Power is the ability to make things happen.
The political system is so unwieldy, so rife with nuance, so studded with procedural obstacles, so vulnerable to popular whim, that power brokers are essential to the process. The 25 people on our list of the Texans with the most political clout at the state level owe their status to some combination of four assets that translate into power: money, institutional knowledge, relationships, and ideas.

This is the third such list that TEXAS MONTHLY has compiled in our 32-year history, but it bears little relation to the other two. The nature of political power has changed radically since our first compilation of power brokers, in 1976. At that time, power was almost exclusively the preserve of big business (banking, oil, Texas-based corporations and the law firms that served them) and big cities (nineteen of the twenty names on the list called Houston or Dallas home). The first list is replete with Texas icons: Leon Jaworski, the Watergate prosecutor; George R. Brown, the pipeline and construction magnate and LBJ benefactor; former governor John Connally, LBJ’s protégé; Robert Strauss, the lawyer and political kingmaker.

By the time we compiled our second list, in 1987, advancing age and declining energy prices had wiped out the old guard, leaving a power vacuum that money and clout alone could not fill. The new prototypes of Texas power were Ross Perot and Henry Cisneros, whose strength was not just riches and political influence but also ideas. Perot spearheaded the 1984 reform of the state’s public education system, which included the radical notion that passing in school was more important than passing in football, while Cisneros, as mayor of San Antonio, built a statewide following by stimulating the local economy and proving the truth of the old adage that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Today, political power is largely the province of operatives, not principals. The 1976 list was full of elder statesmen; the new list has none. Both of the previous lists were packed with household names; the new list has just one, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and she’s a special case: Her importance depends on whether she runs for governor and, if she is to make the list in future years, whether she wins. Not a single corporate leader appears on our list.

The amateur kingmakers of yesterday have been replaced by the political professionals of today. With Republicans in charge at the Capitol, business has more clout than it had in the nineties, but it’s too diverse to speak with a single voice, and its primary concerns are in Washington, not Austin. When companies’ interests are at risk, they hire operatives, just like everybody else. No can-do entrepreneurs walk the halls of the Capitol, as Perot once did. The members of today’s power club no longer call Houston and Dallas home. Most live and work in Austin.