| When Tom Schieffer talks about a meeting in the Oval Office, the Fort Worth lawyer uses verbs one wouldn't expect.
"We were just sitting there, yukking it up a bit," Schieffer says about his first visit with then-President George W. Bush in 2001 at the White House.
In March, Schieffer launched an exploratory bid for the 2010 Democratic Texas gubernatorial nomination. On the evening of May 8, he had a scheduled fundraiser in Austin. On the campaign trail, Schieffer may find his familiarity with the former president a political advantage and a disadvantage, but it definitely provides him with a distinction.
The close ties between Schieffer and Bush started two decades ago, when both men co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team. Schieffer's name recognition and international experience rose after Bush nominated him to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Australia in 2001 and to Japan in 2004.
Now that Schieffer needs statewide Democratic support, however, he spends a lot of time and energy defining himself as a loyal Democratic Party member and his relationship with Bush as apolitical, lest anyone confuse him with a Republican.
"I am not running on the record of his record," Schieffer says flatly about the former president.
About his own ties to Bush, Schieffer makes distinctions between politics and the sports business.
"We don't have Republican or Democratic baseball," he says.
Schieffer, an inactive member of the State Bar of Texas, defines his ambassador appointments as bipartisan, too, saying: "When a president says, 'I need you to do something,' I am from the school that you do it."
He notes that many other prominent Democrats have served Republican presidents, including former U.S. Ambassador Robert Strauss, a founding member of Dallas-based Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Schieffer also notes that Bush, when he was Texas governor, never asked him to serve in his administration or on state boards, precisely because he is a Democrat. But because the ambassadorial appointments constituted foreign service, Schieffer says, the tradition of a bipartisan approach to the nation's overseas relationships applied and overrode his Democratic credentials.
Nonetheless, Schieffer says the only Republican for whom he has ever voted is Bush. "Friendship is greater than politics," Schieffer says.
Surveying the Field
The list of announced contenders for the Texas governor's seat is not yet that long for 2010. Governor Rick Perry, a Republican, has announced plans to seek re-election for his third full term in office. But also seeking the office is one of the current Republican U.S. senators from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison. On April 14, Kinky Friedman issued a public letter indicating he would seek the governor's seat, as he had in 2006 — this time as thewould-be Democratic nominee but hoping to draw support also from Independents. Friedman rose to fame initially with his '70s band the Texas Jewboys and is now a humorist and cigar seller.
Two Texas lawyers who pay close attention to state politics, however, welcome Schieffer's entry into the gubernatorial race and rate his chancesof success high.
Mike Boone, a partner in Haynes and Boone in Dallas and a prominent Bush gubernatorial and presidential campaign contributor, says his support in the current gubernatorial contest goes to Hutchsion. Boone nonetheless adds: "I think Tom Schieffer is a great candidate. The left will try and label Schieffer as a Bushie, but as a moderate he has a good chance."
In a general election, Boone believes, Schieffer would have the best odds running against Perry. Perry has been in office since 2000, when, as lieutenant governor, he assumed the governor's office when George W. Bush left to be sworn in as president.
"The crossover [Republican] vote for Schieffer if Perry is on the ballot in November would be significant," says Boone.
Susan Hays, a partner in Geisler Hays in Dallas and a former chairwoman of the Dallas County Democratic Party, has signed on to serve as general counsel to Schieffer's campaign.
"He is a viable candidate," Hays says. "This man never walked away from being a Democrat. That was something I had to be comfortable with before I signed on to his campaign," she says.
Before agreeing to be his lawyer, Hays says, she grilled Schieffer on the question of his Democratic loyalties and was comfortable that he was taking solid party positions. Hays cites Schieffer's belief that government should make people's lives better and make things work, and not just serve the rich or advance someone's social agenda.
But, Hays says, perhaps as significantly, Schieffer may claim an advantage that many Democrats lack: "He is an incredibly competent businessman," she says. She has been impressed since her initial interview with the efficiency, organization and cost-consciousness of Schieffer's campaign plans.
"What a nice change for Democrats," says Hays.
Early Years
As a lawyer and Texas politician, the 61-year-old Schieffer's career began long before Bush, the 43rd president, entered politics. Schieffer launched his own bid for state representative from Fort Worth as a Democrat in 1971. That's the same year Bush's father, George Herbert Walker Bush, who would later become the 41st president, lost his bid for the U.S. Senate to Lloyd Bentsen.
Graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Schieffer, who earned a B.A. and M.A. in international relations, worked throughout college. He served as an aide to then-State Senator Don Kennard, D-Fort Worth, and next to then-Texas Governor John Connally, who was, at the time, a conservative Democrat. Connally gained national fame in 1963 when he was seriously wounded as he sat beside President John F. Kennedy on that day in Dallas when an assassin took Kennedy's life.
In 1971, then-Republican President Richard M. Nixon appointed Connally U.S. secretary of the treasury. In 1973, Connally switched political parties and became a Republican.
Schieffer, then 24 years old, was starting his career as a Democratic politician in 1972. That year, Schieffer won the Democratic primary to represent Fort Worth in the State House of Representatives, a surefire way in those days to win the general election in November, which he did. His victory was part of what was known that year as the post-Sharpstown class of 1972. Some 77 new state representatives were elected that year after voters ousted a number of incumbents linked to a banking scandal centered in Sharpstown, near Houston.
Schieffer continued to serve as a state legislator until 1978, when a federal court redrew the district lines and he lost a re-election bid to a Republican. While serving in the Legislature, he started attending the University of Texas School of Law full time when the body was out of session.
"I knew I was going to be a politician, but I had to be something else," Schieffer says about the law.
When he was defeated in 1978, Schieffer had one more year of law school to finish. But the loss initially threw him for a loop.
"I had gone from boy wonder to all washed up at 31," he recalls.
He decided to take advantage of a state law that allowed a legislator with three terms of experience to practice law if he or she had attended but not graduated from law school but had passed the Texas bar exam. In a hurry to make money, he took the bar exam after the election and passed, but he did not finish law school.
He set up a solo practice so he could eat, Schieffer says. "I was living hand to mouth," he recalls. He had to borrow $6,000 from his brother Bob Schieffer, a CBS news correspondent, to pay his contribution to his state pension. He had been so tight on money previously that he had elected not to have regular deductions withdrawn from his paycheck as a state legislator and directed to his retirement.
Schieffer says his practice took off. He started out by agreeing to handle all legal matters — criminal, transactional or civil litigation.
His practice eventually moved into representing oil industry players in their business transactions. Those clients led him to Bush, who he met in 1988. Edward "Rusty" Rose, once a financial adviser to the wealthy Fort Worth Bass family who subsequently made his own fortune in multiple industries, introduced the pair.
Schieffer says he and Bush became fast friends. Both had lost a political election in their youth: Schieffer in 1978 and Bush in his failed bid for Congress in 1977.
"Anybody who has had their name on the ballot and lost knows it's a special feeling," says Schieffer.
After they met in 1988, Schieffer says, he warned Bush: "When you check me out, I won't check out" — meaning Bush soon would learn not only that Schieffer was a Democrat but also one who had worked against Bush's father's bids to become a U.S. senator for Texas, vice president and president.
Rose, Bush, Schieffer, Richard Rainwater (another former Bass family adviser who subsequently created his own wealth with investments) and other investors purchased the Texas Rangers Baseball Club in 1989. Schieffer saysRose and Bush asked Schieffer to serve as the club's president and eventually to manage the negotiations with the city of Arlington and the building of a new ballpark there.
Rob Saliterman, Bush's spokesman, says the former president declines comment for this story.
Rose says his support for Schieffer is "unqualified." He has already given a significant sum to Schieffer's campaign, Rose says, and his wife will most likely throw parties to support his former Texas Rangers partner in the future.
About Schieffer, Rose says, "I know him well. I have worked with him. I've seen him under stress and under circumstances that would test both his confidence and integrity, and he has come through with flying colors." Specifically, he says, he credits Schieffer with the "monumental achievement" of building the Arlington ballpark, on time, on budget, and satisfying all constituents. "The bonds got paid off; what didn't work?" he asks rhetorically.
Schieffer's success in those baseball-related endeavors — critics, voters and eventually the box office defined the Arlington ballpark as a major win — probably played into Bush's decision to send Schieffer to Australia and Japan as U.S. ambassador. Shieffer says Bush's nomination of him for the first post stunned him. "You don't have to do that," he recalls telling Bush, meaning their friendship did not require the then-president to give him such a high-stature post.
But Schieffer believes his performance in Australia — which required maintaining a good relationship with a significant (and one of the few) U.S. allies in the wars in Afghanistan and then Iraq — led to his appointment as ambassador to Japan. About the ambassadorships, Schieffer says, "These are real jobs, and there are real consequences to what you do."
During his tenure down under, the United States and Australia increased intelligence-sharing and negotiated The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA.) With a recommendation from then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Schieffer says, he was asked to move to Japan. There he not only negotiated revisions to the nations' historical alliance, named when signed in 2006 The U.S. –Japan Alliance on Universal Values and Common Interests.
Schieffer returned home at the end of the Bush administration in January. Earlier, when he had come home for a visit in the fall of 2008, he had started thinking about running for governor.
As governor, Schieffer believes he "can set the agenda and lead with big ideas" rather than petty fighting or ideological stonewalling. He believes he could do a better job than Perry, particularly with regard to the governor's proposedrejection of some of the federal stimulus funds. "It makes no sense to me to leave money on the table," Schieffer says about Perry's position, "The only reason you would do that is that you are afraid somebody is going to run to the right of you." Perry did not return a call to his press office by press time on May 7.
Schieffer says as governor he wants to remove ideology from the public debate of many issues. As an example, he notes he is pro-choice, pro-stem cell research and pro-adoption, as the father of an adopted son. He doesn't want people's personal ideologies to dominate public debate, he says, emphasizing the importance of compromise and bipartisanship to solving the multiple problems, particularly economic, facing the state and the world. He says the state is in danger of falling behind, particularly because the state has shortchanged its educational system, and he opposes the deregulation of higher education tuition. A product of Texas public schools himself, Schieffer says he believes the state's responsibility for educating children extends before elementary and after high school.
Asserting that the Democratic Party needs to take advantage of the nation's support of Democrats — but be aware of the strong hold Republican still have on Texas — Schieffer insists he's the man for the job. He notes that he holds more business experience than any other contenders including the Republicans. "I am a moderate nominee for the Democratic Party," he says.
He also has the advantage of not needing to win.
"I have a sense of freedom about this. I am going to do it for the right reasons. If I don't win, I can go back and make some money," Schieffer says.
Presumably, Schieffer, who no longer practices law but who keeps up his State Bar of Texas membership, could always go back to lawyering. But he is too focused on the governor's seat now to give specific answers about his alternative plans.
