July 30, 2007

State GOP's Hiring of Ex-Lawmaker
Heflin Sparks Intrigue and Questions

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

Former state House member Talmadge Heflin signed on Monday as the new executive director of the Republican Party of Texas in an intriguing move that raised some eyebrows among some GOP insiders and loyalists.

Heflin, who'd become one of the Legislature's most powerful member before a losing re-election bid in 2004, was hired to run the state party organization's day-to-day operations while Jeff Fisher moved into a separate advisory role. Fisher had been the state GOP's executive director for the past three years.

Heflin is the first former lawmaker in memory to hold the job of RPT executive director. One other ex-legislator, Ray Hutchison, who's married to U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, served as state party chairman in the 1970s.

Texas Republican Party Chairwoman Tina Benkiser said Heflin's background as a lawmaker, businessman and conservative leader will be "invaluable" as he helps lead the state party's professional team during the campaign leading up to the 2008 elections.

“This is an important transition for the RPT," Benkiser said. "Jeff Fisher has helped lead the party with great expertise through two very challenging election cycles. I am glad he will continue with my team as a trusted and valued advisor.”

The Heflin announcement sparked inevitable questions about the long shadow of Dr. James Leininger - a major contributor and force in Texas Republican politics for the past decade - much like the decision to hire Fisher had in the fall of 2004. The state party said that Heflin will continue in his role as a visiting research fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an organization that Leininger founded to help shape conservative policy recommendations for legislators. Fisher was an East Texas county judge who'd directed a consulting firm that was commonly associated with Leininger when the state GOP tapped him as political director shortly before his promotion to ED.

Leininger as been a popular target for Democrats - but while he's had tremendous influence on the Texas political landscape and the evolution of the GOP into the state's majority party - the amount of actual sway that he's had over RPT operations appears at times to have been overstated.

Some Republicans seem less concerned about Leininger's possible intervention than they are about Heflin's qualifications for a job that requires the nuts-and-bolts knowledge of a political mechanic more than a figurehead presence or actual experience in elective office.

While Heflin has been popular, well-liked and highly respected among Republicans in general, some GOP operatives contended that Heflin ran a lackluster campaign en route to his initial loss to Democratic State Rep. Hubert Vo in the 2004 general election. Heflin at the time appeared to be taking his re-election for granted while directing his attention to other endeavors such as a custody fight over the young child of an immigrant who was portrayed in the press as a former housekeeper for the ex-lawmaker.

Heflin lost that year in a district that Republicans carried at the top of the ticket - and his attempt to have the election results thrown out in a formal challenge before the Texas House was rejected despite his allegations of massive voter fraud. Heflin dropped the challenge before his former House colleagues were forced to vote on it when State Rep. Will Hartnett, a Dallas Republican who'd been named special master in the case by Speaker Tom Craddick, found no evidence of widespread irregularities that the ousted lawmaker had alleged.

Some Republicans theorized that Heflin's extended election contest hurt his chances in a rematch that he lost in 2006 when Vo won again with more than 54 percent of the vote. Vo got a major boost from the district's relatively large population of Asian voters - and his election in 2004 gave him the distinction of being one of the two first state lawmakers in the nation of Vietnamese descent.

Some Republicans admitted privately that Heflin had rubbed them the wrong way when he was the House Appropriations Committee chairman during his final two-year stint because they'd felt excluded from the panel's deliberations. While Republicans praised Heflin for writing a two-year state budget without a major tax increase in the face of a record $10 billion deficit, Democrats made cuts in children's health insurance and other key services a centerpiece issue in the campaign to unseat him at the polls the following year.

While Heflin might lack experience in some of the mechanical aspects of the business that political consultants have brought to the position of executive director, the combination of his passion for Republican politics, his 22-year stint as a lawmaker who had to campaign for re-election every two years and his ability to understand the complexities within the state's monstrous budget indicate that he's capable of being a quick read on the new job. And he will have Fisher in the office for guidance when needed.