Peggy Fikac

AUSTIN -- Ask Bill White how he got where he is today, and he doesn't talk about being elected Houston's mayor, forging a lucrative career in law and business or raising buckets of money for Bill Clinton back in the day.

Instead, he talks about registering voters in Hispanic neighborhoods on San Antonio's West Side as the teen-age son of schoolteacher parents. He segues to the 1973 oil embargo and its implications. He fast-forwards to the rush of evacuees that Hurricane Katrinasent to Houston, where as mayor he welcomed them with a "treat our neighbors as we would like to be treated" philosophy that sometimes put him out on a limb.

When I asked White to identify key turning points on a path that now has him seeking the Democratic nod for governor, he gave three - "besides," he was careful to note, "marriage and kids." They help form the case he presents to voters on the trail.

The progressive roots that he said prompted him to register voters while in high school show in his push to improve education. White cites the influence of family and of friends including former state Sen. Joe Bernal of San Antonio, who coached and was in a bowling league with his dad. White, as a legislative page, commuted to the Capitol with him. "I would be going back and forth with Joe every week from Austin when I was 13 years old and a page, and we would talk about the future of this state," White said, adding that Bernal, like his parents, "believed that the future of our state was ... educating and bringing into leadership our growing Hispanic population."

On energy, as White tells it, that progressive beginning was leavened by a conservative attitude toward "excessive" regulation of competitive markets. He's known for his push for air quality, and as mayor sought to crack down on pollution from companies that weren't even in city boundaries. But on domestic production and pricing, he said his regulatory views were shaped by the embargo.

"Before the 1973 embargo .. few people understood how important domestic production was to our national security," said White, who as a Harvard student (he had an American Legion scholarship) got a policy job with then-U.S. Rep. Bob Krueger in the embargo's wake. White said in studying the industry as a student he saw "the United States was pursuing policies with overregulation of the oil and gas business which encouraged imports and discouraged production of domestic fuels including clean natural gas."

Two decades later, Clinton named White deputy secretary of energy after White raised some $2 million for his campaign. When White left that post, he became state Democratic chairman, launched an oil and gas exploration company and later became an energy and real estate investor as CEO of Wedge Group. But he said he learned to work across party lines, and to advocate his views on the issue, starting with his work with Krueger.

"Often I had to battle those who thought, incorrectly, that consumers would benefit from more regulation," he said. "Although my political background began with people who were more progressive Democratic political figures ... I learned that it was important for consumers and national security to avoid overregulation where there's real competition, and the market should be free to work."

Overarching his political philosophy is a leadership style showcased when Houston welcomed Hurricane Katrina evacuees. He made it happen partly with housing vouchers initially secured with nothing more than, as Texas Monthly put it, "the full faith and credit of Mayor Bill." While some praise him for putting partisan politics aside as mayor, critics at times have called his style top-down and arrogant. In this case, it won him the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

White said he learned that Texans will answer an appeal to their values and their "deep reservoir of spiritual strength." He said it also showed, "Leadership involves far more than just passing a law or giving a speech. Leadership is organizing a community and all the resources of the community to accomplish a clearly defined objective that people buy into." Coming weeks will show if Democratic primary voters buy into White.

San Antonio Express-News
Jan. 17, 2010