ustxtxb_obs_1990_04_20_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

LOUIS DUBOSE alties would have ranged from 10 to 99 years and anyone who had a previous conviction under the same section of the Code of Criminal procedure would be denied probation if convicted a second time. Allen Hightower, a Democrat who represents Huntsville and the Texas Department of Corrections, said he was concerned that Denton’s amendment did not allow for probation or deferred adjudication. “No probation?” Hightower asked from the back mike. “That’s right,” Denton said. “… then I’m going to say that this will cost, oh, $500 million in prison bonds,” Hightower responded.” Not to worry, according to Denton, who argued that to win a war you’ve got to spend money. “And this is the kind of bill that Bennett [Bush Drug Czar William Bennett] is asking for.” The amendment was defeated but on the following day Beaumont Democrat Mark Stiles told Hightower he’d made a mistake. “I was just thinking how many prisons you could have built with that amendment,” Stiles told Hightower. DIGITAL MALFUNCTION? At one point in the course of voting, House Speaker Lewis granted a request for verification of a vote and called the roll while the red and green lights that registered members’ votes remained lighted on the vote board. Several representatives contended that they had punched voting buttons on their desks to vote one way and the board showed them voting another. And in the course of the verification, several votes were changed. “There’s been a problem with the voting machines,” Lewis explained. “For the benefit of people who are going to work on these machines,” Comanche Democrat Jim Parker told the Speaker from the back mike, “I’d like to point out that these malfunctions seem to be tied to your voting light.” The Speaker, who usually passes rather than votes, voted on a number of important amendments during the course of the evening’s debate. The statement from the chair, “Show the Speaker voting aye,” is usually good for at least a few votes from members who are reluctant to cross the most powerful member of the House. HIS NAME is James Carville. In the political circles in which he travels, he is known as the “barracuda” or the “classic hired gun.” Carville, who speaks with a Louisiana drawl, has yet to attain the reputation in Texas of, say, a George Shipley, the political adviser working for Ann Richards. But Carville is a political consultant who has gained a reputation, nonetheless. He was prominently featured in a March 18 article in the The Philadelphia Inquirer. Carville, as the Inquirer put it, is “masterminding” Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey’s re-election bid this year. In Texas, Carville assisted Lloyd Doggett in his 1984 U.S.. Senate race and more recently helped Fred Hofheinz in his unsuccessful campaign last year to oust Beaumont Rep. Mark Stiles incumbent Houston Mayor Kathy Whitmire. Political insiders in Austin describe Carville as the mastermind of the central issue of the Jim Mattox campaign. It is Carville, according to the rumor mill, who designed the Mattox campaign theme Lottery Yes, Income Tax No. Carville insists he didn’t make the lottery an issue in the campaign. Jim Mattox did. As an adviser, Carville has helped shape how the campaign has played the lottery issue. But he contends it was Mattox who first decided to make the lottery an issue, and that more than one adviser decided how to use it. “The reports of my role in this campaign are greatly exaggerated,” Carville said in a telephone interview. “I work for him. I’m pulling for him. I’m not the principal architect of anything.” As for Cary ille’ s reputation as a hardnosed say, Texas Tough, or maybe Louisiana Tough political consultant, it is a reputation that he appears to relish. “I’m not quite as unpopular as cholesterol, but I’m more unpopular than plaque,” he said. TYLER SCHOOLTEACHER Grady Yarbrough, who lost in the Republican runoff race for land commissioner, issued a blistering attack on his opponent in the closing days of the campaign. Yarbrough was particularly angered by his opponent Houston millionaire Wes ,Gilbreath, when Gilbreath ran a picture of Yarbrough on a Gilbreath campaign mailout. Yarbrough’s photo, which ran beside a photo’of Gilbreath, made it clear which of the two candidates is black. “He raises suspicion of racism,” Yarbrough complained. He also characterized Gilbreath as “a liar,” who “wrongfully terminates employees” and is “accused of and being sued for wanton, malicious, and willful misconduct.” Gilbreath, according to an anonymous Republican source quoted in the Houston Post “said Republican runoff voters need to know that Yarbrough is colored.” SOMETIMES A WORK of journalism is noteworthy for what it leaves out. In a recent edition of Vanity Fail -, Nicholas Von Hoffman wrote a glowing piece on LBJ biographer Robert A. Caro. The very publication of this article in this particular magazine provides an interesting look at the increasing monopolization of media, and the chummy nature of the publishing world. Vanity Fair is owned through a parent company by the Newhouse family. The Newhouses also own Random House. Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, published Caro’s Means of Ascent. Robert Gottlieb, who is referred to in Von Hoffman’s article simply as Caro’s editor “of eighteen years,” served as president of Knopf. He is now editor of The New Yorker. The New Yorker is owned by the Newhouse family and recently ran excerpts from Caro’s book. None of these connections are mentioned in the article. Von Hoffman, himself, is the author of a 1988 biography of Roy Cohn, a close associate of the Newhouse family. It was a relationship, Von Hoffman writes in his book, “of inestimable value.” There are over 25 references to members of the Newhouse family in the index of Von Hoffman’s Citizen Cohn. LOU “ENGLISH” \(nickname inback, now presenting himself as an independent candidate in the race for the state Senate seat to be vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Kent Caperton. Zaeske, who has been a high-profile leader of the Official English movement in Texas, is running on: opposition to a state income tax, law and order, local control of public schools, opposition to abortion. fiscal responsibility, stu THE TEXAS OBSERVER 1 1 ‘,….-0.16010,74!04144.4.adft;. , Avtoppooir .4,4;,1,901%