ustxtxb_obs_1983_09_30_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

borough, but it’s the movement that is important and that will determine whether the populist or progressive movement, in whatever incarnation, is going to really make a difference and survive. In other words, it’s not going to be Hightower or Mattox as we’re seeing now with Mattox, our star can fall pretty fast. A movement has got to be created and that movement has got to find ways to finance itself. Nearly all of my money came from $10 to $50 contributors. And, of course, I run on a lot less money than other people do. I’ve built up the name recognition there. There are a lot of factors. It takes me less money to run than some others. But if we’re to have either a liberal movement or a progressive movement or a populist movement, whatever, we’re going to have to find ways to finance it. And that’s going to have to be mass fundraising techniques, and people have just got to be willing to turn loose more of their money. If they really want good politics, they’ve got to put the money up. You can’t sit back and say, “My God, they’re taking money from Clinton Manges,” and you not give any money. Where else are we going to go to do it? If you’re talking about just a shoestring campaign like I ran a shoestring campaign cost me $485,000 to run. And I incurred a good bit of personal debt to do that. And I was luckier than most in terms of name recognition and that sort of thing. So we’re going to have liberal and populist and progressive officeholders if we have liberal and populist and progressive constituencies willing to support them. You get in politics what you deserve. You’ve got to remember, we’ve got the numbers. You can’t blame big business for Ronald Reagan, you can’t blame it for Bill Clements, any of that. We’ve got the numbers. And you can vote in this state, you can vote in this country. It’s one of the good things that we do have going for us. It’s difficult to get organized, but more people have got to play. There’s nothing magic to this stuff. You’ve got to have good people running who are willing to talk on issues and willing to do just the glamorless work that politics really is. There’s nothing terribly nice about running for office. All that won’t make any difference unless people are willing to support it. What we have found, of course, is that people are willing to support it. We’ve got to build on it, though. You don’t quit now. You can never quit because they don’t quit. They’re sitting there in the Petroleum Club in Houston today. They’re on the golf course at Lakeway. They’re out there saying, “I think we got Mattox; what are we going to do about the rest of them?” They’re going to be there putting candidates up, putting money up, and our side’s got to keep up that same stroke. POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE V During the August 5 meeting of the Select Committee on Public Education \(TO, Ross Perot told reporters that he had been working with the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio in developing an alternative to current bilingual education practices. Perot indicated that he was bankrolling a program being developed by Edgewood Superintendent Jimmy Vasquez and his staff. Vasquez, however, tells a different version of the story. “He visited the district five or six weeks ago,” Vasquez told the Observer recently, “and in the course of our discussion, he asked if I were familiar with a program using computers for pre-school children in Houston. I said I was always interested in looking at alternatives.” Perot told Vasquez to look into the Houston program and to prepare a program budget if he thought it was something Edgewood wanted to do. Vasquez said Perot indicated “he might be in a position to help get it started.” “But the words ‘bilingual education’ never came up in that context,” Vasquez says. “It was discussed as an alternative in the use of technology in early childhood education. To the best of my recollection, it had nothing to do with bilingual education.” Vasquez is certain he would have remembered any such con nection. “I’m very sensitive to that issue,” he said. V U.S. Rep. Morris Udall, chairman of the House Interior Committee, has asked that committee to look into the case of Charles Atchison, who was fired by Brown & Root after he reported problems in pipe support welds in the construction of the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant \(TO, An Interior Committee staff member told the Ft. Worth Star Telegram that Udall had requested documents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigation of the firing “as part of a continuing effort to monitor NRC construction of power plants.” V Dolph Briscoe’s decision not to run for the Senate caused relief among some of his friends who had been urging him that his time in public life is past and that even if he escaped the fate of Preston Smith \(another ex-governor who tried a miserable in Washington. V Robert Mosbacher’s entry into the GOP primary for the Senate caused rejoicing in the Doggett camp on the theory that while Gramm vs. Paul would not have assured a really hot Republican primary, Mosbacher does assure one. Ergo, Doggett’s people reason, a couple of hundred thousand conservative voters will be pulled out of the Democratic primary into the Republican one. V One extremely important development in Doggett’s favor is the staunch support he is receiving from Harry Hubbard, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, and other top state-office labor officials. V Krueger is strong among Hispanic leaders, whom he has been courting for years. Doggett and his people are hard at work trying to cut into this strength. In the opinion of one Doggett leader in South Texas, Doggett must break into the phalanx of Hispanic leaders who are publicly for Krueger. These include state representatives Paul Moreno \(D-El the emergence of important support from several Hispanic mayors in the lower Valley. v For a mere $10,000 you will be able to attend “the Texas Edition” of the Southern Governors’ Conference as a Gold Patron. The conference will be held at Austin’s Hyatt Regency, Sept. 25-28, and receives no public funding. Instead, it provides an opportunity for corporate movers and shakers to rub away at the 12 SEPTEMBER 30, 1983