Out of Comptrol

A Converted Democrat's Improbable Quest to Save Texas Politics

Mike Collier

• Publisher: River Grove Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781632990983
• eBook ISBN: 9781632991188
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Independent Publisher Gold Award Winner, South-Best Regional Non-Fiction ?Mike Collier knew he was fighting an uphill battle. A retired PwC partner and a CPA with 25 years of experience, Mike was the logical choice for Texas State Comptroller—the chief financial officer of the second largest state in America.  But he stood on principle and quit the Republican Party to run as a corruption-fighting Texas Democrat in a state that only elects Republicans.  Because he dislikes intolerance and overreach, Mike successfully reached across the aisle and garnered support from Republicans and Democrats alike by campaigning on fiscal responsibility. But he lost the election to a rice farmer who was hand picked by the Republican Party, a political machine whose bad-for-Texas antics Mike brings to life through his stories from the campaign trail. IPPY Award Winner Out of Comptrol details the difficult but exhilarating path of a modern political campaign, from the decision to try to make a difference to fundraising, stump speaking, and TV jitters. With personality and humor, Mike offers first an outsider’s and then a tenacious insider’s view of Texas politics. His excitement and frustration make Mike's experience a story you won't forget. Updated in 2019 with his take on the close race for lieutenant governor!

1

My Texas History

My connection to the great state of Texas began forty-two years ago. I remember it vividly.

On a February day in 1975, my brother Tom and I were horsing around in the basement of our home in southwestern Pennsylvania. My father came to the top of the stairs and called down that he wanted to see each of us, one at a time, starting with Tom.

Dad is a commanding presence, more than six feet tall and more than two hundred pounds, all muscle. He started his working life as an apprentice to a tool and die maker before he decided to earn a college degree, the first ever in his family. It took him twelve years of very hard work, raising his family by day and taking college classes at night. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, working his way into management at Westing-house by being smart, tough, and fair. My brother and I have always idolized him, and whenever he gave an order, we followed it and didn’t waste any time.

Tom started walking slowly up the stairs. Neither of us had any idea what was coming, although I suspected that Dad was going to brief us on the facts of life. From Dad, you’d expect a briefing, even on this most delicate subject. And if you knew Dad, it wouldn’t surprise you that both of his sons got this briefing on the same evening, despite the fact that Tom was a junior in high school and I was in the eighth grade. It would be more efficient, he knew, to have the talk once.

While Tom was upstairs, I braced myself for what was sure to be a terribly awkward experience, already knowing most of what I was about to learn.

Tom came down the stairs looking pale. With neither of us saying a word, we passed each other, and I climbed the stairs.

Dad was standing in the bedroom that Tom and I shared. He looked plenty serious. I took my seat on the edge of the bed and tried to appear as nonchalant as possible. Dad began to speak.

“Mike, I’ve been asked to transfer to Texas.”

What a relief, was my first thought.

“The move, if we go, will be this fall. You’ll start the school year in Texas. Your younger brother and sister don’t know yet, so we’re not going to say anything for a little while. Do you have any questions?”

I looked out the window. It was one of those priceless Pennsylvania evenings when the snow covered everything lightly and the moon made it all so beautiful. We lived in the country, in a very hilly (some would say mountainous) part of Pennsylvania, about twenty miles from Pittsburgh and about forty miles from West Virginia. At age fourteen, I only had two deer hunting seasons under my belt after years of biding my time, wandering the woods and pretending with a BB gun, until I could hunt legally. What’s more, I’d just raised enough paper route money to buy a Remington 30-06 deer rifle with a Leupold 4x scope. It was my pride and joy, and deer hunting—and our little mountains, and snow—were my passions. I couldn’t believe we’d leave what I thought was a hunter’s paradise.

I looked at Dad and asked, “When do you need my answer?”

He rolled his head back and laughed a great, warm, loving laugh. “I’m not asking, I’m telling.”

The die was cast.

From that moment until August of that year when we moved out, I spent a lot of time looking at maps of Texas and reading whatever I could get my hands on about the state. I was relieved to read that Texas had deer hunting, as well as a place they called the Hill Country in the Austin area, where we were going to live. And although I knew it was hot in Texas in the summer, I learned that in the winter it snowed every once in a while.

What’s more, deer hunting was done differently in Texas than it was in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, you hunted wherever you wanted to, and so many hunters preferred to hunt in the same spots that it almost seemed crowded at times. In Texas, by contrast, hunters bought a deer lease and property owners, usually ranchers, controlled how many hunters had access to their property. I liked the idea, particularly because I thought I’d be less likely to get shot.

Okay, I thought, I think I can make this work.

We drove to Texas in August and by the time we arrived in Georgetown, a small town north of Austin (Austin at that time was just a small town north of San Antonio), I loved the place. Rural, beautiful, free, and friendly are words that came to mind.

We came to Texas during the later stages of the first technology wave that hit Texas in the 1970s. The state was attractive to industries that were looking for new places to set up shop. Land was plentiful, housing was inexpensive, and its beauty made it easy to persuade employees and their families to relocate there. It had some great universities, which meant that it was a talent magnet. And its leaders invested the state’s oil wealth to support tuition, which meant that lots of people—including me and my siblings—could attend those universities. Texas seemed like paradise.

We settled in, and all the Collier kids did well. Tom was the first to go to college, dashing off to Texas A&M University to study engineering. I graduated next and went to the University of Texas at Austin to study music. My sister Patty went to UT as well, and my little brother Jim went to East Texas State University. Our middle-class parents didn’t have to drown themselves in debt to pull this off. We felt like the luckiest people on earth.

At UT, I played trumpet in various orchestras and classical ensembles. I also marched in the Longhorn Band, and I loved it. LHB, as we called it, gave me opportunities that would never have been possible—meeting all kinds of people and traveling nationally. Having been raised first in rural Pennsylvania and then in rural Central Texas, I was a hayseed, as the saying goes. But thanks to LHB, I felt as if I had finally stepped out onto the world’s stage.

LHB even marched in President Ronald Reagan’s inaugural parade, thanks to an invitation from Texas’s own Vice President George H. W. Bush. It was a very cold day, and the parade had been delayed due to the timing of the Iranian hostage release. When we finally got started, the sun was going down, and when we turned the corner on Pennsylvania Avenue and saw the reviewing stand in the distance, it was literally glowing under huge, Hollywood-style spotlights. I had never seen anything like it. President Reagan looked every bit the movie star, and I distinctly remember that it was the lighting that made all the difference in the world.

A few months later, I was headed into a rehearsal on the UT campus when a friend of mine rushed toward me and asked if I’d heard that the president had been shot only a few hours before. I hadn’t heard, focused as I’d been on rehearsing my difficult trumpet part. Besides, I had no interest in politics. As far as I was concerned, Reagan was nothing more than a well-lit movie star acting as the president.

But later that night in the dorm I turned on the TV and was amazed by all that I saw. Secretary of State Alexander Haig made his famous “I am in control here” comment,¹ which got everyone talking about the presidential succession and the Constitution. Commentators were analyzing the stock market’s reaction to the crisis. Defense analysts were bantering about the national security implications of a wounded president. There was all the drama of not knowing precisely where the vice president was, and whether we’d lost contact with him and for how long, and so forth. I found the whole thing mesmerizing. Overnight I become so fascinated by the inner workings of politics and commerce, and the way things actually worked in the real world, that suddenly I lost all interest in a career as a musician.

Problem was, I had no idea what I wanted to do instead.

A very close friend and fellow trumpet player, Cameron Chandler, had already switched his major to petroleum land management. The oil companies had designed the degree in order to help train new landmen, and UT had developed a specific degree plan around it. A landman’s job is to handle the oil and gas leases that allow oil companies to drill and produce oil. I liked the degree plan because it combined law, business, and science; since I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I valued the variety. There had to be something in there that would appeal to me, I thought. So I followed Cameron’s lead, changed majors, and began studying to become a petroleum landman.

With two years remaining at UT, I was walking across campus thinking about something I had just read in the newspaper related to some international crisis and how President Reagan was handling it. Prone to worrying as I am, I thought to myself that I sure hope our elected leaders know what they are doing. And suddenly, it hit me: Political leaders have to come from somewhere! If we want good political leaders, then good people need to make the decision to go into politics.

To say I felt a surge of ambition that instant is an understatement. It was a rush, probably the kind of feeling some people might describe as a calling.

I talked about my feeling around this time with a very close friend, Chuck Doty. Chuck had already graduated from UT and was flying fighter jets for the US Navy. We were sitting at the Driskill Hotel bar in Austin one day when I began to talk about running for office later in life. I went back and forth over whether I would run as a Republican or a Democrat when Chuck interrupted me. He said something that would stick with me the rest of my life.

“Every young man dreams of making a difference,” he said, “but few actually do. You’ll never run for office, Mike, because you’ll end up with a mortgage and children and responsibilities. You’ll never be in a position to actually do it.”

Chuck was smarter than me, and I thought deeply about what he said. But my feelings about politics were stronger than he gave me credit for at the time. I still thought of it as a calling, although less like a religious calling and more like the awakening of what I knew would be a lifelong aspiration. It wasn’t an aspiration to become famous or powerful like President Reagan, who by then I had come to respect. It was an aspiration to do some good in the world, to work on public policy matters with competence and integrity.

Overnight I developed an obsession with reading newspapers, reading history, and watching CNN (cable news had just burst on the scene, and I was addicted). It felt almost involuntary, as if I was drawn to prepare myself for the work ahead, whatever work that might be.

Along the way I heard political leaders say that everyone should, at some stage in their life, involve themselves in public policy. I always took that to mean ordinary citizens should learn something useful in the private sector, spend some time in government trying to make things better, and not stay too long. That idea always appealed to me.

Just before graduation I met Congressman Bill Archer at a reception in his honor. He was a powerful and popular congressman from the Houston area, and I was determined to meet him. The Longhorn Band was playing in the background, and during a short break I had no difficulty getting close, shaking his hand, introducing myself, and telling him that I had an interest in politics. I asked him for his advice. He gave it to me in no uncertain terms.

“Get a job,” he said. “Launch a career, start a family, buy a house. Do all those things first, and then if you want to run for office, do it.”

I thought his advice was excellent, and I decided to follow it.

Exxon hired me as a landman when I finished my degree. I was as proud as I could be, but I knew that a career as a landman wasn’t for me. Being a landman is a great job, and you can make great money. I have a number of friends who are landmen, and I respect the role they play in the energy industry. But I found the job to be one-dimensional, and I couldn’t see it as a means of developing my resume, the know-how, and the contacts I needed to make the kind of contribution I wanted to make in public life.

So after two years and one promotion, I went back to UT to earn an MBA and take my career in a new direction. I had considered trying to get into Harvard, but with the state of Texas underwriting the cost of the degree, it made much more sense for me to stay in Texas. Besides, I loved UT from my undergraduate days, and I could hardly wait to get back on campus.

In the MBA program, I concentrated on finance and accounting, and I knew very quickly that I’d made the right decision. I found that I loved financial and statistical analysis and that, for me, the process of digging through data and understanding what it all meant was joyful and important. I loved cutting through statements like “everyone knows this” or “everyone knows that” and forming my own opinion based on the facts. I loved it so much that I briefly considered a career in academia, one where I could specialize in some area of financial analysis and spend my time researching and writing.

But instead, I met Suzanne Laskowski, a history major at UT. We were introduced on a blind date, and I fell in love the minute I saw her. It took her a little time to decide she liked me too. But soon we became serious, and after graduation, I knew that I wanted to make money so that we could get married and start a family. I decided that rather than toying with the idea of a PhD, I’d better start my career.

I stumbled onto Price Waterhouse (now known as PwC) by pure happenstance: A friend from the MBA program took a job there and told me about it. He worked as an auditor, a job that involves researching and confirming client companies’ financial statements. I loved the sound of it, and I managed to convince the PwC partners in Austin to hire me as an entry-level auditor. While other MBA grads were pulling down almost six figures in their first jobs after graduation, I took the PwC job at a fraction of that. It just seemed like the right thing to do; I saw it as a way to continue investing in my career.

Auditing a company involves reporting to the company’s board of directors about whether the management team is accounting and reporting its finances properly and completely. In practice, it means going into the client company, analyzing data, asking tough questions, and reporting on what is really happening. I learned to love the job, and I was good at it. Little did I know at the time that I was building the very skill set I would need to work on the most vexing public policy issue we would face in my lifetime: public finance.

PwC required all accounting professionals to become certified public accountants before they could be promoted to manag...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Prologue
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: My Texas History
• Chapter 2: Republican or Democrat?
• Chapter 3: “Your Party Is Doomed!”
• Chapter 4: Okay, Maybe I Am Crazy (Angry?) Enough
• Chapter 5: Jason Stanford
• Chapter 6: Well, Chuck, I Proved You Wrong
• Chapter 7: Bracing for Launch
• Chapter 8: Call Time
• Chapter 9: Hazing the Rookie
• Chapter 10: A Star Is Born
• Chapter 11: Discovering Texas, One Phone Call at a Time
• Chapter 12: Does the Dark Side Tempt You?
• Chapter 13: Signs of Life
• Chapter 14: Any Stump Will Do
• Chapter 15: The Republican Candidates
• Chapter 16: The Collier-Brigham-Smith #1
• Chapter 17: The Money Game
• Chapter 18: Meeting with the Tea Party
• Chapter 19: Convention Madness
• Chapter 20: The Watchdog Tour
• Chapter 21: Late Summer Doldrums
• Chapter 22: Labor Day
• Chapter 23: To Get Along, Just Go Along
• Chapter 24: Showdown at the Dallas Morning News
• Chapter 25: Rigged, at Almost Every Turn
• Chapter 26: Corruption
• Chapter 27: The Down-Ballot Boys
• Chapter 28: All in the Family
• Chapter 29: My Fifteen Minutes of Fame
• Chapter 30: The Debate
• Chapter 31: Home Stretch
• Chapter 32: Election Day
• Chapter 33: Listening Tour
• Chapter 34: Just Wait
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Newspaper Endorsements
• Notes
• About the Author