Politics and the Texas Legislature
Parliamentarian
Oveta Culp as parliamentarian of the Texas legislature. Photo © Houston Chronicle.
If I hadn’t been parliamentarian of the Texas Legislature, other things would never have been sparked. Twenty is a wonderful age for things to be sparked.
OVETA CULP HOBBY
A state legislature is a government group whose members discuss and plan policies they think will help the people in their state live better lives. This assembly can pass, amend, and repeal laws. In Texas, the legislature meets for almost five months, once every two years in every odd-numbered year, to write new laws and find solutions to the problems facing the state. The regular session normally lasts 140 days. The governor of Texas can also direct the legislature to meet at other times. These extra meetings are called “special sessions” and can last no more than 30 days. The special sessions deal only with issues chosen by the governor.
Over the many years Oveta accompanied her father to the Texas legislature, she learned about parliamentary procedure. Parliamentary procedure, also known as “rules of order,” is the body of rules many different types of organizations follow that helps them make collective decisions in a fair manner. These rules tell the order in which people are allowed to speak, and also how proposals, called bills, are brought before the group for discussion and voting.
These rules are necessary to help keep the actions flowing in a civilized manner, without outbreaks of yelling, arguments, and fighting. Like a game of chess, which has certain rules one must follow to win, parliamentary procedure outlines the rules that a group must follow to reach a decision together. Organizations follow parliamentary procedure to debate and reach group decisions—usually by a vote—with the least possible friction. Because people might have strong differing opinions about the same topic, the rules of order make it possible for everyone to be fairly heard and the issues given an impartial hearing. Parliamentary procedures are the rules governing the game of politics.
Oveta attended Mary Hardin-Baylor College for one year before moving to Austin. By the age of eighteen, Oveta became even busier. She often took advantage of opportunities to learn new things. For instance, she taught school for a short time in Rogers, Texas. She still read law in her father’s office and accompanied him to the House of Representatives, but during the summer vacation, she worked in the circulation department of the Houston Post. The Houston Post was a large newspaper that was to later play a pivotal role in her life.
After her summer stint at the newspaper in Houston, Oveta accepted a position as a staff person in the governor’s campaign headquarters of Dan Moody. Dan Moody was the Texas attorney general at the time, and he would be elected governor of Texas in 1926. While serving in Moody’s campaign headquarters, Oveta had a firsthand look at the elections process and political campaigns. All these activities laid the groundwork for her future.
Soon, she announced her intention to attend the University of Texas to study law. And attend classes at the University of Texas Law School she did, but Oveta wasn’t allowed to officially enroll, because the law school didn’t allow women in their formal curriculum.
Meanwhile, back at the state legislature, the parliamentarian, the person responsible for ensuring that proper rules are followed by the state legislators during their meetings, was unable to perform his duties during a special session because of classes he needed to attend at the University of Texas. Oveta, due to her extensive knowledge of and exposure to the many legislative sessions at the Austin capitol, was appointed to take his place. In fact, Oveta was one year shy of the legal voting age, twenty-one, when she received word that she would be selected for the permanent parliamentarian position. By the time the House voted on her nomination later in the year, she had turned twenty-one. It was Oveta’s job to make sure the politicians followed proper procedures in debating and voting on public matters. She sat next to the speaker of the house at the head of the room.
This appointment began Oveta’s long career as parliamentarian of the Texas legislature. By the end of her tenure, Oveta had served as the parliamentarian in four regular sessions and eleven special sessions of the Texas legislature, under four different speakers of the house. She was the first woman ever to hold the distinguished position as parliamentarian in the Texas House of Representatives. Little did she know at the time that she was destined to be the first woman in other, bigger roles later in her life.
Oveta’s role as parliamentarian brought her to the attention of many Texas politicians of the day. Because the legislature typically ran from January until May, every other year Oveta had to find other work to support herself. She moved back to Houston in 1928 and worked as the secretary of the Democratic Club to help plan the National Democratic Convention to be held in Houston later that year. Oveta said she was only a “flunky” in that job, doing everything nobody else wanted to do.1 However, she did more than that. She sat in on the convention and drank in every word she heard.
Oveta then held a series of positions, among them working on Tom Connally’s U.S. senatorial campaign, as well as on a Houston mayoral campaign. In these roles she learned the inner workings of political campaigning and running for office as an elected official.
In October 1929, the stock market crashed, starting a time in U.S. history known as the Great Depression. This period was characterized by high unemployment. Between legislative sessions, Oveta had landed a job as a clerk for the Texas Banking Commission. One of the outcomes of the Great Depression was that many banks failed. Not enough people were repaying their loans because they were out of work, so the banks could not keep the required amount of money on hand to remain solvent.
There was a serious lack of bank examiners to help deal with all the failing banks. One day, the banking commissioner said to Oveta, “Miss Culp, I want you to examine a bank in Temple.”
“But commissioner,” she replied. “I’m not a bank examiner.”
“You are now,” said the commissioner, and off Oveta went to Temple.2 By the time she ended her employment with the State Banking Commission, she had catalogued the entire code of banking laws for the state of Texas.
Oveta’s next political work was in Jim Young’s campaign for governor. Jim Young was an old friend of the Culp family. This position took Oveta to Dallas, where she met other young women who were also interested in politics. Among them was a young attorney by the name of Sarah T. Hughes, who encouraged Oveta to run for the legislature. Sarah T. Hughes then ran for and served several terms as a district judge in Dallas County. Even though Jim Young’s campaign for governor ended in defeat, Oveta’s friends in Houston urged her to return to Houston and run for a legislative position in Harris County.3
When Oveta was twenty-five, she did run for a seat in the Texas legislature, position number 5 from Harris County. The primary election was held July 26, 1930, and Oveta ran her race as a Democrat. Her campaign faced several obstacles. She was young and not well known in Houston, and Harris County had never named a woman to a state office. Her work in Jim Young’s losing campaign proved a handicap, as well. Her opponent managed to defeat her by labeling her both a “Unitarian and a parliamentarian.”
The word “parliamentarian” was perhaps misunderstood by most voters, and Oveta’s opponent made it sound very dark and sinister. He suggested that no right-thinking man or woman would want anyone like that to represent him in the legislature.4 Unfortunately, the majority of the voters were influenced in a negative way by the political name-calling, and Oveta was defeated.
Oveta was too honest to say she didn’t mind the defeat. She did. It was the first real setback she had met, and it dismayed her. Though it was the first and last time she ever ran for public office, she made many friends, both personal and political, who served her well in the future.