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Postmaster: If undeliverable, send Form 3579 to The Texas Observer, 307 W. 7th St., Austin, Texas 78701 POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE YELLOW DOGS BARK. After Garry Mauro, George Shipley, Jack Martin and other Democratic pols huddled in Austin with Gov. Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, James Carville, recently, Mauro emerged with a warning for Republicans: “Bush had better hang on to his hat. We’re ahead in the polls, and we intend to stay there.” The poll Mauro referred to, published the first week of September in the Dallas Morning News, showed the president locked in a dead heat with Clinton in a state which a few months ago looked like a lock for the incumbent. Gov . Ann Richards had let it be known that she would only make a serious effort to work on behalf of the Clinton-Gore campaign if their campaign organization was willing to spend the money and time to make a difference in Texas, and the investment seems to be paying off. Confident Democratic officials in East Texas, which is expected to be a crucial battleground, say the Presidential campaign is meshing smoothly with state and congressional campaigns there, unlike the self-destroying campaign conducted by Michael Dukakis four years ago. ELEPHANT STAMPEDE. Character attacks haven’t seemed to work against Clinton, who continues to lead nationwide polls despite Republican criticism of his decision 23 years ago to avoid the Vietnam War. VP Dan Quayle, who proudly shuffled papers in Indiana during the Southeast Asia conflict, had to sit through a scolding for his criticism of America’s bestknown “single mom,” TV’s fictional Murphy Brown, and the Bush-Quayle campaign is backing off from the “family values” theme. The atmosphere is gloomy at the White House, where the retrieval of Jim Baker as Chief of Staff has failed to turn around the campaign; his reported insistence that all campaign initiatives come through his office has created a logjam. Frustrated White House aides are said to be touching up their rsums. \(Let’s hope their tranNational Republican officials, alarmed at the Texas tailspin, reportedly have brought in relief for Rob Mosbacher Jr., head of the coordinated Victory ’92 campaign. Dave McNeely of the Austin American-Statesman reports that Mosbacher retaliated by dropping Karl Rove from the campaign, believing that the direct mail expert was the source of a recent Evans and Novak column reporting that Sen. Phil Gramm had sidelined Mosbacher. According to McNeely, Rove claims he was wrongly convicted; he said he talked with Novak, but the columnist already had the story when he called. RIGHT WING & A PRAYER. “George Bush is not a leader, never has been a leader and never will be a leader.” Thus spake former Gov. John B. Connally, a recovering bankrupt Republican, to the Los Angeles Times’ Jack Nelson during the Republican convention in Houston. Connally’s putdowns might be dismissed as sour grapes, but August funding levels reported to the Federal Election Commission showed the GOP failing to keep up with the Democrats for the first time in decades as support of the incumbent President has trailed off from the contributing class of society. Such a turn was predicted in July by Allen Drury, author of Advise and Consent, who was invited to the annual gathering of tycoons at Bohemian Grove in California. Drury told friends upon his return to Washington that the talk among the plutocrats was of how to reach accommodations with Gov. Bill Clinton. Evidently the monied wing of the GOP already had started to write off Bush before the Democratic convention and midSeptember movements to the Clinton standard by such formerly stalwart Republicans as John Sculley of Apple Computer and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe, signal that Bush is being abandoned by the GOP’s military-industrial branch to the tender, and deserved, mercies of the social right wingers. HOMOPHOBIA HITS HOME. Robert Mosbacher’s daughter, Diane, first made the papers when she and the then-Commerce Secretary from Houston gave commencement speeches at neighboring colleges in California. Diane, a psychiatrist in San Francisco, said she had compared speeches with her father: “He would have used mine, but he’s not a lesbian. I would have used his, but I am not a Republican.” In a profile in the Washington Post, she criticized the homophobia rampant in the GOP, which her father promotes as chief fundraiser for Bush’s re-election and her brother, Rob Jr., as head of the coordinated Republican Victory ’92 campaign. “I think they really don’t know I hope they don’t that this affects people in the street, that people can get beat up, people can get killed, teenagers can commit suicide … That’s not family values. That’s fatal values,” she said. “I hope my father and my brother understand that the party that they’re working with could mean that I could lose my job, other people could lose their jobs just because they’re lesbian and gay and that’s scary.” MUD WRESTLING. Republican hopes to unseat veteran Sen. Chet Brooks, D-Pasadena, encountered some turbulence when it was disclosed that the GOP nominee, Jerry Patterson, might run afoul of the state constitutional provision that bars from the Legislature any person holding a “lucrative” state or federal office. Quorum Report, an Austin newsletter, reported that Patterson’s position on the board of a Southeast Harris municipal utility district, for which he was paid a modest per diem, made him ineligible for the race, but Patterson said the Texas Supreme Court decision that reinstated Jeff Wentworth to the ballot in Senate District 26 gives Patterson confidence that he could withstand court challenges to his candidacy. State GOP Executive Director Karen Hughes said as far as the party is concerned, Patterson is a valid candidate. A spokesman for the Secretary of State said the Attorney General would decide if the matter is raised. Brooks said he has not raised the issue, but he is confident he could win anyway in a district that, with the addition of Clear Lake and parts of Brazoria County, is rated marginally Republican. The Supreme Court on Sept. 16, following up on its earlier verbal order, decided on a 7-2 vote that Wentworth’s term on the Texas State University Board of Regents ended when he resigned in 1988 to run for a House seat. HIGH-TECH CLEANING UP. Rhetoric may put the future of Texas in high tech industry, but the Texas Employment Commission predicts that the biggest job opportunities in the next decade will be among janitors and maids, followed by secretaries and general office clerks. L.M. Sixel of the Houston Chronicle reported that other fast-growing occupations include registered nurses, retail salespeople, managers, truck drivers, child care workers, secondary school teachers and waiters, as the shift toward the service-based sector continues and companies move manufacturing , jobs to other nations in search of cheaper labor. “We keep hearing what we need is a well-educated work force Continued on pg. 23 24 OCTOBER 2, 1992