House Calls in the Senate

Armed with an olive branch and shiny new gavel,
the new Lieutenant Governor is making the rounds

BY MIKE HAILEY

David Dewhurst has gone to work on his image - and he's finally starting to get some respect as a result.

After a year having to put up with bad jokes from Democrats and cold shoulders from some in his own GOP, the Houston energy entrepreneur is taking the offensive to try to clear up perceptions that he's too partisan and inexperienced to handle the job.

Dewhurst's quick read of the new political landscape has been impressive. He's wasting no time reaching out across the political spectrum - and he's keeping an open ear to Senators and making a sincere effort to get to know them well. Even some Democrats admit that they've been pleasantly surprised.

A Houston native who built a cogeneration business that made him a millioniare many times over, Dewhurst appears to be approaching his new station with the wide periperhal vision that you'd expect from a former CIA agent who spent some time on assignment in a South American civil war zone. Instead of taking success for granted, the new Lieutenant Governor seems to understand how easy it would be to slip into the cliched power traps that have set the stage for many other's falls.

Dewhurst's resume is a story about making and losing a fortune then making it again. But he'd never held office until winning the low-profile, often overlooked and underrated job of Land Commissioner's job in 1998. He was vulnerable to caracatures but not in a position to do much to turn them around.

One of the worst raps he'd taken was when he was identified as one of the leading contributors to the Free Enterprise PAC after the group had sent out a hate mail piece attacking moderate Republicans like State Sen. Bill Ratliff, who for the past two years has been holding the position that Dewhurst has now. Dewhurst insists that he assumed his donations to FreePAC to promote conservative, pro-business causes and candidates, not the kind of tactics that backfired last year.

He doesn't seem to be as stiff. He's more comfortable with public speaking. While there's no doubt that he's a conservative, he's making an effort to build a broad coalition of support in a Senate with a 19-12 Republican tilt. Last week he picked six of those Democrats to lead Senate committees as chairs. For weeks Democrats had hoped they would get as many as four.

So while the jury will be out for a while on the new Lieutenant Governor, he seems to be off to a pretty good start.