Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 238 implicit objective to affect the direction of some public policies in Texas. I joined the board just as Dr. James Leininger was leaving the chairmanship. Jeff Judson had been president and chief executive for just a couple of years. It was an economically dangerous, albeit exciting, period of transition. After setting the ideological course of the organization and finding the right executive, raising the funds to run it was, to me, the board’s main responsibility. 1998 was an election year. Most, but not all, of the candidates that TPPF and I supported were Republican. In the November 1998 elections, for the first time since Reconstruction, the Republican Party had won all the statewide elective offices and acquired control of the Texas Senate. TPPF used the occasion to stage an inaugural banquet attended by most of the new state leaders, who proclaimed adherence to our limited government views. The fact that we were able to pull this off catapulted the organization to a new level of credibility in the state. My direct exposure to the process of passing laws during the 1999 legislative session qualified me to be a better board member. It helped me understand with crystal clarity that often candidates’ pre-election talk does not translate to post-election action. Therefore, the need to maintain the intellectual connection established before election after electoral victory is very important. Pragmatically speaking, the line between policy research and lobbying can blur very rapidly. Thus, TPPF’s job is first to provide the intellectual thrust to lift the veils obscuring the issues and then to help legislators apply the conclusions of the research into writing the law. In my view Jeff Judson manages these dual responsibilities with great success. As I stated many times before, the importance of economic philosophy among elected officials is very high, but in the presence of strong lobbyists it can be relegated to less important planes. The enormous complexity of divergent points of view, different interests, avoidance of un-intended results and broad nature of viable interpretations of the role of government in specific instances, make it very difficult to write a law purely from the philosophical angle. It is this gray area from which many relatively different laws, possibly all generally friendly to creative free enterprise, may come out. This gray and undefined area of semi-acceptable political action is the hunting ground for the lobby. The larger the area is the more the lobby likes it. This is where the strong win and the weak lose; it is an area where money is the ultimate weapon. Only large resources can direct enough and constant pressure on lawmakers to make them focus on the issue and help them see it in a certain way. We, the people interested in specific laws, provide the ammo (money) and the lobbyists are the trained gunners. They are expensive! In my view, the preceding assertion does not minimize the role or importance of the TPPF, which is not a lobbying organization. Much to the contrary, it serves to point out how important it is to define more narrowly the sometimes wide-open philosophical right-of-way within which lawmakers chose to act. In rare moments of confidential Autobiography.doc 238 of 239
Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 239 conversation more than one of my elected friends have expressed frustration at their impotence vis-à-vis the lobbies they sometimes confront. The smaller the gray area in which they can operate, the fewer lobbyists there will be. And therefore, the less money will be needed to pass a specific law. Thus, the importance of the work done by organizations such as TPPF acquires relevance in two aspects. The first, as I said above, is in more clearly defining libertarian economic-philosophy boundaries within which elected officials write the law. The second is creating awareness among all elected officials of the implications of their own announced pro-free enterprise philosophy. A strong sense of personal inner conviction becomes extremely important in the case of close votes in legislative procedures. To help form strong pro-free enterprise convictions among elected officials and to see that they apply them in writing new laws are the most important purposes I see for my involvement with the TPPF. I want to help elected officials at all levels of government develop a keen sense of what the genius of America is. I want to help them vote to preserve the America that gave me the opportunity to develop my dreams. They must be aware that they, more than any other citizen, are responsible to preserve the genius of America. Autobiography.doc 239 of 239
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Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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