Word: leges
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Bush tried to bond with every lawmaker in Texas. By the time he took office, in January 1995, he had met with nearly all the 181 members of the legislature--"the lege," which convenes every other year--asking about their issues, trying to understand their minds and motives: a solid month of virtuoso schmoozing. "For Bush, everything is personal," says Terral Smith, his legislative chief. "He needs to have the personal relationship before the issue comes up." He dropped in unannounced on legislators, gave them nicknames and bear hugs and backslaps, went to pancake dinners and football games in their...
...trial lawyer Bush never took on is Paul Sadler, a soft-spoken litigator from East Texas who is also the lege's leading wonk. As chairman of the house's public-education committee, the Democrat is a longtime player on the issue closest to Bush's heart, education reform, which had been under way in Texas for a decade by the time Bush ran. In 1993, Sadler led the fight to scrap the state's education code, and during Bush's first term, Sadler and others were writing the new code. Sadler says Bush jumped into the reform effort immediately...
Instead, the lege passed welfare-reform measures that were strict but somewhat more forgiving, with three-year time limits and provisions that the able-bodied must work. It also extended the child-health-insurance program to 200,000 more children. "In my experience, when given a choice between compassion and noncompassion, Bush invariably takes the noncompassionate path," says Elliott Naishtat, a Democrat who chairs the powerful house committee on human services, which handled the welfare bills. "Punishing the kids to get the mom to cooperate is not acceptable and not compassionate. You don't have to do it that...