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I. Summary

• Texas governors have long appointed big donors to key state boards. Texas’ appointment powers are especially susceptible to political patronage abuse because the state imposes no limits on how much money an individual can give to a candidate for state office.

 
• The problem with this patronage system is that governors pass over more qualified people in order to appoint big donors to top state positions. Big donors also have vast economic interests that foster ethical conflicts when they hold public offices.

 
• George W. Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns received $1.4 million from 413 bureaucrats whom Governor Bush appointed to 50 leading state boards and commissions from 1995 through June 2000 (3 percent of the $41 million raised by his gubernatorial campaigns).

 
• The Bush campaigns’ $1.4 million appointee windfall came from large contributions from just 30 percent (122 people) of the 413 appointees studied (the other appointees contributed less than $1,000 apiece).  These large appointee contributions ranged from $1,000 to $141,000 and averaged $11,259 per appointed donor.

 
• Half of this $1.4 million in appointee money came from the state’s vast higher education patronage system. Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns raked in a $679,106 jackpot from 76 regents whom Bush appointed to the boards of the eight public universities analyzed here.

 
• Governor Bush’s single biggest cash cows were the UT System Board of Regents (contributing a total of $432,606)  and the Parks and Wildlife Commission ($201,877).

 
• UT Regent Vice Chair Tom Loeffler is Bush’s biggest-contributing appointee ($141,000). This lobbyist has been linked to repeated ethical flaps. Loeffler: sat on the board of the scandal-ridden UT Investment Management Co; he and his lobby firm were the hired guns who stopped the Texas Department of Health from cracking down on makers of ephedrine diet remedies (linked to eight Texas deaths); and Loeffler voted to license a UT cancer treatment to a private company that later gave him stock options worth tens of thousands of dollars.

 
• Given that money interferes with merit in this patronage system, it is not surprising that at least eight of the 50 boards and commissions analyzed in this report have been plagued by mismanagement and ethics scandals.

 
• Was Governor Bush moved in part by political contributions when he appointed big donors to leading state positions?  Such awkward questions could be eliminated if Texas limited individuals to campaign contributions of no more than $1,000.

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