This is a sad day for Texas Democrats. The Houston Chronicle has reported that Jim Mattox, a former congressman and one of our state's best attorney generals, has passed away at the age of 65:
"Jim Mattox was a tireless fighter for average working families in Texas," U.S. Representative Chet Edwards (D-Waco) said in a statement. "His was a voice that will be missed but not forgotten."
Former Tarrant County Democratic Party Chairman Art Brender called Mattox a "courageous fighter for working folks in every office he held, both Congress as our attorney general and in the legislature."
"He was responsible for enforcement of consumer protection laws in a fashion that has not been matched since he was attorney general, Democrat or Republican," Brender said. "He was a real character."
James Albon Mattox was born on August 29, 1943, the son of a union man and a waitress. He attended Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas, and went on to distinguish himself as a student at the Baylor School of Business, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1965 and received the Wall Street Journal Award for academic achievement. He earned his law degree from SMU, getting the third-highest grade on the state bar exam in 1968.
Mattox began his public career here in Dallas County as an assistant DA under Harry Wade, and would later serve as a state representative from East Dallas beginning in 1972. In 1976, he was elected to his first of three terms in Congress, representing the 5th congressional district. He was the only member of his freshman class to serve on on the House Budget Committee, and would later go on to chair the committee's Task Force on National Security and Veterans Affairs as well as the House Banking Committee.
He was elected Texas Attorney General in 1982, the last year that Texas Democrats swept all statewide races on the ballot. It was as AG that Mattox would truly earn his reputation as "The People's Lawyer," working tirelessly on behalf of the interests of working class Texans:
Mattox revolutionized child support collection, and his use of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices act against large corporations earned him many admirers among everyday Texans.
As attorney general, Mattox took on airlines over deceptive advertising related to fare prices, and the insurance industry–among many other corporations–on behalf of Texas consumers. Mattox faught insurance companies, claiming they were trying to create an insurance crisis in Texas in his second term.
Many Texans have somewhat ambivalent feelings about Mattox because of his well-deserved reputation as a political brawler. His 1990 primary fight against Ann Richards, who would go on later that year to be elected governor, stands out in the minds of many for its acrimony. But like Hillary Clinton, who he endorsed in this year's presidential race, his ferocity as a campaigner was an extension of his tenacity as an advocate for the ideals that he believed in. That tenacity never wavered: as recently as this summer, he was counseling then-candidate Barack Obama not to pull any punches in his upcoming fight against John McCain. He was an active Democrat to the very end of his life, speaking just last week before a state party panel about the need for reform in the Texas primary/caucus system.
It's often a cliche to hear about someone who has just passed away that "they don't make 'em like that anymore." But in the case of Jim Mattox, at least, it's undeniably true: he was a bulldog for social justice, and one of the last of the old-school progressive Democrats here in Texas. We in the Lone Star State are poorer for his loss.
UPDATE: Thanks to sberel, who recalls the important role that Jim Mattox played as an advocate for the teaching of evolution in Texas public schools:
After the Texas board of education accommodated Fundamentalist Christians in 1974 by requiring that evolution be taught as "only one of several explanations" of the origins of mankind, some publishers began to alter their texts to make them more widely acceptable. For instance, in the 1981 high school biology book published by Laidlaw Bros., a division of Doubleday, the word evolution did not appear, even in the glossary or index.
In 1982 the People for the American Way, a liberal group that wages First Amendment campaigns, began pressuring the Texas board to rescind its 1974 rule. They were joined last month by a powerful ally: Texas State Attorney General Jim Mattox concluded that the rule was unconstitutional because it was motivated by "a concern for religious sensibilities rather than a dedication to scientific truth."