Bob Bullock: experience counts: the man who ran Texas as lieutenant governor knew how to get what he wanted.

• Author: McNeely, Dave

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Almost nine years ago, the most storied Texas politician since Lyndon Johnson rode off to that big caucus in the sky and left behind a tangled legacy.

As presiding officer of the Texas Senate for eight years, Bob Bullock enjoyed the most powerful lieutenant governorship in the nation. He was often mean and nasty, yet incredibly effective. Lawmakers, lobbyists and other officials did things not necessarily because they wanted to, but because Bullock wanted them to. He left the Legislature in 1999 and died five months later at 69, but his power is legendary.

An example: In 1994, the University of Texas and Texas A&M University wanted to increase their sports team earnings by leaving the Southwest Conference in 1994 to join the Big 8. Bullock, a graduate of both Texas Tech and Baylor Universities, called in their top executives.

"You're taking Yech and Baylor, or you're not taking anything," Bullock said. "I'll cut your money off, and you can join privately if you want, but you won't get another nickel of state money."

The university representatives expressed hesitation. Bullock cut them off.

"If you want to try me, go ahead," he said.

"Governor, we understand," said then-UT Chancellor Bill Cunningham.

At that moment, for all practical purposes, the Big 8 became the Big 12.

Was Bob Bullock, as one of the last governmental gunslingers, the most innovative and productive state government executive? Did he, by his animosity, help bring down fellow Democrat Ann Richards as governor, and promote a baseball team president and former First Son to succeed his father in the White House?

The answer may well be "yes." How it happened is a story little-known outside Texas, of two governors and a lieutenant governor powerful enough to control the reins of both their political futures and, ultimately, the course of history.

Democrat Ann Richards and Republican George W. Bush had at least two things in common. They both quit drinking in the 1980s, when they were in their 40s. They both served as governor of Texas while Democrat Bob Bullock was lieutenant governor.

Bullock and Richards had been drinking buddies in the 1970s until Richards checked in for alcoholism treatment--"drunk school," Bullock called it--in 1980. Bullock followed suit in 1981. In 1990, he was elected lieutenant governor and she was elected governor.

The late columnist Molly Ivins, who was close friends with both, thought it bothered Bullock that Richards had gotten the governor's job he'd earlier said he wanted.

"Bullock was never fair to Ann, and treated her very badly, mostly out of intense envy," Ivins said in a 2005 interview. "She could get elected governor and he couldn't."

And although he was one of the state's pioneer practitioners of affirmative action with regard to hiring and promoting women and minorities, Bullock still suffered from more than a trace of male chauvinism, Ivins said. She recalled that he called Richards and her staff "hairy-legged women."

In Texas, the governor and lieutenant governor run independently of each other. After Bush upset Richards in the 1994 election, while Bullock was handily re-elected, Bullock and Bush got along famously.

With a few exceptions, he treated the presidential son almost reverently. He predicted as early as 1996 that Bush would one day follow his father to the White House, and endorsed him for re-election as governor in 1998 over Bullock's former deputy comptroller, Democratic...