Bill Clements

William Perry "Bill" Clements, Jr. (April 13, 1917 – May 29, 2011) was the 42nd and 44th Governor of Texas, serving from 1979 to 1983 and 1987 to 1991. Clements was the first Republican to have served as governor of the U.S. state of Texas since Reconstruction. Clements' eight years in office were the most served by any Texan governor prior to current Governor Rick Perry.

Early career

Clements was born in Dallas and worked as an oil driller for many years. He founded SEDCO in 1947, the world's largest offshore drilling company and technical leader of the offshore drilling industry, developing dynamically positioned drilling rigs, top drives, and many other offshore drilling innovations. In 1984, SEDCO was sold to Schlumberger Ltd., and its assets combined with their drilling contractor subsidiary, Forex, under Schlumberger management, to form Sedco Forex Schlumberger. Sedco Forex Schlumberger was acquired by Transocean Ltd. in 1999 and combined with their existing fleet.^[1] He entered politics as the United States Deputy Secretary of Defense under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, in the latter administration under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (1975–1977).

Texas' first GOP governor since Reconstruction

On January 16, 1979, Clements succeeded Democrat Dolph Briscoe as governor of Texas. To win the position, he first defeated State Representative Ray Hutchison in the Republican primary by a lopsided vote of 115,345 to 38,268. Hutchison, a prominent Dallas attorney, is the second husband of Texas State Treasurer (1991–1993) and U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has served since 1993. Clements won the November 1978 general election by narrowly defeating Democratic former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice John Hill, who was the two-term Texas Attorney General for six years. Clements polled 1,183,828 votes (49.96 percent) to Hill's 1,166,919 ballots (49.24 percent). The La Raza nominee, Mario C. Compean, and two other minor candidates shared 18,942 ballots. Clements' margin over Hill was 16,909. Therefore, Clements fell just under a simple majority, making him another "minority governor." The more liberal Hill, who had also once been the appointed secretary of state, had defeated Briscoe in the primary.

In winning, Clements achieved victory with 350,158 ballots less than the 1972 GOP nominee, Henry Grover went down to defeat with, because turnout was much lower in the 1978 off-year election than it had been during the aforementioned presidential election year. The 1972 Texas governor's race was the last to coincide with a presidential election because when the terms went to four years, the gubernatorial elections were also set to coincide with the off years between presidential elections.

Clements ran for reelection in 1982, but he was defeated by Democratic Attorney General Mark White by more than 327,000 votes because of sagging economic indicators and weak support from minority voters, who historically tend to support Democratic candidates. White received 1,697,870 (53.2 percent) to Clements' 1,465,537 (45.9 percent). In addition, the Republican down-ballot candidates were all defeated in 1982, including George Strake, Jr., a Houston businessman who had been Clements' former secretary of state. Strake ran for lieutenant governor against the incumbent Democrat, Bill Hobby. After the 1982 campaign, Strake was named to replace Chet Upham of Mineral Wells as the Republican state chairman, a position that he filled from 1983-1988.

Staging the 1986 comeback

In between his two terms as governor, Clements was chairman of the board of governors of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He ran again in 1986 and won a contested GOP primary against U.S. Representative Thomas Loeffler of New Braunfels, the seat of Comal County, and former Democratic turned Republican Congressman Kent Hance of Lubbock. In the fall, Clements unseated Governor White, who was hurt by the unpopularity of the "no pass/no play" policy involving high school athletics and proposed teacher competency testing. In gaining his second term, Clements polled 1,813,779 ballots (52.7 percent) to White's 1,584,512 (46.1 percent). Clements had turned the tables on White in a near mathematical reversal of the 1982 results and was inaugurated for a second nonconsecutive term on January 20, 1987, just after White came "Striding up to Clements in the Capitol rotunda" and extended a hand for a handshake with congratulations and Clements simply shook it without comment and turned away.^[2]

Clements as governor

His first term was marked by SEDCO's involvement in the largest oil blowout in history, the Ixtoc I oil spill, which caused extensive environmental damage. During this time, Charlie Brooks, Jr., became the first inmate ever to be executed by lethal injection (December 1982). Clements faced heavily Democratic state legislatures during his tenure. In 1979, the legislature overrode one of his vetoes, the last time that Texas lawmakers have completed an override. In 1980, Clements commuted the death sentence of Randall Dale Adams to life in prison. Adams, the subject of The Thin Blue Line, an Errol Morris documentary film, was exonerated in 1989 after serving twelve years in prison.

During his second term, Clements worked to reduce crime, improve education, boost the Texas economy, and to foster better relations with Mexico, especially on issues important to the mutual borders, such as immigration and the War on Drugs.

However, he did not push as pledged for the initiative and referendum reforms advocated by State Senator Walter Mengden of Houston, based on the principle of California's Proposition 13.^[3]

Clements's second term was marred by a startling revelation he made two months after taking office. On March 3, 1987, Clements admitted that he and the other members of the SMU board of governors had approved a secret plan to continue payments to 13 football players from a slush fund provided by a booster. Clements said that the board agreed to "phase out" the slush fund at the end of the 1986 season, but that it felt duty-bound to honor prior commitments to the players. The decision to continue the payments ultimately led to the NCAA shutting down the football program for the 1987 season—the so-called "death penalty." SMU then opted not to field a team in 1988 as well, claiming it could not put together a competitive squad. The shutdown and other sanctions left the once-proud Mustang football program in ruin; SMU has had only two winning seasons since returning to the field, and would not procure another bowl bid until 2009. A few months later, the College of Bishops of the United Methodist Church released a report detailing an investigation of its own into the scandal. It revealed that Clements had met with athletic director Bob Hitch, and the two agreed that the payments had to continue because the football program had "a payroll to meet."^[4]

According to the report, in late 1985 then SMU President L. Donald Shields and board of trustees chairman Edwin L. Cox wanted to stop the payments completely in opposition to Clements and Hitch. The four held a "most important meeting" in August 1985 in Shields' office in the SMU administration building, Perkins Hall. Shields and Cox noted that although earlier in the year a phase-out of the payments had been agreed upon by SMU leadership, the NCAA had just enacted the "death penalty" for repeat violators (of which SMU was one, having been cited six times to that point by the organization and twice in the last five years) for violations occurring on or after September 1 of that year, and thus the situation had changed. But Clements, admitting his way would be "taking a chance", argued that if the payments were stopped immediately, star players receiving them would be sure to leave SMU and publicly announce why. Nothing was formally decided at the meeting, but afterwards, Clements and Hitch talked for about fifteen minutes in the Perkins Hall parking lot. Hitch remembered Clements asking him if the payments could be continued and when hearing that they could, telling him in no uncertain terms "Then do it." And the payments continued (on at least two occasions starting in 1983, after President Shields expressed outrage over the payments and said they had to stop, Clements, an SMU dropout, told the PhD holder Shields to "stay out of it" and to "go run the university").^[5]

A week later, Clements apologized for his role in continuing the payments. He said the he had learned about the slush fund in 1984, and an investigation by the board of governors revealed that players had been paid to play since the mid-1970s. Clements said that rather than shut the payments down immediately, the board "reluctantly and uncomfortably" decided to continue paying players who had already been guaranteed payments. However, he said, in hindsight the board "should have stopped (the payments) immediately," rather than merely phase them out.^[6]

Clements faced calls for his impeachment as a result of these statements; two state legislators argued that he would have never been elected had he honestly addressed his role in the scandal. Under the circumstances, he opted not to run for a third term as governor and was succeeded on January 15, 1991 by Democratic state Treasurer Ann Richards.

Post-political life

After leaving the governorship, Clements lent considerable personal effort to support a variety of Republican candidates seeking office in Texas. He resided in Dallas with his second wife, the former Rita Crocker (born October 30, 1931), who was first lady of Texas during both of his administrations. She was subsequently appointed to the University of Texas Regents by Governor George W. Bush. Clements was known for his acerbic, energetic personality, which Democrats abhorred but Republicans tended to cheer. In 1993, he had supported the conservative Congressman Joe Barton in the special election for the U.S. Senate to succeed newly-resigned Democrat Lloyd Bentsen. Barton lost out to Kay Bailey Hutchison. Clements also supported the embattled Texas Supreme Court Justice Steven Wayne Smith, who was purged by Governor Rick Perry in the 2004 Republican primary.

Whereas Governor Perry first endorsed former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York City for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Bill Clements was as early as 2006 already raising funds for the eventual nominee, U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona. After Giuliani withdrew from the race, Perry joined Clements in endorsing McCain.

In June 2009, Clements donated $100 million to UT Southwestern Medical Center, the largest civic donation in Dallas history.^[7] On February 16, 2010, Clements and his wife both endorsed Governor Rick Perry's re-election campaign in the 2010 Texas Republican gubernatorial primary against Kay Bailey Hutchison.

In October 2010, Clements' son, B. Gill Clements (born 1941), was murdered at the age of 69 near his ranch in Athens in Henderson County in east Texas. An investor, Clements was also a graduate of Southern Methodist University, married, and the father of three children. He was predeceased by his mother, Pauline Allen Gill Clements, Bill Clements' first wife.^[8]

Death

On Memorial Day weekend in 2011, Clements died at age 94 in a Dallas hospital from natural causes. In addition to his wife Rita, Clements was survived by a daughter, Nancy Clements Seay.^[9]

See also

• Southern Methodist University football scandal

References

Further reading

• Bridges, Kenneth William. "The Twilight of the Texas Democrats: The 1978 Governor's Race," Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Texas, 2003, 281 pages; AAT 3117260 in Proquest

External links

• Papers of Governor William P. Clements at Texas A&M University
• Bill Clements at Find a Grave
• 'Bill Clements Dies at 94; Set Texas on G.O.P. Path', James C. McKinley, Jr., The New York Times, 30 May 2011