Grandma goes electric

"Whether that sounds self-serving or like bullshit, it's not," Sanders says.

When Sanders discusses the political aspirations of his boss, his words also can't help but sound self-serving.

"There has not been a single discussion with anybody about her political plans or her political future," he says. "She's solely concentrating on doing a good job at this agency."

During her speech to the Heritage Foundation, however, it seemed as if Rylander was auditioning for another political race. Or maybe she just never stops campaigning. She touted herself as the "state traffic cop" looking for ways to cut government waste.

"My vision for the 21st century is paychecks and jobs for Texans, limited government and unlimited opportunity," she said. "My philosophy is quite simple. What we all need from government is less, not more. Less mandates, less regulation, less taxation, less government spending. Every single decision I make is based on that philosophy."

Those words aren't much different from those she offered in her run for comptroller. But in her D.C. speech, Rylander detoured to set off alarms that she may be campaigning for something new yet again. She told the Heritage Foundation that her national defense philosophy could be summed up in the words of gangster Al Capone, who once said, "You can get more done with kind words and a gun than you can with kind words."

"I don't want us to be held hostage by Iran or Iraq or any Middle East ayatollah ever again," Rylander said.

The Texas comptroller is involved in a lot of things. National defense policy is not one of them. Ambitious though she might be, one thing is certain: Rylander isn't running for president. But her governor is. And if Bush wins, that creates a scramble in Texas politics in 2002. Rylander could run for governor, but more conventional wisdom has her targeting the lieutenant governor's seat if incumbent Rick Perry, who will be elevated to governor in 2001 if Bush becomes president, runs to retain the chief executive post.

"It is premature and stupid in this current flux that we're in here in Texas politics to speculate," Sanders says. It's even more stupid, however, to think that a politician like Rylander isn't already obsessing.

Perhaps Rylander is auditioning for the U.S. Senate. She already tried to get to Congress once, losing in a 1986 election to represent Travis County in the U.S. House. To make that race, she switched parties and ran as a Republican. Last year U.S. Senator Phil Gramm took the extraordinary step of chairing Rylander's comptroller campaign. Wendy Gramm, the senator's wife, is one of the three people chairing Rylander's e-Texas. It's conceivable that Phil Gramm might not run for re-election in 2002 and is grooming Rylander as his successor.

Rylander, meanwhile, grooms e-Texas as a means to forge new political alliances and sidle up to those willing to contribute to her cause -- not necessarily her cause of "smaller, smarter government," as she likes to call it, but rather the cause of satisfying her own political ambition.