Chupacabra Report
News that
Gets My Goat:
I had CSPAN
on for wallpaper the other day and noticed that the House General Speeches was
all the Texas GOP delegation so I had to turn on the sound and see what crazy
shit they were saying. I listened to Pete Olson stammering for a while and
gathered that Kent Hance was retiring from his position as Chancellor of Texas
Tech. This was an occasion for all the other Tories to stand up and say that
Hance is ‘a wonderful human being, a great humanitarian and a personal friend
of mine.’
I remember
him a little differently.
Hance was an
attorney and law professor from Lubbock who, after serving in the Texas Senate,
ran for Congress in the 19th district in 1978. This race earned his
historical footnote as the only person to beat George W. Bush in an election.
He did this in part by plastering phony invitations to a ‘George Bush for Congress’
beer blast on the windshields of churchgoers in bone-dry west Texas.
Congressman
Hance established a solid conservative voting record and joined the Boll Weevil
Democrats faction that crossed the aisle to enact the Reagan tax cuts. In 1985
Hance switched parties to become a Republican. It was about this time that some
wealthy donor took Hance and fellow party-jumper Phil Gramm to a Super bowl
game. Hearing the crowd roar, Gramm told Hance “If we can lower taxes and end
the deficit, they’ll cheer for us like that.” Needless to say, this didn’t
happen. That would be akin to saying ‘If we lose enough weight on the beer and
cheeseburger diet, we could fly.’
Hance gave
up his seat to make unsuccessful races to be U.S. Senator and Texas Governor,
and served on the Texas Railroad Commission (that regulates the oil business in
Texas.) After his 1990 loss to Clayton Williams, (who lost to Ann Richards
after making a rape joke to reporters) Hance “sought opportunities in the
private sector” and he found them as a lobbyist for GOP moneybags Lonnie
Pilgrim, oilfield mfr. N.L. Industries, and swiftboater Harold Simmons’ Waste Control
Specialties, who won approval to build two nuclear waste dumps in West Texas.
In 2004
Hance became legal counsel to the Alabama Coushatta Tribe, who the year before paid
$18 million for lobbying services to Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, a gravy
train that flowed to Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, and now Kent
Hance. I avidly followed this scandal at the time and never saw Kent Hance’s
name come up, and must say that he was never indicted, prosecuted or convicted
of any wrongdoing. For all I know, the tribe hired Hance to get Abramoff’s hand
out of their pocket.
In 2006 the Board
of Regents of Texas Tech University appointed him Chancellor. Hance donated
$1.75 million to build a chapel there that now bears his name. He achieved his
goal of raising $1 billion for the University, and will retire as Chancellor this
year. The University has already named him Chancellor-Emeritus.