a “message of anger” from voters. In stark contrast
to
Austin’s daily paper, Express-News columnists offered blunt
analysis of
the contents of the angry message. Carlos Guerra’s morning-after report
began:
“I guess you heard that a totally unexpected thing happened to Bill
Thornton –
and all the well-connected backers who contributed hundreds of
thousands to his
campaign… Thornton – and his backers – ran into Kay Turner and all
those
pesky people who opposed one or both of the Applewhite initiatives.”
Guerra went on to say he was not surprised at the vote,
because of
sentiment expressed by voters at his precinct. After reporting on an
informal
poll won handily by Turner, Guerra quoted one gentlemen at length: “I’m
just
tired of all these people who run to make more money for some real
estate
developer. They don’t care what it does to the city, what it does to
the
water… They don’t care what it does to anything except what it does
for
them… I am going to go out of my way to vote for whoever is against
them.”
Thornton is still a heavy favorite in the May 30 runoff, but victory
is by no
means assured. A lot will depend on the nature and strategy of Turner’s
runoff
campaign.
Meanwhile in Dallas, Austin native Ron Kirk made history by becoming
that
city’s first black mayor. Kirk, who grew up in East Austin and served
as Texas
Secretary of State under Governor Ann Richards, defeated nine rivals to
win the
job with 62% of the vote. His nearest rival, attorney Darrell Jordan,
had 24%.
Kirk ran on a platform of stopping “the blame game” and ending the
“senseless
bickering” at city hall. He vowed to cut through polarizing rhetoric
and get
down to solving the city’s problems.
Kirk played down the racial significance of his victory, pointing out
that he
won support throughout the city. Of Dallas’ 14 single-member council
districts,
Kirk won in all seven that are predominately white, and all five that
are
predominately African-American. Mayor Pro Tem Domingo Garcia carried
the two
predominately Mexican-American districts, finishing third with 13%.
According
to the Dallas Morning News,black turnout was a record
25%. Kirk
won 97% of that vote, 42% of the white vote, and 14% of the Hispanic
vote. – D.S.
THE HUNGER: Local minister Charles Moore ended a two-week fast last
weekend
when he received word that participants in a recent international
United
Methodist bishops conference in Austin issued a statement expressing
“concern”
for the mistreatment of gays and lesbians.
Moore, the 60-year-old pastor of Austin’s Grace United Methodist
Church, sent
a one-page missive to the bishops, urging them to “declare your concern
for
homosexual persons… and to call for the removal of all language in
the United
Methodist documents which discriminates against anyone because of their
sexual
orientation.”
The bishops’ response, while not all that Moore asked for, encouraged
his
supporters. “It was probably the best we could have hoped for,” says
Jim Rigby,
minister at the St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, just south of
Pflugerville.
“The hope was that they would start to talk about it. There’s still a
lot of
work to be done.”
At issue is language in the denomination’s Book of Discipline which
states
that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” To the
contrary,
Moore says, he has anguished over the years at how the church treats
gay
people. He lists in his statement “a gifted organist, married to cover
his true
sexuality, beaten senseless in a bar, dismissed without a word; a
talented man
working among the poor, slapped and humiliated in the presence of his
peers on
suspicion of homosexuality; a seminary classmate and fellow pastor,
openly
admitting his sexual orientation, driven out of the ministry to become
a church
janitor.” Moore declares that, by his silence, he helped to perpetuate
mistreatment of gays and lesbians, and vows to do so no more.
“It is too late for most that I have mentioned to hear me, but it
is certainly
not too early to remove the stigma that homosexual persons still face
in the
church,” he writes.
Delegates to the 1992 United Methodist general conference voted to
retain the
discriminatory language by a more than 3-1 margin. The next conference
is set
for 1996. – A.B.
BRINGING UP THE REAR: The Institute for Southern Studies in Durham,
N.C.,
recently completed a study showing that states with the most progress
in
environmental protection have the healthiest economies. According to
their
findings, Hawaii and Vermont hold the top two spots among all 50 states
in both
categories. Texas, on the other hand, was listed among the bottom ten
states
for both economic progress (40th) and environmental protections (49th).
Louisiana had the honor of coming in last in both.
The environmental criteria include toxic emissions, pesticide use,
energy
consumption, and spending for natural resource protection. The economic
criteria include average income, jobs, business start-ups, and
workplace
injuries. – L.C.B.
This article appears in May 12 • 1995 and May 12 • 1995 (Cover).