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Article Excerpt
"IT WAS KIND OF LIKE I DIDN'T EXIST," Tom Craddick told me when I asked him what it was like to come to the House of Representatives as a 25-year-old Republican from Midland in 1969. He was isolated from his colleagues by age ("I bet the average age of the members today is fifteen years younger than it was then"), by how he spent his spare time ("They socialized at the Citadel Club; I built two car washes"), and most of all, by political party. Craddick was one of only 8 Republicans in the 150-member House. Gus Mutscher, the Democratic Speaker, appointed Craddick to the Committee on Enrolled and Engrossed Bills, a gulag for members who were out of favor. "I don't think we ever had a meeting," Craddick says. When Craddick ran for reelection, Mutscher took out a full-page ad in the Midland paper, citing him as the reason why the University of Texas' new Permian Basin campus was ticketed for Odessa instead of Midland and urging voters to elect his Democratic opponent.
Today, as you can see from his photograph, Tom Craddick is a happy guy. He completed a 34-year journey from ultimate outsider to ultimate insider by winning election in January as Speaker of the House--a position he pursued relentlessly and, some would say, ruthlessly for at...
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