Elected 1994, term expires Jan. 2003 Born: July 6, 1946, New Haven, CT Home: Austin Education: Yale U., B.A. 1968, Harvard U., M.B.A. 1975 Religion: Methodist Marital Status: married (Laura)

Career:

• Professional: Founder & CEO, Bush Exploration Oil & Gas Co., 1975-87; Sr. Advisor, Bush Presidential Camp., 1988; Managing Gen. Partner, Texas Rangers baseball org., 1989-98.
• Military: TX Air Natl. Guard, 1968-73.

Office: State Capitol, P.O. Box 12428, Austin 78711, 512-463-2000; Fax: 512-463-1849; Web: www.state.tx.us.

George W. Bush is governor of the nation's second largest state, arguably the most popular governor of any big state, and by mid-1999 was far ahead in national polls for the Republican presidential nomination and for the presidency itself. Yet outside Texas he was still known primarily as the son of President George Bush and as a big state governor who won re-election with 68% of the vote. Born when his father was an undergraduate at Yale, Bush grew up in a modest ranch house in Midland, when it was a fast-growing, rough and tumble Permian Basin oil boom town. Soon after his parents moved to Houston in 1960, Bush went east to school, where he was uncomfortable with the radicalism of late 1960s Yale College and the trendy leftism of mid-1970s Harvard Business School. He returned to Texas, became a fighter pilot in the Air National Guard, got into the oil business in Midland and ran for Congress in 1978. He lost that race 53%-47% to Kent Hance, then a Democrat from Lubbock: rural West Texas wasn't yet ready for a Midland Republican. Bush's business career wasn't spectacularly successful. He did better as a political adviser to his father in 1988 and after, and as the 2% owner and managing director of the Texas Rangers baseball team. He supervised the building of the attractive Ballpark at Arlington and, when the team was sold in June 1998, his original $600,000 investment was, with the help of a bonus for his work as managing director, turned into some $15 million.

After his father's defeat in 1992, Bush decided to run for governor. He brought his nervous intensity to the race and a determination to discuss specifics of state issues in a way that illustrated sensitivity to the texture of everyday life--just the opposite of his father's perceived uninterest in domestic issues and distance from ordinary life. In heavy personal campaigning he consistently called for tougher sentences for criminals, adult prison for violent offenders as young as 14, limiting welfare benefits to two years and requiring job training, and limiting punitive damages in lawsuits. He did not pick an easy opponent. Ann Richards, first known nationally for her keynote speech attacking George Bush in 1988 (''born with a silver foot in his mouth''), had been elected in 1990 after a grueling campaign and had proved popular in office. Richards pushed through a state lottery and a corporate income tax, but stoutly opposed any income tax; she got increased minimum sentences for murder and a new school finance formula to respond to court orders. She hosted Mexico's President Carlos Salinas and campaigned for NAFTA. Yet Richards unaccountably failed to sound the positive, triumphalist note she might have. In public she called George W. Bush ''shrub'' and referred to him as ''some jerk who's running for public office,'' while he was careful always to refer to her as Governor Richards. While Richards launched late attacks on Bush and was endorsed by Ross Perot, Bush stuck with his message, ''Take a stand for Texas values.'' The opinion polls were close from spring on, so it was a bit of a surprise when Bush won 53%-46%.

Texas's legislature meets for 140 days every two years, with key roles being played by the speaker, Democrat Pete Laney, and lieutenant governor, Democrat Bob Bullock, who remained leader of the Senate even after Republicans won a majority there in 1996. In his session, Bush, working closely with Bullock and Laney, was exceedingly successful in enacting his programs. Bush got the legislature to pass tort reform, limiting punitive damages and changing some rules, though not imposing loser-pays. He passed a bill giving much more autonomy to local school districts, though initially none took advantage of it; he endorsed a 1994 commission's recommendation for tough accountability standards and regular testing, and over the next few years Texas's TAAS tests showed noticeable improvement in scores. He got welfare reform limiting benefits and requiring job training, though it did include his proposal for a cutoff after two children, and the Clinton Administration denied a waiver in May 1997 to allow welfare services to be provided by faith-based charities. The legislature also passed a law enabling law-abiding citizens to get a permit to carry concealed weapons. In his second session, in 1997, Bush was not so successful. He started off with an ambitious plan to cut property taxes by 40% and to raise the sales tax and business taxes. Court rulings have been threatening Texas, like many other states, with drastic action because of school districts' widely varying property tax bases. But Bush could not put the different sides together, and in May 1997 settled for a $1 billion property tax cut funded by budget savings. He signed a health care bill providing easier payment for emergency care, direct access to obstetricians and gynecologists, 48-hour hospital stays after childbirth, and a ban on retaliation by HMOs against physicians who file complaints.

Going into the 1998 campaign cycle, Bush's poll ratings were exceedingly high; for a while Democrats thought about running no candidate at all against him. The eventual Democratic nominee was Land Commissioner Garry Mauro, an old friend of Bill Clinton best known for his high-profile environmental campaigns, including the ''Adopt-a-Beach'' program. But despite numerous appearances by the Clintons, Mauro lagged far behind in money (in early August Bush had $14.5 million on hand and Mauro $220,000) and polls (the July Texas Poll had Bush ahead 67%-20%). Bullock, a veteran Democrat and godfather to one of Mauro's children, endorsed Bush; as he said later, ''I've served under seven governors, and Bush is the best I've served under. It just does not make sense to retire a responsive and proven leader.''

Much of the campaign concentrated on the 3.9 million voters who are Hispanics. The 1994 exit poll showed Bush with 24% of Hispanic votes; he said he hoped to win 40% in 1998. He traveled frequently to heavily Hispanic areas, including faraway El Paso and the Lower Rio Grande Valley; he kept in touch with and hosted Mexico's President Ernesto Zedillo and the governors of the four adjoining Mexican states; he spoke Spanish serviceably enough to engage in repartee with voters and to conduct a press conference outside the Foreign Ministry in Mexico City. He opposed national Republicans' policy of eliminating aid to legal immigrants, opposed use of military troops to patrol the border and took a characteristically consensus-minded stand on bilingual education. ''There is a great debate about bilingualism. Remember, the goal is to teach children how to read and write and add and subtract in English. And here is my position loud and clear. We are going to measure it, and if the bilingual program serves to teach our children English, then we ought to say thank you very much and leave it in place. And if the bilingual program does not achieve state objectives, we must say change the program, eliminate the program because what we want is for every single child to get the gateway to freedom and that is called English.'' A portion of his ad budget was devoted to Spanish language radio and television, some of it featuring a song, ''Juntos con Bush (Together with Bush),'' written and sung by Tejano star Emilio Nivaria.

Less prominently, he worked to make sure that Republicans won up and down the ballot. Bush has refused to campaign against Democratic legislators who supported his program, but he did exert himself for Republican candidates in open legislative seats. Behind the scenes, he worked hard for the Republican lieutenant governor candidate, Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry, who was running against the Democrats' strongest candidate, Comptroller John Sharp; they overlapped at Texas A&M, where Sharp was student body president and Perry a cheerleader. A Sharp victory would have made a Bush presidential candidacy awkward (as a Democratic lieutenant governor did for California Governor Pete Wilson in 1996). Perry's fundraisers included one other potential Republican national candidate (John McCain) but also featured George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush; he beat Sharp 50%-48%. In the race for attorney general--important for its significance for tort reform--Bush forces backed former Supreme Court Justice John Cornyn who ultimately beat Barry Williamson, former railroad commissioner, in the runoff. Cornyn then beat former Congressman and Attorney General Jim Mattox, a loud populist, 54%-44%.

Bush's victory margin was in line with the polls, 68%-31%; he is the first Texas governor to win a second consecutive four-year term. He won almost across the board, carrying 239 counties and losing 15. The VNS exit poll showed him trailing among Hispanics by the statistically insignificant margin of 50%-49%; polls by the Willie Velasquez Institute showed him winning 39% of Hispanics statewide and by a UT-El Paso professor 37% in El Paso County. In any case it was an impressive showing: Texas Hispanics have been heavily Democratic for years. The VNS exit poll also showed Bush winning 27% of votes from blacks--unusually high for a Republican. He carried men and women, all income and age and education groups by wide margins. Republicans won all seven statewide offices, for the first time. But Bush did not necessarily have coattails: Perry and Cornyn won only about 30% of Hispanic votes, for instance, and Republicans gained only three seats in the state House and lost one in the state Senate. The state's basic Republican preference is closer to Cornyn's 54% than Bush's 68%. But Bush's performance was certainly enough to recommend him as a candidate for president.

In his disciplined manner, Bush tried not to let his looming presidential candidacy overshadow the 1999 session of the legislature. ''We can either view it as a distraction, or seize it as an opportunity to show the world what limited and constructive government looks like,'' he said. He took few out-of-state trips, although at the Washington National Governors Association meeting, Montana's Marc Racicot, Massachusetts's Paul Cellucci, and Michigan's John Engler led a move that got a majority of Republican governors endorsing him for president; and he formed an exploratory committee in March, which raked in huge contributions. His 1999 budget program included a $2 billion property tax cut; the legislature cut that back, as state revenue estimates slipped, but it was mostly enacted. He also cut the franchise tax on small businesses, pointing out that most new small businesses in Texas are owned by Hispanics, and eliminated the sales tax on disposable diapers, children's over-the-counter medicine and, for two weeks in August, children's clothes. He called for a research and development tax credit. Democratic legislators blocked his call for a pilot program of school vouchers for poor students, but he had more success on his call for blocking social promotion and holding back children who consistently fail TAAS exams. He also got parental notification for abortions of minors.

After the legislature adjourned on May 31, Bush planned mid-June trips to Iowa and New Hampshire. In 1998 he was already talking about ''compassionate conservatism,'' and in March 1999 he said: ''It is conservative to cut taxes and compassionate to give people more money to spend. It is conservative to insist upon local control of schools and high standards and results. It is compassionate to make sure every single child learns to read and no one is left behind.'' His hostility to what he regards as the culture of the 1960s came out in a 1998 campaign ad: ''Whether for government or individuals, I believe in accountability and responsibility. For too long, we've encouraged a culture that says if it feels good, do it, and blame somebody else if you've got a problem. We've got to change our culture to one based on responsibility.'' Bush is plainly uncomfortable with winging it on issues, as Bill Clinton does so often and with so much flair. In 1998 and 1999 he quietly brought to Austin experts in foreign and domestic policy for what amounted to tutorials--foreign policy experts like George Shultz, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Zoellick, Richard Perle, Condoleezza Rice and domestic policy experts like Larry Lindsay, Stephen Goldsmith, James Q. Wilson, John DiIulio, Michael Boskin. But in early 1999 he only started to enunciate his own stands on these matters. He quickly supported the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in March 1999, but seemed uncomfortable going farther; a week later he said the need for a stable Europe and the refugee crisis made it imperative to win the war. He continued to oppose abortion, but said that abolishing it was an unrealistic goal, and backed the partial-birth abortion ban and parental consent. In June 1999 he took the Americans for Tax Reform pledge against tax increases. Bush's positions on many national issues were not known in May 1999, but his record in Texas has been open to public view and he has not been shy about declaring general principles. As for his character--perhaps the most important consideration in a post-Clinton election--voters may feel they know more about him than they do about his contenders, since they already know his family.

Election Results
1998 general	George W. Bush (R)	2,550,821	(68%)
	Garry Mauro (D)	1,165,592	(31%)
	Other	21,665	(1%)
1998 primary	George W. Bush (R)	576,528	(97%)
	Other	20,311	(3%)
1994 general	George W. Bush (R)	2,350,994	(53%)
	Ann Richards (D)	2,016,928	(46%)