A.R. "Babe" Schwartz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A.R. "Babe" Schwartz is a former member of the Texas legislature. He served in the Texas House of Representatives from 1955 to 1959, and in the Texas Senate from 1960 to 1981, from Galveston. As a legislator, he had a reputation as a fiery liberal speaker and a wit. In her book "Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?," Ivins referred to Schwartz as a "white-maned pixie" and called him one of the legislature's "excellent orators." Texas Monthly named Schwartz one of the "Ten Best Legislators" four times. The first time, in 1973, the magazine called him "The most complex, remarkable man in the Senate" and "one of the most consistently influential members." During the 1979 legislative, helped lead the "Killer Bees," a group of state senators who brought the legislature to a standstill by going into hiding and breaking the Senate quorum. During his tenure as a lawmaker, he served on every major committee of the legislature, and served as the chairman of the Rules, Jurisprudence and Natural Resources Committees.
Schwartz was defeated in the 1980 election by J.E. "Buster" Brown, a candidate who was recruited by 29-year-old Karl Rove, who was working at the time for Texas governor Bill Clements. Schwartz became a lobbyist and legislative consultant on local, state and national issues. He has has appeared in the PBS documentary "Vote For Me: Politics in America" (1996) and "Bush's Brain" (2006).
In 1996, he began teaching Legislation and Coastal Zone Management Law at the University of Houston Law Center as an adjunct professor.
He remains a keen observer of Texas politics, and his comments have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, "60 Minutes" and many Texas newspapers and magazines. When Republican congressman Tom Delay was first indicted in October 2005, many commentators predicted that he would bounce back politically; Schwartz, however, told the New York Times that "He's been gut-shot politically," and was proved right.
Schwartz was born in 1926 in Galveston, and attended Texas A&M University and the University of Texas School of Law. He is married to the former Marilyn Cohn of Harlingen, Texas, and they have four sons: Bob and Dick Schwartz, both of whom live in Houston, John Schwartz, who lives in New Jersey, and Tom Schwartz, who lives in Florida.
