THOU SHALT SPEAK NO EVIL OF ANOTHER REPUBLICAN

Last fall, Bill Clements, Kent Hance, and Tom Loeffler signed a solemn oath not to break the Eleventh Commandment of their party: thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. It was a command performance. Ex-Governor Bill Clements and former U.S. Rep. Kent Hance, opponents in an already bitter three-way Republican gubernatorial primary, arrived separately one October afternoon at Dallas’ Hyatt Regency Hotel. Upstairs, GOP National Committeeman Ernest Angelo and his wife, Penny, were in town from Midland for that evening’s big GOP fundraiser featuring former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. It was in their plush Hyatt suite that State Republican Chairman George Strake’s secret meeting with Kent Hance and Bill Clements would take place.

Rep. Tom Loeffler, the third contestant in the GOP race, had sent his regrets: he was detained on urgent congressional business in Washington. But Strake had sent him a copy of an unusual document over the weekend and had already gotten Loeffler’s quick agreement to its terms over the phone. By the time Hance and Clements arrived, Strake had Loeffler’s signed pledge in his hand, rushed back to Texas by Federal Express. Now it was time to corral the primary’s two high-spirited mavericks, the crusty former governor and the easygoing former Democratic congressman.

Experts say it was an unprecedented moment in the history of American politics. It was the sort of thing only Republicans would dream up, a document only the historically vicious gubernatorial politics of Texas could warrant. The agreement, never actually released to the press, began like this:



Dear George:

As the three declared candidates for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, we hereby agree to the following:

(1.) To campaign in the primary on the issues, and not on personal attacks against fellow Republicans…



Clements and Hance read the document carefully and signed it at the bottom, Hance cracking a few jokes to lighten the tension. Strake’s Marquess of Queensberry rules for the GOP primary included, first and foremost, his own rendition of the hallowed “Republican Eleventh Commandment” originally set out by gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan during a particularly feisty 1966 California primary: thou shall not speak ill of a fellow Republican. Strake took the Reagan concept one step further, asking the three combatants to actually sign a written pledge. “It doesn’t make everybody perfect,” Strake said several months after the signing ceremony, “But I think they’ve all held to it reasonably well. I check the papers every morning to see that they do.”



By early February of 1986, those members of the press and public who had been licking their chops in expectation of the Texas GOP’s first internal bloodbath were more than a little disappointed. The “knock-down, drag-out fight” predicted early on by Republican Senator Phil Gramm had simply failed to materialize. For four months, the three Republicans crisscrossed the state, beaming at each other and complimenting each other and agreeing on everything from prisons and taxes to gambling, state spending, immigration, education, and no-pass, no-play. Republicans could be forgiven for wondering: if these guys are so nice and friendly and agreeable, how are we going to choose?

Patience, patience. The Eleventh Commandment doesn’t cancel the grudge match. It just postpones the real fight until this month-when Bill Clements, Kent Hance, and Tom Loeffler can safely be relied upon to tear each other apart.

Kent Hance was recruited into the Republican Party by a fellow party switcher, Phil Gramm, and a small group led by Dallas Cowboys owner and longtime Clements ally Bum Bright and Bright’s right-hand man, former Clements campaign manager Jim Francis. But when these Hance backers launched their attempt to repeat Gramm’s successful 1984 switch-par-ties-and-win strategy, they failed to consult the resident of 4800 Preston Road, the pastoral Highland Park estate where Bill Clements has quietly played the role of party elder statesman since he was forced out of the Governor’s Mansion by Mark White in 1982. Restless and bored, the sixty-eight-year-old Clements became “convinced” last summer that he was the only Republican in Texas who could beat White in 1986. Abruptly announcing his own candidacy last July, Clements gritted his teeth and grinned uncomfortably at the TV cameras, telling everyone how his wife, Rita, had ordered him to “smile more.”

The sudden announcement caught nearly everyone by surprise, igniting a bitter feud between Clements and his old allies in the Bright-Francis group. After brief huddles with their supporters, Hance and gubernatorial candidate Tom Loeffler shocked observers by announcing that both were in the governor’s race to stay-Clements or no Clements. Hance and Loeffler began sniping slyly at Clements and at each other-until October 14, when George Strake summoned the mischievous schoolboys to Dallas, rapped their hands with a ruler, and made all three write one hundred times, “I will not attack my primary opponents.”

For four months the three candidates have kept their word. But now, in the words of one campaign insider, “It’s time to take off the gloves.” If they can’t attack each other in the open, they will do so behind the scenes, through surrogates and off-the-record, not-for-attribution interviews. If they can’t argue about differences on the , big issues, they will argue about those seemingly trivia! disagreements over fine points that often speak a world of difference about a candidate’s philosophy, style, and approach to government. Most of all, they’ll attack each other’s records, which even Strake admits is fair game. “They’re going to let people know what the differences are,” he says. “As long as they stay focused on the issues, that’s okay.”

Some observers have complained that Strake’s Eleventh Commandment document will cheat Republican voters of the kind of spirited, hard-fought gubernatorial primaries the Democrats have always had-bitter, highly publicized fights that usually end up producing Democratic victories come November. Strake disagrees. “We are different from the Democrats. We don’t have to have bloodlettings just because the Democrats have them.”

Despite their surface similarity on the issues, it’s hard to imagine three more different candidates in the same party primary. Hance and Loeffler, young lawyers with rural Texas roots, were brothers-in-arms in the Reagan conservative congressional coalition. The similarities end there. Unlike perennial outsider Hance, Loeffler is the consummate party man, a lifelong Republican activist who has spent most of his career on the federal payroll in Washington: Tower Senate aide, Federal Energy Administration lobbyist, special assistant in the Ford White House, and one of Texas’ most influential congressional insiders, now the third-ranking figure in the House GOP. Loeffler’s campaign literature touts him as a “thoroughbred Republican.” His TV commercials boast of a solid conservative voting record, a spiritual kinship with Reagan, and a fondness for his horse, Liberty. Loeffler translates his relative absence from the Texas political scene into campaign assets: a lack of negatives with Texas voters; no record on state issues that can be picked apart by opponents of either party; the excitement of a “fresh new face in Texas politics”; and, above all, a “clean” voting record on state taxes and spending. Loeffler supporters say he offers a “contrast in bold colors” with White on budget issues, a contrast that would fade to “pale pastels” if the nominee were Hance or Clements.

But Loeffler has problems. He is little known outside of Washington and his congressional district, which sprawls from San Antonio to Midland-Odessa in West Texas. On the stump, he has neither Hance’s charisma nor Clements’ authoritative delivery: his voice is a quiet, nasal whine more suited to congressional back rooms than to the thundering oratory of a Texas political campaign. Most of all, his inexperience in state government shows: he is often fumbling and unsure of himself when discussing state issues. This “Austin factor” could kill Loeffler with Texas voters who are more interested in what he will do along the Brazos than what he did beside the Potomac. “Loeffler is too congressional, too Washington,” says a Hance aide. “He goes in front of people who want to hear about education or prisons and starts talking about Nicaragua.”

Hance, forty-three, is a dramatically different politician from the fresh-faced, serious Loeffler and the aging, snappish former governor. Hance’s strongest suit is sheer campaign ability. His irrepressible sense of humor (Hance’s literature labels it his “Will Rogers wit”) goes hand-in-hand with a proven ability to draw conservative Democrats and rural voters. In Kent Hance, supporters claim, Republicans have finally found a gubernatorial candidate who can complete the Reagan realignment and permanently broaden the base of the party in Texas. Like Loeffler, Hance is an effective legislative politician who has been successful in assembling compromises and passing legislation; like Clements, Hance has solid experience in Austin (as a state senator from 1974-1978) and exhibits a firm grasp of state issues. Most of all, Kent Hance enjoys campaigning, shaking hands and talking to voters with an easy, comfortable style that contrasts sharply with Clements’ legendary irascibility and Loeffler’s stiffness.

Hance may have more assets than Loeffler, but he also has more liabilities. Chief among them is his 1984 decision to endorse, however lukewarmly, the Democratic ticket of Walter Mon-dale, Geraldine Ferraro, and Lloyd Doggett. Loeffler aides also have a sheaf of congressional votes-cast by Hance in his Democratic days-that will hurt Hance badly with religious fundamentalists, tar-right activists, and conservative ideologues. Hance’s party switch and immediate entry into the GOP governor’s race created a credibility problem for him. But Hance’s “opportunism” is a tricky issue, one Clements and Loeffler will have difficulty exploiting without appearing to pull the welcome mat out from under the party’s newest big-name convert and, by implication, other Democrats in Washington and Austin who might want to follow Hance across the aisle. Jim Francis, who chairs Hance’s kitchen cabinet, has a fairly effective answer to the opportunism charge. “How is it opportunistic to run in the Republican primary in the face of Bill Clements?” As Hance himself ruefully noted a few days after Clements’ announcement, “Guess that pretty well lakes care of the argument that I had anything handed to me.”



Then hen there’s Bill Clements, a shade mellower than four years ago, but running on the same basic platform: experienced, competent executive leadership. As the only one of the three Republicans who’s “been there,” Clements stresses his advantage in age and experience over “two young lawyers with no experience outside the political arena.” He emphasizes his years as a businessman, Pentagon official, and governor, pointing to his close-cropped scalp. “I didn’t get all these gray hairs for nothing.” Despite his Rita-enforced mellowness and good cheer, underneath he’s the same old Bill Clements: direct, frank, and knowledgeable, drawing from a seemingly limitless command of facts and figures about every aspect of state government. He projects an impressive image as the party’s elder statesman. He enjoys near-total name identification among Republican voters. On the surface, the tough-talking former governor appears invulnerable in the May primary.



But a surprising number of the state’s most powerful Republicans openly question whether Clements can beat Mark White in November. Therein lies the reason why most of the Texas GOP’s top elected officials, financiers, and party leaders have committed, not to their aging Napoleon back from Elba, but to the two upstart generals they see as the party’s best vote-getters. “If Clements couldn’t beat Mark White with a $13 million budget and the incumbency four years ago, how does he plan to beat him now?” asks Jim Francis. They accuse Clements of trying to “fight an ’86 battle with ’82 tactics.” (“If Teddy Kennedy wants to be president,” read one mass mailing signed by Clements in December of 1985, “he must have Mark White in office.”) But above all, as one Loeffler aide said, “Clements’ biggest liability is Bill Clements.” Hance aides agree, citing instances where the governor has already blown his new-found cool and made exploitable public errors, such as his much-publicized feud with Bum Bright over the Southwest Conference recruiting scandal. Clements backers privately accuse Hance operatives of “sandbagging” Clements. They say the Hance campaign is “blitzing on every down” in order to force Clements into throwing costly interceptions-a charge the Hance people vehemently deny. “Those were unforced errors,” says Carol Reed, a Dallas political consul-tant and member of Hance’s kitchen cabinet. “Clements created every one of those situations all by himself.”

As this article goes to press, the bickering between the Republican camps is still muted, the candidates contenting themselves with carefully sugar-coated compliments for each other that effectively mask bitter pills of political invective. (Hance and Loeffler are both “fine young men,” says Clements. Translate: they’re too wet behind the ears for this job.) Meanwhile, the Loeffler camp has stepped up its subtle attacks on Hance, attempting to position its man as the only “true Republican” alternative to Clements and labeling Hance a “Republican Mark White.”

Loeffler’s strategy is to allow Hance and Clements to tear each other apart- with Loeffler poised to pick up the pieces. In April, Loeffler will start publicly blasting Hance, avoiding infringement of the Eleventh Commandment by sticking to Hance’s ’’record on the issues.” Meanwhile, Hance will do the same to Clements. Look for Hance to repeat the strategy that almost worked against Lloyd Doggett and Bob Krueger in the 1984 U.S. Senate race. He’ll try to find one simple, clear-cut point of difference (like the immigration issue in 1984) and hammer away at both Loeffler and Clements through the final three weeks of the campaign. Meanwhile, Clements will focus on smiling, attacking White, and keeping his temper in check, with his opponents and the media slavering at bay all spring, waiting to capitalize on any eruptions of the old Clements temper.

All three camps agree that the race will be decided not by differences on policy questions, but on “electability issues”-questions of style, experience, and political resources that determine which GOP candidate has the best chance of beating White next year. But that doesn’t mean state issues won’t be important in the primary. Although their differences on the issues may seem slight, the way each candidate handles state issues may ultimately decide which one will face White next fell. After all, some GOP primary voters may not care just about beating Mark White-a few may want to know exactly what each of these Republicans might do as governor.

However, if you comb their past records, listen to all the off-the-record badmouthing, and read between the lines of all the rhetoric, you can see how the fight will shape up. To the extent that the primary campaign involves “policy issues,” it will turn on some or all of the following: taxes, state spending, prisons, economic development, immigration, education, social issues, and the general issues of conservatism and party loyalty.

The most incendiary issue will be taxes. Loeffler will lash into Hance for voting for the “largest tax increase in U.S. history.” Loeffler will warn Republicans that Kent Hance will cost the GOP its best issue: White’s flip-flop on taxes. Meanwhile, Hance and Loeffler will blast Clements for his recent 1986 campaign promise: Clements, like White in ’82, promised flatly that he will not raise any taxes as governor, no matter what. Clements will then attack both Hance and Loeffler, saying that, by leaving open the possibility of a tax increase, they “give away” the tax issue against White.

On spending, Hance and Loeffler have already made sly remarks about how state spending has “gone up 246 percent over the past eleven years.” That specifically includes the four years of the Clements administration, when backers of Loeffler and Hance say state spending went up faster than it has under Mark White-a charge Clements insiders vigorously deny. The big-spender tag infuriates Clements, which is exactly why Hance and Loeffler will keep trying to hang it around his neck, hoping Clements will make factual errors and lose his cool when forced to defend himself.

Hance will continue his subtle offensive against Clements on the issue of Texas’ sluggish economy, seeking to draw a parallel between 1986 and 1982 (when Bill Clements1 Texas was trying to stave off a national recession). Hance promotes the creation of Texas economic development offices in Europe and the Far East. Clements opposes the idea as an unworkable “textbook theory” (a dig at Hance’s professorial background) and stresses the need for a practical businessman/entrepreneur in the governor’s office. Loeffler will cite his votes in Washington to help the Texas economy.



On education, the three Republicans pretty much agree. But Loeffler will suffer unless he does more homework on the issue; Hance and Clements understand it inside and out, and both will make big plays for the large teacher vote they expect to defect from the Democrats this year. Hance may gain the most: the only one of the three who has served in the Texas Legislature, he amassed a solid record of support for education while in Austin. Meanwhile, Clements will remind voters that he started the Texas education reform bandwagon rolling. Even Hance agrees on this point. “Mark White’s like a guy I used to go hunting with,” Hance drawls. “He shoots at everything that flies and takes credit for everything that drops to the ground.”

Loeffler will attack Hance (and, more politely, Clements) on a battery of “conservative” social and national issues, contrasting his own solidly right-wing record to Hance’s more moderate stance. Although Hance has always been staunchly pro-life, he once voted for federally funded abortions in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the mother’s life-a vote, Loeffler will say, that means Hance “favors federally funded abortions.” Hance says he switched his position after viewing the film “The Silent Scream,” and now opposes all abortions. Ardent pro-lifers will support Loeffler’s adamant anti-abortion stand against both Hance and Clements (the ex-governor would allow abortions in cases of danger to a mother’s life, incest, or aggravated criminal rape).

Hance supporters believe their candidate’s background on women’s rights could help him. Hance endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment as a Democratic Congressman, although he now joins Clements in calling it a “dead issue.” Loeffler voted against the ERA in Congress. On the loyalty issue, Loeffler will hit the airwaves late in the campaign with a series of TV commercials showing Hance exhorting Texans to vote for Mondale and Ferraro. Hance will defend against Loeffler’s conservative litmus test by questioning the appeal of Loeffler’s “far-right” views in the general election.

Clements has boasted that he will take more than 50 percent of the Texas vote May 3 and avoid a runoff wiih either underdog. Having set expectations so high, Clements is in deep trouble should he fall short. Hance insiders privately predict that Clements and Hance will finish a distinct 1-2 in the primary, with Hance the beneficiary of a large “stop Clements” vote in the June runoff. In any case, here’s how the vote should go on May 3:

Loeffler will get the hard-core conservative idealogues, the Christian fundamentalists, and the old-line party faithful who believe the Republican Party has arrived in Texas and no longer needs to rely on party-switchers (like Hance) or admitted ticket-splitters (like Clements). Give the lion’s share of the yuppie vote to Loeffler, if he doesn’t alienate younger voters with his accent on right-wing social issues. He’ll do well in San Antonio and the Hill Country, get a decent share in Houston, and split Midland-Odessa with Clements and Hance. Loeffler will lose to Hance and Clements in Dallas, but could make the runoff if he improves his campaign style, shifts his emphasis to state issues, and forces Hance to stumble badly in April.

Hance will get the conservative Democrats and the independent vote. He’ll get nearly all of the die-hard Mark White haters, who are probably fewer in number than anyone in the Republican leadership seems to think. Hance will get most of his votes from people who just plain like him; he’s by far the most appealing personality the Republicans have ever run statewide. He’ll also take the few rural voters who vote in the GOP primary and most of the teachers and state employees who will vote in the GOP primary to protect themselves against Clements.

Clements gets all those who feel they owe him something: people he appointed while in office; Republicans who are still grateful for his 1978 victory as The First Republican Governor in 104 Years; and those who feel he simply did a good job as governor and deserves another term. He’ll get the older “experience voters,” and he’ll get the voters who like his style. Despite all the talk about Bill Clements’ “high negatives,” there are still lots of Texans who like Ol’ Bill’s straight-from-the-shoulder frankness.

But the largest share of Clements’ supporters, the ones who currently put him twenty to thirty points ahead of Hance and Loeffler, are the mass of GOP voters who won’t tune in until the final four to six weeks of the campaign. They’re for Bill Clements because they voted for him in the last two governor’s races, and they’ll stay with him until the race gets good and noisy, and they can spot someone else they like better. That’s why Kent Hance will soon turn up the volume and attack Bill Clements and Tom Loef-fler. Clements will slug back because it’s his nature, and Loeffler will attack Hance because he must to stay alive. If Hance stays on the offensive, he has a good chance to slip into the runoff and beat Clements in June.

In the meantime, pass the popcorn and enjoy the show.