Claytie: The Roller-Coaster Life of a Texas Wildcatter

23. "I was a little political before I got political. When I got political, I wasn't worth a damn."

With nearly 3.9 million votes cast, Ann Richards won by fewer than one hundred thousand. She collected roughly 49.4 percent of the vote; Claytie, 47.2 percent, and a third-party candidate, 3.4 percent. The Richards camp cited as pivotal “a surge to the polls in minority-dominated South Dallas, supplemented by heavy support from women voters in the usually archconservative north end of the county.” Buddy Barfield agreed that the biggest loss—hardly surprising—was in Dallas: “Dallas was the area where we always had the biggest hurdle because we were not cut out of the fabric of what Dallas looks for in a candidate.” Citing the Dallas women’s vote, he added, “We lost a lot of Republican women that traditional Republican candidates should have gotten.” Clearly several miscues figured in the upset, and Claytie was quick to accept blame for most of them. But the campaign advice and decision making was not always the best, as several team members conceded. The spurned handshake was a monstrous example. Buddy Barfield speculated that the most critical mistake was the campaign strategy after the resounding primary triumph. “We should have gone underground until about August and done nothing but raise money,” he said. After peaking early, the campaign lost its edge and its crispness toward the end, when Claytie was overworked and worn down. I was a little political before I got political. When I got political, I wasn’t worth a damn.” 23 “ P O L I T I C A L A D V E N T U R E S 297 The astute political observer George Christian agreed that timing was the key to the Richards rally. “She peaked at the right time and he didn’t,” Christian told reporters. “Her campaign had nowhere to go but up and his campaign had nowhere to go but down.” Lost in the euphoria of the overhwhelming primary success was the effect the plane crash had on the general election. “The sad, sad tragedy of the plane going down had a tremendous impact on Clayton and on that campaign,” said state cochair Carole Rylander. “The plane was full of his friends . . . and he just actually shut down for weeks after that. I was making the talks. He wasn’t. He was hunkering in with those families.” Barfield called the plane crash a “huge, huge event” in the lives of Claytie and Modesta as well as in the life of the campaign. “Clayton had lost some of his close personal friends who were also part of the campaign advisory board,” he recalled. “These were people he had worked and played with so many years. And I think this hurt us in the general campaign to not have some of these individuals as a sounding board and a leveling factor for Clayton.” Claytie’s longtime friend and attorney, Tom Scott, likewise thought the traumatic Valentine’s Day tragedy might have been the turning point in the campaign because of the loss of his friends’ wise counsel. No doubt Claytie’s miscues also proved costly. “His self-inflicted wounds bled him to death,” maintained Austin consultant Karl Rove, who had worked in Kent Hance’s losing primary campaign and would later become the lightning-rod architect of Pres. George W. Bush’s political fortunes. Yet focusing on Claytie’s gaffes as the reason for his loss, his supporters say, overlooks that it was his honesty , candor, openness, enthusiasm, and accessibility that won him countless votes as the only major “nonpolitical” candidate in either the primary or the general election. Claytie being Claytie, he often joked about some of the advice he received. “I can’t tell you how many people told me, ‘Claytie, you’re too honest to be a politician.’ And Phil Gramm told me, ‘Claytie, 298 P A R T F O U R you’re not mean enough to be a politician.’” With that huge grin, he added: “Maybe I should have listened to them.” When the subject of the rape joke arose, he would respond with a Claytieism: “If the Lord wanted me to be governor, He wouldn’t have brought in that storm.” Although Bill Kenyon absorbed his share of the heat, he was generally on target with an oft-repeated assessment about the necessity of letting Clayton be Clayton. Claytie once offered his own refreshingly convoluted perspective : “I...