Jim Mattox and Clinton Manges were made for each other. Mattox, the Texas attorney general recently indicted for commercial bribery, and Manges, a South Texas landowner known for his penchant for lavishing large donations on officeholders (including Mattox), have a great deal in common. They are both about the same size and build, they grew up poor, claim that they identify with the little guy, are usually convinced that they are right and seem to relish rather than shrink from combat. Neither man smokes nor drinks. They both have a concern for their families comparable to that of a mother bear, and both are convinced that The Establishment would happily drown them if it could.
Mattox first met Manges in 1982, on a brisk spring day in early March. Mattox had joined several other politicians for a barbecue in the airplane hangar on Manges’ Duval County ranch. At the time, Mattox was a congressman running for attorney general-a race he had initially felt forced into entering. Republican governor Bill Clements had bludgeoned the Texas Legislature into drawing Mattox’s Dallas congressional district out from under him. Later, a federal court overturned Clements’ effort and preserved Mattox’s district for the Democratic column. But, by that point, Mattox was already committed to the statewide race. To win, he needed help in South Texas, where he knew very few people.
Mattox had first approached State Comptroller Bob Bullock, a friend of Manges’, about arranging an introduction to Manges. Bullock told Manges that Mattox wanted to join the crowd at the barbecue. Manges recalls that he told Bullock that he had no problem with that, even though Manges was supporting John Hannah, the former U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Texas, in the race for attorney general.
After Mattox spoke at the barbecue, Hannah walked over to Manges and, Manges says, told him that he thought Manges was supporting him. Hannah then indicated in rather strong words that he didn’t appreciate Manges allowing Mattox to speak.
“I could understand that the guy might be a little displeased,” Manges said recently. But Manges also says that Hannah, after all, was on his ranch. “Since you take that attitude,” Manges says he told Hannah, “I’m gonna help Jim Mattox-as of right now.”
Hannah flatly denies that the conversation ever took place. But for whatever reasons, within weeks, Manges had funneled $50,000 into Mattox’s campaign. (Manges has a penchant for helping officeholders if they are in a position to help him.) Then, during Mattox’s runoff race with Hannah in June, Mattox’s brother and sister borrowed $125,000 from Seafirst Bank in Seattle, from which Manges reportedly had borrowed more than $40 million. That week, Mattox reported a $125,000 loan from himself to his campaign.
Manges says he makes hefty contributions out of an interest in good government and a wish to help the little man in the political arena. Manges’ opponents charge that he buys off politicians to feather his own controversial nest of often-contested oil-and-gas holdings on South Texas ranch land.
South Texas is a place where men play for all the marbles; and if you don’t believe that, you’d better be careful not to get your knuckles into the hot caliche soil. Arthur Mitchell, a tough-talking Greek lawyer, says that South Texas is like another world, legally and otherwise. Mitchell knows what he’s talking about. In addition to conducting a course for several years that taught would-be Texas lawyers how to study for the state’s bar examination, Mitchell has represented numerous clients from South Texas, including District Judge O.P. Carrillo, who was tried for impeachment before the Texas Senate in 1975-a chore that Mitchell took on because Manges said that he’d pick up the tab.
Mitchell, who tutored Mattox before his bar exam and who went to work as a special assistant attorney general for Mattox early this year, says that South Texas is “one of those parts of the state that’s just like Cimarron back in the old days. You kind of make your own rules. That area’s notorious for people who are self-made. You’d be in bad shape if you went out in the middle of the King Ranch and started to enforce a beer-drinking curfew. It’s big and it’s fascinating, and it’s run by people who pretty well hold their own with it.”
Manges was once asked why he called a Ray-mondville cotton gin that he owned two decades ago the “Mongoose” gin. Manges replied that a friend had nicknamed him Mongoose (a takeoff on his name) after the little Indian rodent famous for its skill in killing the dreaded cobra. “He told me it was a little animal that strikes so fast you can’t see him,” Manges said.
MANGES WILL never forget the time his family ate nothing but squash for a week. He was young, and his parents, who were migrant workers living in cotton-sack tents, were in dire straits. Clinton and his older brother by three years, Chick, were walking down a road one day when they encountered two boys carrying a pail of milk. Clinton told Chick, “I’ve just got to have some of that milk.” So he grabbed the pail and drank all he could, while Chick fought off the two boys. Eventually, a whole gang of kids were chasing the two brothers. All that saved them from a severe beating was a friendly icehouse man brandishing some ice tongs.
Manges told me that story in the bunkhouse of his 100,000-acre ranch. Chick, who now works for Manges, also remembers the incident. We had flown in earlier in the day, landing in Manges’ twin-engine plane on the three-mile road into his ranch compound, which doubles as a landing strip, complete with runway lights. Also on the plane was Bullock, Manges’ sometime attorney for several years.
We landed and got into a gaudy Cadillac. Manges was dressed the way he always is: in a Countess Mara polo shirt, beltless slacks and cowboy boots. He dresses the same way for every occasion. “I’ve never seen him dress to go hunting,” Bullock says. (He also says he’s seen Manges return from a business trip, step out of his plane, get directly into a Jeep and head out to do a little shooting.) “He’s the same all the time. He’ll go into the board room of Exxon dressed just the same as he would to go quail hunting.”
Manges has less formal education than most janitors. But people who have watched him for years say that he is a consummate trader of land and oil-and-gas holdings who goes after whatever he wants, even if-as in the case of the purloined pail of milk-it causes a huge fight. During the last 15 years, despite some occasional troubled times, he has always landed on his feet.
Manges is in partial control (although he is hounded by creditors, large law firms and oil companies) of hundreds of thousands of acres of energy-rich South Texas land. And he has learned to play by South Texas rules: If you are big enough, tough enough, smart enough and crass enough, and if you’re willing to work hard, you can do whatever you want. With occasional setbacks, he’s been a winner so far. Through shrewd land trades in which he kept the mineral rights to the land he bought and sold (some trades are still the subject of court suits charging that Manges went back on his word), he says he now has so much money that he can’t count it, with more coming in every day.
“I probably own in excess of 400,000 mineral acres outright,” Manges said during that visit to his ranch. He also said that he owns the surface acreage of well over 100,000 acres. “I really don’t know how much I have,” he said offhandedly. “I’ve got minerals scattered around everywhere.”
And yet his cash flow has, at times, been so low that he’s had to duck debts for months or years, forcing his creditors to file suit to get their money. Even attorneys who have represented him have had to sue to get their fees. Arthur Mitchell, the attorney Manges had agreed to pay to represent Carrillo in 1975 (Manges had also helped buy Mitchell a Cadillac while he was overseeing lawsuits involving Manges’ land) had to sue to get his fee.
In a sworn deposition, Mitchell listed 168 businesses, public agencies and individuals to whom Manges owed money. He claimed that Manges’ “normal business practice [is] to not repay his obligations until the creditor brings suit.” Manges, Mitchell contended, “does not have a good name, fame, reputation, respectability, character, good will or the trust of friends, business associates or auditors.”
Years later, Mitchell dismissed this affidavit as the talk of a lawyer trying to get paid. He described Manges as someone who fights for what is right “when a lot of people would give up. And 99 percent of the time, he’s right.” He just runs short of cash now and then.
But Manges blames his cash-flow problems on a conspiracy by The Establishment to deprive him of land and riches that he believes he’s earned. He hasn’t been able to develop his land as fast as he’d like, he says, because some of the major oil companies that hold longtime leases on the land he now owns don’t want him to. That inability to raise as much energy money from his land as he otherwise might have infuriated the ambitious South Texan, and now he’s doing everything he can to change the situation. He believes that his battle with The Establishment-personified for him by the likes of former Gov. John Connally-affects every aspect of his business.
Manges believes, for instance, that he was forced to sell out of two South Texas banks because of the work of Connally and his minions. Connally has said that Manges’ contention is absurd. But Manges insists that all his troubles started when Connally was secretary of the treasury and was overseeing national banks through the comptroller of the currency. Connally denied Manges the right to run the Groos National Bank in San Antonio after Manges had bought control of it. “This same harassment has been going on since then,” Manges says.
“I don’t feel like I’m picked on as an individual,” Manges says. “I just feel like I’m kind of spearheading a deal that goes against people you shouldn’t be fooling with.” He says that, until recently, his efforts to get competent legal help from a major law firm have always been stymied because the big oil companies have them locked up. “You go to any one of the law firms anywhere in this country and say, ’Look, I’ve got a deal here, and I’d like to hire you.’ [They say,] ’Oh, no, I’m on a retainer to Mobil, I’m on a retainer for Exxon. I can’t get involved.’ “
Manges may be unlettered, but he does know the meaning of “paranoid.” “I want you to understand this,” he says, “I am not paranoid.”
In 1982, Manges finally joined political forces with flamboyant San Antonio plaintiffs’ attorney Pat Maloney, whom he had hired earlier to conduct his legal business. Maloney had previously waged his own partially successful battle with The Establishment, but he was out to change the structure of some of the state’s courts by electing judges who more closely shared his philosophy. With Manges’ money and Maloney’s political acumen, they declared open season on politicians and Supreme Court justices who didn’t share their views. And they justified it as war on “the big boys” who, they say, have run Texas institutions for the benefit of their own well-lined pockets.
“I did it deliberately,” Manges said recently. “I meant to knock this old establishment out of the saddle. And, by God, we’ve got it on the rocks.”
Part of that assault on The Establishment was to take deadly aim on the flying red horse of Mobil Oil, which Manges says has violated its contracts with him and with the state by not producing oil and gas from the land on which they share production rights.
Manges filed a zinger of a lawsuit against Mobil and persuaded the attorney general’s office to join him. And then, rousted from Congress by Bill Clements, incredibly turning that circumstance into a successful race for attorney general, comes Jim Mattox.
MATTOX GREW up tough like Manges. His parents separated when he was 12. Jim was called upon to augment his mother’s waitress salary to make ends meet and to help raise his younger brother and sister. “When my mother was working and running the snack bar at Montgomery Ward at the Big Town Shopping Center,” Mattox recalls, “I popped and sold popcorn at the store.” He says that Manges once “sold popcorn over there at that theater on Jefferson Boulevard” while attending watchmakers’ school in Dallas.
While Jim worked on freight docks to help supplement his scholarship money for Baylor University, his mother worked double shifts in a restaurant. When she died in 1970, Jim took over full responsibility for his two siblings.
Through it all, Mattox has always railed against authority. He once told a reporter that he “was the fastest runner on the football team, but I never got to play because I was always in some type of friction with the coaches. I quit football because I didn’t like people telling me what to do.”
Mattox entered a race for president of the business school at Baylor. Characteristically, he ran as an independent against the fraternity system. He won. The only race he ever lost was for a Democratic precinct chairmanship in 1966. He lost by three votes, after being accused of socialistic tendencies. But he never lost another political race. He says he learned to play rough by having “it done to me first.”
In 1972, when Dallas first got single-member legislative districts, Mattox fought his way into a runoff in his East Dallas area with Sam Coats, an incumbent at large representative. Mattox won a savage campaign that Coats, now a vice president of Southwest Airlines, only recently has been able to laugh about.
Mattox spent two terms in the Texas House of Representatives, where he was voted outstanding freshman during Price Daniel’s reign as speaker, and was a constant antagonist to Billy Clayton when Clayton replaced Daniel. Mattox helped start the House Study Group, which provided a research arm for legislators independent of the speaker’s office.
Clayton recently said that Mattox hasn’t changed much. “He is kind of a maverick, and he played the same role back then.”
In 1976, Mattox ran for the congressional seat that Republican candidate Alan Steel man was vacating after redistricting had made the district much less Republican. Then-Mayor Wes Wise ran for the seat in the Democratic primary, but Mattox walloped him. In the fall, he disposed of Republican candidate Nancy Judy.
In 1978, Mattox characterized Republican opponent Tom Pauken as “a young Nazi” and won in a cliffhanger. A Mattox-Pauken rematch in 1980 was also close. In Congress, Mattox got on the wrong side of House Speaker Tip O’Neill for refusing to wear a tie, and he never recovered.
During the 1981 congressional redistricting by the Texas Legislature, Mattox spent so much time hanging around the Capitol that he almost took up residence. But legislators he had infuriated years before were in no mood to bail him out, and with coaxing from Clements, they drew lines that made his district Republican.
And now, against all odds, he is the state’s attorney general.
When Mattox took office on January 1, the case against Mobil Oil had been filed only the day before by Mark White on his last day as attorney general before becoming governor.
The case is this: Mobil owned some leases on land (the surface of which is now owned by Manges) that were written in 1925. Under some of that land, the State of Texas owns the minerals. Manges owns most of the rest. Under the state law, in cases in which the state owns the minerals but not the surface, the surface owner leases the land, and if the land commissioner approves the lease, the state and the surface owner split the bonuses and royalties from production.
Manges was convinced that Mobil (and Exxon) were not developing their leases on his land fast enough, and he began looking into the leases. He found evidence that he contends (and state officials agree) clearly demonstrates that Mobil and Exxon had neglected to fulfill their contract to let no more than 90 days lapse between finishing one well and starting another. The lapses began as long as SO years ago, Manges says.
The result is that oil-and-gas revenues worth more than $1 billion may be owed to Manges and Texas. Exxon, after looking over the situation, settled for $4 million in cash and the chance to validate some of its leases, while agreeing to pay higher royalties on new deep-gas production. Land Commissioner Garry Mauro says that the case against Exxon was even weaker than the ones against Mobil, but Exxon settled. Mobil made one try at settling during mid-1982, but the company wasn’t willing to put up any cash.
On August 2, 1982, then-Land Commissioner Bob Armstrong wrote Attorney General White suggesting that White sue. On December 31, 1982, after negotiations had broken down, White finally did. Mattox inherited the suit.
Seafirst Bank, meanwhile, had watched some of its energy loans go sour and tried to foreclose on Manges. He says his deal with Seafirst was that he would pay only the interest on his notes, leaving the principal to be paid after the Mobil suit was settled. But in the process, the facts of the $125,000 loan to Mattox’s brother and sister and the subsequent loan of $125,000 by Mattox to his campaign were leaked to The Dallas Morning News. The News reported that when Mattox’s campaign repaid him for his loan, his siblings, Janice L. and Jerry S. Mattox, repaid Seafirst the next day- the exact amount of $133,797.57 (the loan plus interest) that Mattox had repaid himself.
Mattox reportedly grew incensed that Mobil attorney Tom McDade of the powerful Ful-bright & Jaworski firm of Houston wanted to depose Mattox’s sister about the loan. He allegedly threatened J. Wiley Caldwell, also of Fulbright & Jaworski, that the attorney general’s office would hold up its certification of municipal and other bonds for Fulbright & Jaworski if McDade insisted on the deposition.
McDade, a flamboyant trial attorney with a reputation for aggressively attacking the other side of a lawsuit until it becomes easier to settle out of court than to endure the barrage, had aroused Mattox’s infamous ire. But Mattox insisted that his strong talk to the Fulbright lawyers wasn’t a threat. He said that McDade had lied to him and in court documents, and he was simply going to hold them to a very stiff standard.
“Because the law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski had been untruthful with me, and there were a number of.. .examples of it, I was going to review their work to make sure every ’i’ was dotted and every ’t’ was crossed,” Mattox said a few days after he was indicted. “It made McDade and Wiley Caldwell extremely angry for me to have the audacity to suggest that I was going to, in effect, have them on something other than a trusted status because of the un-trustworthiness of McDade. And that’s how we got into this whole controversy…” Mattox and McDade distrust each other so much that they tape-record phone conversations with each other.
Mattox’s enemies-even his friends-marvel at how Mattox has managed to turn a presumably innocent misdemeanor campaign reporting charge, punishable by a maximum $200 fine, into a felony indictment on another charge growing out of Mattox’s reaction to the first. In characteristic fashion, Mattox had resorted to his time-honored defense mechanism: When in doubt, attack. While some say that a smart lawyer wouldn’t threaten the Fulbright firm, others say that Mattox’s hot temper makes it believable that he would.
Mattox reacted to the early stories and to the grand jury investigation by attacking the News, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, Mobil, Fulbright & Jaworski and anyone else who said anything about the matter. In the beginning, Mattox also tried to stonewall the press and others about the investigation, but after some weeks, he abruptly changed tactics and even sought out reporters that he had earlier berated.
“He ain’t going to say ’I’m sorry,’ ” said one close aide a few weeks before the indictment. “He ain’t going to say, ’I was wrong.’ That’s just not going to happen. He’s convinced he’s right.”
Earlier in the summer, Mattox also said he was infuriated by McDade’s effort to drag Janice Mattox into the Mobil case because of the Seafirst loan. “It makes me so damn mad,” Manges fumed. “I can take it, but I hate to see decent people cut up.” Manges praised Mat-tox’s desire to protect his family. “Jim’s sister- there’s no finer person on this earth,” he said.
By the end of August, Manges was able to chortle at what he saw as the hapless hunt to connect him to Mattox through the loan. “You know, they were so sure that they were going to catch me endorsing that note or guaranteeing that note for Jim’s sister,” Manges said. But he said that Mattox himself met Y.C. Chao, the Seafirst loan officer, at Manges’ ranch that day in March 1982 and that they had found common ground because Mattox had been to Taiwan. “I had nothing to do with it whatever,” Manges insisted.
Mattox at first said that the loan was made to his brother and sister for oil-and-gas exploration. Then, at a press conference last August, Mattox said that his brother and sister owed him $125,000, “and they paid me the money that they owed me.” He said that he loaned the money to his campaign, and “ultimately they were reloaned the money to pay off the Seattle bank.” Mattox said, “I have not done anything wrong,” and sure enough, the grand jury did not indict him for that charge.
Both Mattox and Manges insist there was no influence bought or sold because of the $50,000 contribution by Manges, or of the Seafirst loan. “I don’t need anything out of Mattox,” Manges insisted. “He’s not doing anything personal for me. He’s fighting for $800 million for the state.. .We have to be on the same side-because we’re both right.”
MANGES AND Mattox like each other- partly because of their similar rough-and-tumble backgrounds, partly because they are presumably helpful to each other. One friend of Mattox’s says that Mattox’s upbringing made him a fighter who learned self-reliance at an early age. “He had to go with his gut instinct, so he trusts only himself now,” the friend says. “I don’t think he’ll ever be close to another human being.” Manges doesn’t agree: “I think he completely trusts me in every way.”
Mattox says that “the affinity that a lot of Democrats have for Manges is that, first, he’s a solid Democrat, and that he has been abused repeatedly by what we generally would call the business power structure of Texas; and in the fact that he has now become wealthy and has not forgotten from whence he came… .He remembers that he has not always had a golden spoon in his mouth and is willing to assist candidates.
“He doesn’t give any more money, really, than what a number of the contributors from the other side of the spectrum give,” insisted Mattox, who has run his campaigns into the face of the business establishment on several occasions. “They give just as much, if not more. He happens to be one of the few people who gives it to Democrats that have compassion and caring for the downtrodden and for progressive individuals.”
Mattox is also impressed that Manges would help an underdog, a long shot. He thinks that Manges admired his courage in appearing at Manges’ ranch to speak when Manges was supporting John Hannah.
“I have always had some respect for a fellow who would assist an underdog in a race, taking a chance on helping,” Mattox said. “And he did that. And I, of course, appreciate that kind of consideration.”
Whether it was friendship or poor judgment on Mattox’s part, even Mattox’s friends looked askance last summer when the attorney general appeared on the same platform with Manges in San Antonio. The event was a press conference, at which Manges announced that he had purchased a United States Football League franchise for San Antonio. Mattox reportedly had written a letter to the league, recommending Manges.
Manges invited Mattox back to the ranch early this year, when the new attorney general met with District Judge Ruben Garcia. Garcia happens to be the judge in whose court Manges and Maloney filed their suit against Mobil.
Mobil is trying to remove Garcia from the Mobil case tor reasons such as that meeting. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that Garcia was represented by Manges’ lawyer, Pat Maloney, before the Judicial Qualifications Commission when he was charged with padding his expense account. (Those charges were later dropped.) In addition, Manges contributed more than $3,000 to Garcia’s re-election campaign last year.
Mattox has joined in Manges’ efforts to prevent McDade and Mobil from removing Garcia as the judge in the case. That hearing was to be held as this story was going to press. But Mattox insists that his ties to Manges have nothing to do with his joining the efforts to keep Judge Garcia on the case.
“I could have ended all this stuff with one oftwo actions,” Mattox maintained in mid-September, after his indictment. “One is to eitheragree to settle the case or to agree to acquiescein McDade’s actions, in helping recuse Judge Garcia…
“Mobil Oil and that law firm that’s representing them have got tremendous power throughout all of South Texas,” Mattox said. “I think it’s extremely dangerous to turn loose of a judge that you think is going to be fair and take a chance that Mobil Oil can get ’em a judge that they control. And I have no reason to think that Judge Garcia would not be fair.”
Immediately after his indictment, Mattox hired famed Austin attorney Roy Minton to defend him on the felony charge. In addition to being an expert on the commercial bribery statute, Minton is also a jury-pleasing, cracker-jack lawyer who’s defended such high-profile politicians as former House Speaker Billy Clayton in the Brilab investigation and Comptroller Bullock on DWI and other charges.
Meanwhile, as the Mobil-Mattox-Mangesmatter drags on into the winter, Mattox insiststhat his “principal concern in this thing.. .isnot Clinton Manges, although I regard him asa friend. My principal concern is figuring outhow to collect one heck of a lot of money forthe State of Texas.”
