ustxtxb_obs_1988_08_19_50_00020-00000_000.pdf

POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE V THE MYSTERY tenant booked in the Vice-Presidential suite at the Houstonian Hotel was revealed in a wire service story filed in Houston. Some had speculated that it was Austin political operator Ty Fain, who grabbed national headlines when he rented the Bush suite during the Democratic state convention and invited the press in for a “baloney party” serving up Balanced Budget Bologna, Homeport Bologna, Star Wars Bologna. . . . Other speculation focused on Texas literati with designs on solitude and the Vice-Presidential collection of 99 Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Not so, according to the AP. The suite is rented by Bush himself, perhaps to solidify his residency claim, now that Lloyd Bentsen will play a more prominent role in November. But more likely and here even Republican Party spokesman Mark Goodin has said “uncle” to keep the Ty and Kate Fains of the world out of the VicePresident’s bed until after November. V MICHAEL DUKAKIS and Lloyd Bentsen are campaigning in Spanish in the Rio Grande Valley and Lou Zaeske of the American Ethnic Coalition an Englishfirst group doesn’t like it. Zaeske took the Democrats to task, insisting that a bilingual campaign won’t play in Texas. “It will lose them the South, it will lose them Texas and the Southwest and it will lose them the Presidency,” Zaeske claimed. Zaeske was in Austin for a Texas Observer/Scholz Garden debate on the official language movement. // AUSTIN JOURNALIST Sam Kinch describes the American Ethnic Coalition as a “basically Republican” group largely ignored by party leaders who are providing gavel-to-gavel simultaneous Spanish translation of their national convention in New Orleans. Republicans will make the convention available in Spanish by offering a satellite channel for the Spanish-language media. V VICE-PRESIDENT BUSH, meanwhile, is trying to build support in the Hispanic community. He recently added Hollis Vasquez Rutledge, former city manager of San Benito and Hidalgo, to his Texas campaign staff. Rutledge will resign a Housing and Urban Development position to join the Bush Campaign. V FLOATING FAR FROM the mainstream, Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez was one of very few Texas Democratic politicians to express disapproval of Dukakis’s selection of Bentsen as his running mate. Gonzalez had argued that House Speaker Jim Wright should have been drafted for the position, according to a report in the San Antonio Express-News in July. “Bentsen’s voting record is closer to the Republicans than the Democrats,” Gonzalez was quoted as saying. Gonzalez said he would work for the Democratic ticket but that there was a part of his anatomy he wouldn’t bust on their behalf. But what exactly was it? The Express-News ran the quote as, “I won’t bust my b for them.” V IN ABILENE Republican state Senate candidate Bobby Albert is running a standard anti-abortion and homophobic campaign against Rep. Steve Carriker in a race to replace Ray Farabee, who resigned his seat to serve as legal counsel for the University of Texas. Albert is attacking Carriker for the representative’s failure to join 80 sponsors of a bill requiring minors to obtain parental consent before an abortion. The bill passed in the House by voice vote. Albert also has attacked Carriker, whom he describes as a “left winger,” for his vote against a bill that would have required health officials to notify spouses of people suspected of having AIDS. The Abilene Reporter News jumped into the fight, calling Albert’s campaign “irresponsible” and encouraging him to address the real issues in the campaign.. . “how to deal with the over-population of state prisons, how to improve public education, how to reform the state tax structure, how the state judiciary should be selected, how to correct imbalances in workmens’ compensation, how to improve the plight of thousands of Texas children born into poverty each year. . .” Carriker and Albert face off in an August 13 special election to fill what remains of Farabee’s term. Both candidates must run again in November for the full term. V DEMOCRATIC state Senator Richard Anderson of Marshall is fighting off a Republican challenger by staking out his own position on a state income tax: he’s against it. “I have campaigned for over two years on a stand against the personal income tax and already fought against this proposal in Austin,” Anderson said. V STILL CRAZY after all these years. The newspapers had fun with the “tiff” between Attorney General Jim Mattox and state Treasurer Ann Richards, when word got out Richards had said in a private conversation that it was “certifiable” that Mattox was crazy. But, as Sam Kinch reminded his Texas Weekly readers in a headline, ” ‘Crazy’ Leads Money Race 3 to 1.” Mattox has banked $603,000 to Richards $190,000 for the Democratic primary race for Governor which will be held in 1990 but which seems to have begun sometime in the mid-60s. But Richards’s fund raising campaign, on the eve of her convention keynote speech, is said to have brought in some $150,000. And her Lily Tomlin, Liz Carpenter, Ann Richards multiple birthday party/fundraiser and movable feast, held in Austin and San Antonio was one of the hottest tickets in both cities. V FUNDRAISING WARS have become the only issue in the state’s Supreme Court Chief Justice race. Here, Clements appointee Tom Phillips and Associate Justice Ted Z. Robertson are engaged in a press release dogfight over who’s taking how much from whom. Phillips, the Bill Clements appointee who replaced John Hill, has announced a $5,000 cap on individual campaign contributions and challenged Ted Z. to do the same. But Robertson claims that Phillips has left a large loophole in his self-imposed limitation and is allowing large corporate law firms to fund his campaign. Phillips was born into a large corporate law firm in Houston and he argues that his support from law firms is far better than Robertson’s acceptance of “$35,000 or $40,000 from an individual or from one partner in a law firm.” Not so, says Robertson: . . . “just 20 law firms contributed $182,590 to Judge Phillips’s campaign” . . . And so it goes. V TOM v. TED Z. could prove to be a tough race to handicap. The older Robertson was featured on a “Justice for Sale” 60 Minutes feature last winter and this has to hurt. Phillips is bright, accessible and something of an ingenue in Austin. He was considered by many to hold an edge in the race. But the Dukakis-BentsenBentsen ticket could hurt Phillips. V SPEAKER of the House Jim Wright has conceded privately to Arizona Rep. Mo Udall and California Rep. George Miller that the bill proposing to open up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration is, for now, going nowhere. Wright had been leaning on Miller’s Interior Committee to get the bill moving, according to several sources, even though a coalition of environmental groups was vociferously opposing the bill. Environmentalists say the 100-mile coastal Wildlife Refuge is too preCious to be opened up to the oil companies. According to an account of Wright’s recent meeting with Udall and Miller, he still wants to see the bill moving next year with “no dilly-dallying .” 0 20 AUGUST 19, 1988