I DIDNT LOSE, I JUST RAN OUT OF TIME

...To put these percentages in some perspective, Kennedy's presidential bid polled from eight percent to 28 percent in these same places...

...I took a train ride...

...Two percent better, at least...

...I DIDNT LOSE, I JUST RAN OUT OF TIME The Joy of Running by Jim Hightower "Now, Hightower, I think I understand you...

...A typical day found Vic Gonzales and me starting east at 7 a.m., rolling out of Dallas with six cups of U-tote-M's industrial strength caffeine for the 45-mile run to Terrell...

...And when they went, they had a defined constituency backstopping them at home...

...Uniquely, most of us went to the capital directly from college, thousands of us, drawn from all over the country by antiwar demonstrations, poverty marches, reform presidential campaigns, or just by the notion that it was the right place to go to work...

...offered what I considered a winning chance to talk about progressive tenets in the specific ways that really matter to people...

...But not nearly enough, not proportional to our numbers, to our political energy, and now (this will hurt) to our age...

...I ask you, does Jimmy Carter have to put up with that...

...Most reformers have shared the depressing experience of discovering a wonderful bit of information, nurturing it to the point of action, handing it gingerly to a friendly member of Congress for the final play, and sitting helplessly as the job is botched...

...I was moved about in Spade Cooley's van, Ruth Ann Spivey's airplane, Efrain Martinez's Cadillac, Arthur Dean Chaney's pickup, and Jimmy Vaughn's '48 Pullman Coach...

...press conference the next day...

...In January, for example, I spent half a day working a county seat in North Texas...

...But what'd he care...

...I'm not suggesting that everyone in Washington get the Hell back home tomorrow and file for county commissioner, nor that there is an absolute drought of progressive candidates out here to water the grassroots...

...Thirty minutes late to Tyler as it was, nonetheless we scanned the horizon for radio towers as we left just in case our Austin schedulers had missed one...

...You mean you want to regulate the choochoos...

...I've been in the offices of the Bonham Daily Favorite, the Liberty Vindicator, the Hereford Brand, the Vidor Vidorian, and the Luling Newsboy & Signal, among others...

...I see that paper," one of them responded...

...We would finish our business in Tyler by 1:30, then travel on to Longview and Marshall, almost to the Louisiana border, holding press conferences, meeting key Democratic leaders and working more courthouses...

...It isn't always respectful out there...

...To say that the regulated industries take an interest in who gets elected to the Commission is like saying there's wheat in Kansas...

...And there will be a next time...

...Meanwhile, the special interests were bankrolling a media blitz for my opponent...

...Let's face it: the generation of progressive activists to which I belong, considered by many the most promising in decades, has surprisingly little political power...

...In fact, I was in many towns that had not been graced by the visit of a statewide candidate in decades, and people I met there were genuinely glad that someone—even a Railroad Commission candidate—was including them in a campaign...

...they are overseers of the lignite strip mining that is cutting clear across Texas...

...The Washington I knew was filled with bright, competent, creative and altogether attractive people...

...Then we visited the party chairmen in both counties, said hello to a couple of influentials on the square, and dropped press releases in the laps of the weekly newspaper editors...

...Exxon's pollution of creeks and thousands of acres of ranchland in Runnels County, without so much as a please-don't-do-itagain from the Commission...

...That was the day I came down here and paid my money to run against the son-of-a-bitch...

...I held my share of press conferences, testified before congressional committees, helped sue the government a time or two, appeared on television, gave speeches, and made enough of a reputation as a troublemaker that I once got recognized by a tourist on Pennsylvania Avenue...

...anybody) would draw about 200,000 monied-establishment supporters out of the Democratic primary, where they've been closeted for decades, thus giving regular Democrats a bigger say over who their party nominated...

...Because we haven't run...

...We once barbecued an entire hog for a rally in my hometown, noting that "this is the first time in memory that the people have been given the whole hog...

...Warren Burnett, my good friend and trusted counselor, gave me sound advice from the start on what matters: "Educate their minds, preach to their hearts, but make goddamn sure you speak to their pocketbooks...

...In fact, I had to force my way into the race...

...the thousands oitroqueros in the Rio Grande Valley who cannot get the required permits to compete as independent truckers because the Commission protects the monopoly position of the big firms...

...By 1976, I'd been in Washington long enough...

...Like a circuit rider, I was out there carrying my message personally and directly to the constituency I had to have...

...This hard traveling, which I started early and kept up through the end, was one of the major reasons we gave them such a close call on election day...

...Why did I lose...

...Three years later, I found myself actually doing it—I had been talked into becoming a candidate...

...Overall the year I spent on the backroads of Texas was as enriching as any of the 37 I've had...

...With 30 minutes work in each town, I had plugged myself into the local circuits of Kaufman and Van Zandt counties...

...In Texas, they make up a big chunk of the constituency that supported Robert Kennedy for president in 1968, then turned after his assassination to George Wallace...

...I documented that he was accepting 90 percent of his contributions from interests that he regulates...

...One of my supporters was flying his private plane from Austin to Marshall to pick us up...

...We were in Tyler by 12:45, still in time to be introduced at our scheduled luncheon...

...Most of them came from places like I had, and nearly all were political activists and reformers, public interest lawyers (a specialization that developed during my years in the city), antiestablishment writers, freelance advocates, foundation-supported malcontents (myself among them), and people who reported on all this...

...Then I headed for Austin, another two hours down the road, so I could be in place fora 9 a.m...

...Gnawing at the back of the mind of any prospective candidate is the realization, that on a prescribed day the blue smoke you've blown will dissipate, the mirrors you've used will be laid face down, and hundreds of thousands of citizens you've never even met will judge you...

...It had taken me much longer to catch on, and I had to go 1,500 miles away from home, to Washington D.C, before I got it straight...

...That way, I go to work with nothing on my stomach and nothing on my mind...

...As a retired businessman who's watched the Commission for decades told me, "They're a bunch of dogs, and have been for 40 years...

...But mostly it was money...

...Not many of us want to risk rejection quite so publicly, which is why those of hardiest egos tend to dominate the political field...

...As the Austin American-Statesman wrote, "This is no Tweedledee, Tweedledum race...

...I dipped fresh-killed-duck gumbo from the 20-gallon drum in Orange, had my fill of backbone and black-eyed peas in Lufkin, cut steak with a letter-opener at a noon pachanga in a Pharr truckyard, and imbibed Pearl beer in East Bernard...

...Nothing can carry the message like a hard-stumping campaigner, and I'm talking about more down-home stuff than a presidential race every four years...

...The old labels—"liberal" and "conservative"—just don't stick to this group...

...I'm talking about small business owners, family farmers, retired people, homemakers, buildingtrades unionists, the courthouse crowd, and what's known in Texas as Yellow-dog Democrats ("I'll vote the Democratic ticket even if they nominate a yellow dog...

...The Commission rac...

...That might sell on the cocktail circuit, but I'm sitting here writing an article while my opponent is continuing to do business as Railroad Commissioner...

...I drew an immediate response...

...they are the final authority on gas utility rates that customers pay...

...and up and down too many courthouses to remember...

...So I went, along with every other former-student-body-president in America, ready to set things right...

...Unfortunately, in our rush to get there, we forgot to pack any political power, and too few of us have returned home to get it...

...All of this confounded the pundits and has sent a little chill through the Petroleum Club, which may give us progressives a measure of satisfaction, but we can and must do better...

...These are county seats, political gossip bazaars, and Vic and I never passed one by...

...Or the time in Denison, midway through my speech to the Lions Club, shifting into my finest lines, when a patrolman came into the room and demanded that I stop speaking so he could announce that a truck was blocking a driveway outside the hotel...

...Our strategy worked in these areas—the Reagan-Bush battle did siphon off thousands of establishment voters from our Democratic primary, and those who remained responded to my populist appeal...

...I was in city churches and country feed stores...

...Many others...

...The contrast between my opponent and me couldn't have been sharper on issues, our backgrounds, our views about the office or the nature of our campaigns, so we were giving Texans the kind of head-to-head political scrap they had not seen in years...

...Jim Hightower, former editor of the Texas Observer, ran last year for the Democratic nomination for a seat on the Texas Railway Commission, the state's utility rate-setting authority...

...I stood my ground, though, finishing my oratory with wet legs and an observation that the commissioners "have been soaking the people of Texas for too long...

...But I am saying flatly that finding and supporting good candidates for local and state offices is not even a consideration, much less a priority, of progressive leaders and financial contributors, which strikes me as a strange political strategy...

...they are the chief framers of energy policy for the state...

...I could go so far, but all of my work finally was dependent on someone else—a senator to attach an amendment, a judge to rule, an executive official to sign-off on some money, a commission to accept a proposed regulation...

...In the second place, and this was the heart of our campaign, my assumption about the political inclinations of typical Texans differs profoundly from the conventional thought that they are don't-rockthe- boat moderates at best, hard-core right-wingers at worst...

...I was working as editor of The Texas Observer, making inquiry into such phenomena as utility rates, oil profits, food monopolies, bankholding companies, and the extraordinary coziness in Texas between government and corporate executives...

...Not so much his $700,000-plus, as my $196,000.1 planned a no-frills budget of a modest $250,000, and didn't raise it, largely because too many people and groups who could have contributed did not believe that I could win, so held back...

...If they join us, with a continuing organizing campaign on the pocketbook issues and money behind us, we'll be more than a handful next time...

...he lambasted me for holding fundraising events in Washington and New York...

...We knew, too, that the Commission race, normally buried in the middle of a long ballot and attracting little notice, this year was the only statewide executive office up for grabs, meaning that the press would focus on it and volunteer political workers could concentrate on it...

...Our plan was not subtle: wade right in at the incumbent, nail the long list of grievances on the Commission's front door, then take to the countryside...

...Had I met my initial budget, I believe it would have been enough to do this, and to win...

...Steven Fromholz, a popular Texas troubadour of great talent and political commitment, traveled widely with me, from Mount Pleasant to unpleasant and back, singing from courthouse steps, picnic tables, and pickup trucks...

...I spent ten years in Washington, good ones for me, most of them doing battle with those "powers that be" the sheriff mentioned...

...I've been standing here at the cash register looking at you," a restaurant owner said to me after I had a meal in his place, "trying to figure out how it is, that I'm backing Hightower and Reagan at the same time...

...There were no drum rolls when I decided to run, nor was I under any delusion that maybe history or "The People" were demanding my candidacy...

...Nothing rallies them like candidates— not a congressional hearing, not a march on the Capitol, not The New York Times op-ed page, not Earth Day, not a "60 Minutes" segment, not suing the bastards...

...Washington spelled p-o-w-e-r, and its beam was as bright and undeniable to me as a neon sign blinking b-e-e-r is to a thirsty traveler coming out of a dry county...

...That is often important and worth doing, but little of it really is in our hands, and that finally reduces us to borrowers...

...But actually doing i t . . . . well, that's another tale...

...I would get a bit of press at each of these stops, meet a few key leaders, and gain a foothold in an area that the Texas establishment was taking for granted...

...Our plan was to appeal to them with, of all things, our unvarnished progressive views...

...I said that if I had voted for as many giveaways to utilities as my opponent had, I'd be so embarrassed I'd have to wear a red wig and sunglasses in public...

...I worked against the war in Vietnam...

...Political observers counted me out from the start—"He will be slaughtered," was the flat prediction of one Dallas columnist last summer, and he was rooting for me...

...Just a Pinch A second important factor boosting my chances was.that we were bringing passion, sparks and a dash of fun back into politics...

...My new friend the sheriff, whom I came across while peddling my own political wares in a West Texas courthouse last winter, had figured out this truth without ever having left the High Plains...

...But a line of thunderstorms cut him off...

...Using the unique logic of politics, there is some talk that I effectively "won" this election, in the same sense that Mc- Govern "beat" Muskie in New Hampshire in 1972...

...The issues and perspectives of any generation are unique...

...When the eight o'clock bell rang at Southwestern Christian College, I was on the podium, thumping the lectern...

...in union halls, bars and barbershops...

...Some of us are slower than others...

...Despite the posted odds, our madness had more method than was apparent...

...he said I was possessed by some sort of "eastern leftwing philosophy...

...It was 4:30, and we were to be in Bryan that evening for a fundraiser, 200 miles to the southwest...

...I won 63 percent of the vote in Dallas, 54 percent in Houston, 63 percent in Fort Worth, 53 percent in Tyler, 64 percent in Weatherford, 54 percent in Marshall, and 58 percent in McKinney...

...I followed him to a Commission-sponsored meeting of major oil company executives, and told a press conference that he was there "slow dancing with the Seven Sisters of Big Oil...

...On,election day, I won more than 60 percent of the votes in that county...

...The storm was not letting up, so at 5:30 we decided to make a run for Bryan...

...Shortly after, I met with five black leaders and mentioned the editor's analysis of my prospects...

...In the first place, we knew that a lively Republican presidential contest (Reagan vs...

...We got to Bryan late and road-tired, but with enough energy to thank the diehards who hung in there till we arrived...

...But, there is no time to sit around crying in my beer...

...Hard Traveling I formally launched my campaign on October 8 from the steps of the Commission's headquarters in Austin, dubbing the agency the Texas Railroading Commission, tagging the incumbents as the lapdogs of industry, noting that even their headquarters building was rented to them by an oilman, and offering myself as "the candidate of all Texans who don't own an oil well...

...and they lobby nationally on energy legislation and regulation...

...What you see there are the action moments, usually during the last month of an election—staff forming a wedge through euphoric supporters, huge audiences erupting into whoops and ovations, reporters swarming with pads and microphones...

...Both poor people and middle-income Texans have their own personal sense of that feeling, and it is this central theme of unfairness and powerlessness that cuts across conventional political lines, that can link bean-sprout eaters to snuff dippers...

...The more he did, the madder I got...

...But finally, as I said in the Observer, "there comes a time when writing about the bastards isn't enough— these pocketbook issues have to become central to our politics, meaning we must have candidates willing to challenge the vested interests head on and without apology...

...We bustled into the courthouses, introducing our way up and down four or five stories of local officialdom...

...giggled a lady in Galveston...

...We should be putting ours into play directly, rather than through surrogates...

...There's no place to hide...

...he took a bus ride...

...It is not necessary to have a lavish media campaign to win in Texas, and it certainly makes no sense to try matching what establishment candidates spend...

...During my speech—whether from the heat of my rhetoric or the pique of the commissioners inside, or just from an automatic timing device—the lawn sprinklers came on, sending assembled well-wishers and a knot of reporters scurrying...

...How many members of Congress, governors, or even mayors can my ilk claim as "one of our own...

...So I "put the chairs in the wagon," as Texas country people say when it's time to go home...

...Nothing gets their attention quite like running at them...

...They also handle freight rates within the state, regulate truck routes and safety, bus service, and railroad traffic...

...The third and most significant reason that I ran well is that people simply agreed with what I was saying, which was nothing more (nor less) radical than that people ought to be treated fairly...

...But to win, you've got to put yourself on the line and take what comes...

...Some...

...But in such a big state as this it is necessary to have some media presence in the last couple of weeks...

...But when you are campaigning eight months away from election day, when you're running for Railroad Commissioner instead of president, and when you're working towns like Pointblank and Dime Box, the reality is much lonelier and much, much humbler...

...I slept on couches, in a waterbed, on the floor, in a loft, in the backseat of a car, and next to a hog pen...

...he labeled me "a leftwing, radical liberal" and even claimed late in the race that George McGovern, Cesar Chavez, and Ralph Nader had handpicked me to run so I could send Texas natural gas up to Yankees...

...Such folks are hardly defenders of the Powers That Be, and their politics ought not t? be taken for granted...

...Supporters wrote campaign songs for us (including the immortal, "Be the man who teaches Exxon to be Humble once again...

...they are responsible for the condition of all pipelines...

...No Place To Hide Out of more than 1.2 million votes cast, I came within 45,000 of knocking off the incumbent...

...The Railroad Commission was vulnerable to this approach, for it had been out of public view for so long that the commissioners had become aloof, even arrogant, allowing companies under their charge to overreach...

...With that, I nominated myself...

...He Will Be Slaughtered The thought of becoming a candidate is compelling in the abstract, and from a distance the hustings even take on a romantic tinge, especially after quaffing a third or fourth beer...

...It was the sort of "pinch, squeal, and pinch-back" campaign that gets people's blood pumping...

...The Commission is the energy and transportation industries' chief bunkerj and I was challenging the bestfinanced incumbent they had ever put up to defend it...

...By ten o'clock we were headed out of town, and we had not missed a touchstone— I had addressed the students, had a quick audience with the dean, had introductions to a couple of key lawyers and some local officials, been interviewed and photographed by the Tribune, cut a 15- minute tape for KTER radio and shaken every hand at a senior citizen center We took the two-laner out of Terrell, first to Kaufman, then to Canton...

...This can be surprisingly cheap if it is targeted for specific purposes— to counter the opposition's lastminute lies, to rev-up organizational effort, and to reach any part of a "natural" constituency that you've missed...

...I worked as Senate legislative aide to the great populist Democrat Ralph Yarborough...

...Instead, they are being gouged, and of course they know it, since they pay the price for it...

...President Kennedy himself had all but said that if you want to change things, Washington is where you get it done...

...It was a good place to be, joining some of the best people of my generation to fight what we saw as important progressive battles...

...This obscure agency was putting the touch on every Texan, even without their knowing it, dipping into their pockets again and again for more money to hand to regulated interests...

...Until one day I made him take hard notice...

...Partly because I ran out of time to get the word out in a person-toperson manner...

...And it must have done some good, because my opponent felt compelled to call a press conference in which he dourly chastened us for running "a flim-flam campaign of deceit and demagoguery presented by a traveling minstrel show...

...Worse yet, the results are going to be printed in the papers for your mama, both your friends, and all your wretched enemies to read and giggle over...

...I ran for an office that is the most difficult of all for anti-establishment outsiders to win, a seat on something called the Texas Railroad Commission...

...That shortage was critical, for it left the campaign with an anemic media budget for the final push...

...And I haven't been mad at the sheriff since, 'cause, as you can see, now I am the sheriff...

...Why is the progressive generation that is now in its 30s and 40s still relying so heavily on public officials of another age who can't instinctively understand and may not be fully committed to doing what we want done...

...If that is confusing to you, it is not always clear to them...

...Like I was told after the election by my friend Pericles Criss, an Austin grocer and political savant, "We have to keep fighting...

...From my minor position in this scheme, I felt I was landing some satisfying blows, and having what one strives to have in Washington: Impact...

...Also, like a volunteer tomato in a weed patch, the 48 percent was a delightful discovery to many liberals who had been with the campaign in spirit, but had resisted getting involved directly on the assumption that I was one-more-niceguy- about-to-get-stomped...

...Then there's the campaignkickoff rally we had at an outdoor plaza in San Antonio, drawing a crowd of eight people, which is fewer than were on the planning committee for the event...

...Yet, something nagged...

...That's not exactly an enviable position, and I think our Washington fixation helps to explain why the progressive movement is currently sputtering...

...It is enough to note that no one even distantly related to a consumer advocate has been a member of this body since the '30s...

...The most important result of the close finish is that supporters are fired up, proud of their achievements, and ready to go again...

...But I wasn't all that easy to persuade...

...Previous important progressive uprisings—such as populism, labor, women's suffrage, and black civil rights^boiled up from the hinterland, from grassroots organizing, before heading for Washington...

...Wherever I went, I was able to add specific verses like these to Ray Charles's powerful refrain, "Them that's got is them that gets, and I ain't got nothin' yet...

...Washington lures people like me, or at least it did in the mid-sixties (I packed my car the day I graduated from North Texas State and was gone the next morning before dawn, heading east with a big smile on my face...

...Such stuff was no less corny at the time than it reads here, but it buoyed the campaign, gave it sparkle and a personal touch...

...My theory, somewhat different from that of experts, is that most people want issues in politics...

...It is worth remembering that you cannot have a mass movement without the masses...

...But there's the rub—we don't have many players on the American political scene...

...Being a candidate can look pretty exciting if you judge it by the two-minute glimpses on television news...

...There the longtime editor told me he would run an item on my visit, but that "his" county was conservative and I wouldn't get far...

...In the final tally, 588,475 Texans stood with me, 48.2 percent of the vote...

...They are disgruntled mavericks, and they may be the majority...

...Okay, okay, I was the one who did the talking...

...In a state with ten "major" television markets and 11 "minor" ones, I had not a dime to spend for TV time, and only $20,000 to buy radio spots...

...Trains are the least of the business handled by its three commissioners...

...Luckily, no press showed up either...

...Well-fed dogs...

...Every morning I get up, pour myself a bowl of Post Toasties and read that man's paper...

...in schools, on farms, at factory gates and around squares...

...All that p-o-w-e-r I had sensed from Texas can be influenced, manipulated or tripped up by people like me...

...People liked it...

...The air remained violently electric all the way, but it was somehow calming now, perhaps because its angry tear across the country seemed madder than ours...

...It was in the supposedly "conservative" bastions, where progressives have not won statewide elections in years, that I ran strongest, actually pulling together that uncommon alignment of constituencies we were reaching for...

...The kind of issues I had dealt with in Washington from a national and general perspective could be brought down to scale in this campaign in a way that reached people right where they lived—the utility rate increase in Mesquite that Lone Star Gas just pushed through the Commission...

...For the most part, these are non-ideological, commorisense voters who won't be found on anyone's liberal list, but also don't share much ground with the Dallas bankers, Houston oil barons, or other peers of the Texas plutocracy...

...Put it like this: if it is energy or transportation, and if there's a dollar to be made from it, chances are its regulation is in the hands of these commissioners...

...They regulate all oil and gas production in Texas...

...I stumped the state in unabashed populist style, complete with rallies in the parks, musical accompaniment, and the inevitable passing of the hat...

...Having met with two small groups of farmers, been to the radio station, and made the rounds of courthouse officials, I stopped by the newspaper office...

...This voluntary uprooting effectively shifted a generation of leaders from the countryside to a Washington base, and it leaves us now trying to push our political vision and issues outward from the Potomac...

...Five years ago, I got so mad at the sheriff of this county that I couldn't see straight...

...And I was a full-fledged public interest advocate, going head-to-head against the considerable power of agribusiness corporations...