Go West

In 1997, West crafted the state's top 10 percent law, which is credited for boosting minority enrollment at the University of Texas at Austin, along with other public colleges. The law says that any student who graduates in the top 10 percent of his or her class is automatically admitted into a state university in Texas. West backed it after a federal court struck down admission decisions based on race; his law, however, slides around the affirmative action ban by giving minority students at poorly run inner-city schools an easier path to college than their well-heeled suburban counterparts. Republican legislators have tried to toss it out or water down the bill ever since, but West has successfully defended it each time.

Of course, the merits of West's bill are up for debate. Officials at the University of Texas say it has forced them to accept too many students from within the state, while kids at suburban schools say the law forces them to cut down on their extracurricular activities to focus exclusively on grades.

Two years after West authored the top 10 bill, Texas Monthly named him one of the "10 Best Legislators in Texas." In 2001, West drafted a bill that in essence outlawed racial profiling, and later he promoted legislation that provided stipends to grandparents raising grandchildren. Last year, West was a member of the joint House and Senate negotiating team that passed the widely heralded school finance bill that helped the state comply with a court order to change how it funds public education. The bill involved balancing the interests of the state's rich and poor districts and their competing legislators.

"If not for Royce West, we would not have been able to pass a bill," says state Senator Leticia Van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat. "We would have been in special session after special session."

State Senator Florence Shapiro, the Republican chair of the Education Committee that crafted the school finance bill, also credits West for his role in ending—at least for now—the long-running drama over how to fund poor districts without unduly penalizing the wealthier ones. The two make an unlikely pair, she a Plano Republican and he a Democrat from southern Dallas. But if the two aren't exactly ideological soul mates, they get along surprisingly well.

"He was involved in every step of the process with me," she says. "He was my confidante and someone I have a very high regard for."

Although West has fought for distinctly Democratic values, he has developed the ability to work well with Republicans like Shapiro. That's helped him win approval and millions of dollars in funding for a University of North Texas campus in southern Dallas, on the DeSoto line, a rare serving of pork that might actually be worth its weight.

"That is one of his main accomplishments," says Shaw, a political analyst for dallasblog.com. "Royce worked on that deal for years. He had that vision when none of us could see what the hell he was talking about. That was his baby; he fought for it. He went from Washington to Denton to Dallas to Austin.

"Fifteen years from now if there are 30,000 students there, that will be one of the biggest parts of his legacy."

Although West can play the role of the partisan firebrand, he embodies the Tip O'Neill style of politics, in which you fight like hell for your side during the day and make peace at night.

Shapiro says that at her father's recent funeral, West was one of the first people she saw. "When I said 'Thank you so much for coming,' he said, 'We're family, and we're family in times of joy and family in times of sorrow.'

"To me, that's Royce West."

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For that family to which West and Shapiro belong, it's not the times of sorrow that are the problem, it's the times of joy. Texas has notoriously weak ethics requirements for its lawmakers, allowing them to use their campaign funds to subsidize a lavish political lifestyle. In the past, Texas legislators have used campaign donations to pay for upscale apartments, steakhouse dinners and expensive gifts for their staff and constituents.

"The whole system is rancid," says Fred Lewis, an Austin activist who favors a cap on campaign donations. "We have semi-privatized our Legislature, and it's an incredibly dumb way of doing business."

For West, it's a comfortable way of doing business. Last year, he used more than $18,000 in campaign donations to pay rent on an election office in Oak Cliff. Those payments went to a company called Skyview Development, according to his campaign disclosure forms on file with the Texas Ethics Commission. What West does not disclose is that he is the registered agent and director of Skyview Development. It's his company. Skyview Development owns the $1.4 million office building that is home to both West's law office on the third floor and his election office on the second floor, a sparsely furnished space with a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson lying by itself on the bookcase.

When asked about Skyview Development, the otherwise cordial West shuts down. "I'm not going to get into all my personal stuff," he says, not angrily but firmly. He does confirm that Skyview owns the office building and that he and some of his family members are part owners of Skyview. (According to the secretary of state's records, only Royce West is listed as an officer with the company.)