Gib Lewis’s Party Politics

Every year, Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis comes to town to act as host at a cocktail party with a unique feature. The guests, before gaining access to one of the bars, must first pass through a line of police wearing riot helmets.

The reason: Lewis always gives his party at the Adolphus Hotel on the Friday night before the Texas-OU game, so downtown is under siege by tens of thousands of hollering revelers. If you can’t display a room key or an invitation to the speaker’s party, the police won’t even let you park at the Adolphus.

The potential partier must pass through several check points before securing entry into the pen(-house area, where the two names that have been influencing American political ideology for generations-Jack Daniels and I.W. Harper-appear to have been at work for several hours. It has been rumored that Dallas County Democrats are about as plentiful as whooping cranes, But if that’s the case, Lewis must have shipped replacements in from the Rio Grande Valley because the joint is packed with well-wishers and well drinkers. Lewis, the sixty-seventh person to serve as Texas house speaker, is conspicuous in his tux.

Mr, Speaker, standing in a reception line and shaking hands, is confronted by a female lawyer from Dallas who, to express it politely, is drunker than a rodeo goat. She demands to know Lewis’s feelings on the compromise tort reform package that was passed through die recent legislature. He is not sure what she wants to hear and says, “Well, there are no halos on either side of that issue.” This is a response that Lewis has found satisfactory for practically any situation . The lawyer, who would later admit that she couldn’t remember what she’d asked Lewis in the first place, decides that the speaker is “a good sumbitch” and hurries away for more refreshment.

When Lewis was discharged from the Air Force some twenty years ago, the extent of his political ambitions was to join the Fort Worth Jaycees. And given the stress of his position in a very partisan House, Lewis says often he wishes he’d stuck with the Jaycees, whose most political act is running the Miss Texas Pageant.

Lewis says that if the legislature would confine itself to those kinds of activities, Austin would be a happier place.