In Black America; Ms. Myra McDaniel: The Secretary of State for Texas

💚 In Black America, reflections of the Black experience in American society. The amazing thing about voter registration was how much it went up over May, because we actually went up a real 300,000 people registered over May, and we lost about 800,000 who got purged in August, so together they registered about 1,100,000 people between the May primaries and general election, which is kind of incredible numbers.

It did not turn out into a comparable large turnout for vote. We did not vote as well as did the rest of the country, the rest of the country, about 52% of those adults over 18 actually voted, and only about 50% of adults over 18 Texas actually voted, so we were not as good. We had a turnout for the voters that was exactly the same as it was for the presidential election in 1980. At the moment, the Election Revision Committee, which was set up by Harvey and Lewis, is working on recodifying the Election Code, and third-party access is one of the questions that has been brought before them, as whether or not that committee votes it into the kind of occasion, as they see it, remains to be seen, but we haven't actually got to vote on that yet, if I recall correctly. There will be however many separate bills that will be presented to the legislature having

to do with the Election Code, and I suspect that that will be one of them, so even if it's not part of the codification effort, it will be presented to the legislature as a separate bill. Mrs. Mara McDaniel, the new Secretary of State for Texas, has built a career in government and the private practice of law. Secretary McDaniel, with the former General Counselor to Governor Mark White, but left his office in May of last year to enter private practice. This McDaniel is an Ivy League graduate, recognized by her colleagues as thorough and conscientious. I'm John Hanson, and this week our focus is on Mrs. Mara McDaniel, the new Secretary of State for Texas, in Black America. The Secretary of State's office over the years has always had an administrator who is the Assistant Secretary of State who actually performs the job of administering the office on a day-to-day basis. Although in recent years, the Assistant Secretary of State has changed about every four years along with the Governor and Secretary of State.

There was a period when there was an Assistant Secretary of State who was there for like 12 or 16 years, I understand, so it's not necessarily true that you do not have any continuity in terms of your long-range administration. Just to the data processing, it does get the major portion of our budget right now. We don't really spend any money on legislative kinds of things. I'm not too sure what that part of the question addresses. The Appropriations Act says that no money can be spent on lobbying, so you don't ever end up doing that. We are planning to put a big effort into rewriting some of our data processing programs, which is what we need to do right now. We just purchased some equipment which is being installed at the moment. We use all one brand of equipment there, and we're kind of like doubling our capacity. I understand at this point in that they are working on getting the bugs worked out of that right this minute.

They started installing it right after elections. We didn't install it before elections, because we wanted the elections to run smoothly in our computer, so just an integral part of our elections. With the increased capability that we have from the hardware, and then starting up this coming biennium, we will be working on changing our software packets at the moment. They are patched together, but we are planning to write some, and I don't know whether we're going to actually... I mean, when you say write some, I don't know exactly what that entails, because I'm not the kind of person who does that, but it's my understanding that it can be done. And that's what we're planning today, so we're planning to put some money and effort into that area. Only nine years out of law school, Secretary of State, Mayor McDaniel, brings a sense of humor and wide experience to the highest appointed office in the state of Texas. Mrs. McDaniel in at law school at the age of 39, and since that time has built a career in government and in the practice of law.

Secretary McDaniel grew up in Philadelphia, and as one of three children, raised by a mother who worked at a package store. Secretary McDaniel attended Philadelphia High School for Girls, and was given a fellowship to attend the University of Pennsylvania when she studied English literature. Before entering law school, Secretary McDaniel was an administrator and management analyst for the Veterans Administration, as well as Baldwin Wallace College in Ohio and Indiana University. After graduation from the University of Texas Law School in 1975, Secretary McDaniel worked for the Texas Attorney General's Office as a trial attorney, and later as chief of a taxation division. She was also General Counsel to the Texas Railroad Commission, and later worked in the private sector for the William B. Wilson Company. Secretary McDaniel's experiences have been many and varied, and are too numerous to list. However, her latest and highest appointment as Secretary of State for the State of Texas commands applause and commendation.

While there are two different kinds of things that the Secretary of State does, first of all, because the Lieutenant Governor is separately elected. The Secretary of State acts as emissary for the Governor, which means that when the Governor doesn't appear, the Secretary of State appears. So if there's a hurricane, for example, down on the Gulf, the Governor takes off a helicopter for the hurricane, and the Secretary of State gives the speech. Which, of course, makes a lot more sense to me, but I've never quite understood people who rushed toward hurricanes and droughts and floods and other disasters. The second part of the job is the Secretary of State manages an agency of 250 people with a budget of about $15 million a year. As most people are aware, because we just have been through a major election, the Secretary of State is the chief election officer of the State, and in that capacity, we are supposed to maintain uniformities and law and interpret the election code for everyone.

We do things like run election schools and provide election inspectors and a number of services for the counties as they actually run the elections there. We have a statutory filing section where we do all the corporate filings, so we incorporate companies and merge them and amend them and dissolve them and all that kind of stuff. We also are the official holder of the seal of the State of Texas, and we put it on a number of documents signifying that they are indeed the original copies of the original. So original bills, for example, as they are passed by the House and signed by the Governor of File, but the Secretary of State, and if you want a real copy, we're with people you get one from. We published the Texas Register, which is where people go to find the rules and regulations of the agencies, which affect so much of our lives, and we're also the people who published the open records and open meetings, notices somebody who was interested in going to various

state agency meetings can tell when they're holding them. We have the filings for the uniform commercial code, and only bankers and lawyers know about them, but those are some filings you do for certain security documents, so that if you borrow money on big scale, we can find you. We also staff the ethics commission. We issue elections opinions, and there's one more thing I'm having. We'll try to remember what it is, oh I know, we license notaries. We also keep track of a number of kinds of things, like all lists of all the bidiatrists and optometrists and just numbers of kinds of groups. We have a complete listing of people who are licensed in Texas in certain areas. Wouldn't you learn that you were being considered for the Secretary of State's Office and reaction from that consideration that you received?

What? I was learned before all the rest of the year. You don't get to be Secretary of State without having discussed it some first, and I discussed it with the governor. I had only been working with a law firm for three months, and was not particularly interested in leaving that, but was persuaded to do so. Were you born and how did you happen to choose law as one of your professions? I was born and filled out the Pennsylvania and grew up there and had most of my education there. As to how I got the law, I had been working in a number of different fields prior to that. I had had one career, my husband always teases and says our family is not a two career family, we're a four career family because both of us have made major career changes along the way. And I had been a last and administrative assistant to some folk who were just wonderful, I was a administrative assistant to the vice president of academic affairs of a college and to the

dean of a much larger college. And got to do just a number of really very enjoyable challenging kinds of things, but the scope of the job always depended on what the person who your assistant to was willing to delegate. And on both instances, I was exceedingly fortunate because they were willing and did delegate some very interesting kinds of things to do. My husband moved to Florida to teach there and I took a year off and had the opportunity to do anything I wanted to do, which most people don't ever get to have that chance, but I really was at a point in my life where I could stay home if I wanted to, do volunteer work. I could go to school. I could go back to work, it was going in any direction I chose. I considered going back to my original career, which was being a management analyst. And if I did that, I'd have to go back to school.

And as I say, I'd kind of ruled out being the administrative assistant because it is said dependent on the swims of whoever you happen to work for. I thought if I was going to go to school, I might just as well try and decide what I'd like to do most. And I kind of looked at my skills and my personality, and I thought I might really enjoy being a lawyer. So I thought, well, I'll go take the LSAT and if I do it reasonably well, I'll apply to law school. If I don't, I'll do something else. Fortunately, I did well and then I thought, well, I'll go try law school. If I like it, I'll stay, if I don't, I'll leave. I loved it and certainly have enjoyed being an attorney very much. Does your English literature background help you in the practice of law? Oh, I think it's helped me enormously in almost everything that I've done. As an English major, you get a great deal of facility with the language, which I just think is exceedingly important both in being able to communicate so much better than

if you don't have that kind of facility. So you can use a precise shading of language to indicate what you mean. You also learn to analyze the written word, and that's very important when you turn you also. So it's just been invaluable. Once completing the requirements to become an attorney in passing the bar exam, you went to work for the Texas A.G.'s office. Why did you particularly choose that as your first professional law career? I had clerked there and had some idea of the kind of work they did, and was very fortunate that they were willing to appoint me. The attorney general's office in Texas is the only arm of the state which goes to court. And I wanted to get some trial experience. I felt that I might really enjoy being a trial lawyer, but that even if I decided that it was not the area of law I wanted to continue in, that the kind of skills you pick up from

trial law and the understanding you get of what it takes to make a case and present it are very helpful to you in the general practice of law, because quite often you have to be aware of what will be evidence in a lawsuit, for example, and how it should be presented whether or not you happen to be handling the lawsuit yourself. Investigations of trial law to practice, I must say, it certainly was very gratifying. We were able to try cases dealing with constitutional law and with statutory interpretation. Almost all of our cases were peeled, so you got to argue in front of a pellet courts and that's love, huh? You said you spoke with Governor Mark Wyatt about accepting the position of Secretary of State. Has there been any duties or responsibilities that you haven't anticipated on? Has the job in what you expected to be so far? In some ways it has. I was very fortunate because I was in the Governor's Office's General Counsel and was able to work with John Fainter when he was Secretary of State and have some idea of what he did.

Does that help being on the inside and knowing somewhat of what goes on in the particular office, even if you are not, you're in the same office building, but not in the same office? Oh, it's invaluable. For example, I knew what I was getting into before I got there and some of the kinds of things that I'd be called upon to do, so I wasn't surprised when they happened. I also, because I was in the Governor's Office, had a broad background in what was going on in the state. So, for example, this past Monday, we got in the ambassador from Britain and a couple of other folks from Britain, who are touring the United States to find out about Texas. And the Governor was out of the state and so they stopped into visit with me. And I was able to discuss what Texas is doing in a number of areas, because I have that kind of background from working in the Governor's Office. And I knew that's the kind of thing they want to know about because I knew what John Fainter did. And so, I think it's just really helpful to be able to see someone that closely at work if you're going to actually end up with their job.

The Secretary of State's Office over the years has always had an administrator who is the Assistant Secretary of State who actually performs the job of administering the office on a day-to-day basis. Although in recent years, the Assistant Secretary of State has changed about every four years along with the Governor and the Secretary of State. There was a period when there was an Assistant Secretary of State who was there for like 12 or 16 years, I understand. So that's not necessarily true that you do not have any continuity in terms of your long range administration. As to the data processing, it does get the major portion of our budget right now. We don't really spend any money on legislative kinds of things. I'm not too sure what that part of the question addresses. The Appropriations Act says that no money can be spent on lobbying, so you don't ever end up doing it.

We are planning to put a big effort into rewriting some of our data processing programs, which is what we need to do right now. We just purchased some equipment which is being installed at the moment. We use all one brand of equipment there and we have, we're kind of like doubling our capacity. I understand at this point and that they are working on getting the bugs worked out of that right this minute. They started installing it right after elections. We didn't install it before elections because we wanted the elections to run smoothly in our computer. Just an integral part of our elections. So with the increased capability that we have from the hardware and then starting up this coming biennium, we will be working on changing our software packets at the moment. They are kind of patched together, but we are planning to write some and I don't know exactly what that entails because I'm not the kind of person who does that, but it's my understanding that it can be done and that's what we're planning today.

So we're planning to put some money and effort into that area. This past election period, the Secretary of State, particularly here in Texas and across the country, were involved in voter registration. How did that go here in the state of Texas for as your office is concerned? It went fantastically well. More people were registered in the state of Texas than have ever been registered in the past. We had 7,900,167 people registered to vote on Tuesday morning and that's a new record for the state. That's 73.5% of those who are eligible to register. There's been some talk about handing out voter registration cards once you receive your diplomas, making clergyments, deputy registrars, etc. Do you foresee this becoming a reality in the future or some type of upgrading of the way we registered people to vote today? We currently do have voter registration cards in all the high schools in Texas and the

principals are instructed by the statute to give them to all graduate seniors who want them. That part of it's already done and they can turn them back into the principal who access a volunteer deputy registrar. Many ministers, of course, are very much active in such things as voter registration. I don't think that the state should require any minister to do that. I think that certainly kind of depends on the church. Some churches are very much interested in those kinds of social issues, other churches are not, and I think that should be left up to the particular church and congregation. You were a former general counselor to Governor Mark White. What did those duties entail? Many and varied. We actually had an office of several attorneys and we gave legal advice to the governor and to the rest of the people on his staff.

As any general counsel does, the kinds of things you get in are reviewing contracts to see whether people should sign them, giving advice on employment practice, for example, to whether these kinds of activities are going to get you into any problems because their employment laws are very complex indeed today. For the governor's office, you also get into what authority does the governor have on you, the laws of the state, so if he wants to start a certain program, for example, you can advise whether or not that's possible with the authority as or whether he just isn't able to do that. The governor of Texas is limited to kinds of things that can be done and only those things for which there's some statutory or constitutional authority can be done by that office. So, you can't just do anything you want at any time. Sometimes you would interpret federal regulations, for example, because the governor in Texas is the one by law who administers federal law throughout the state and also federal money. And you can advise him as to what the federal statute permits him to do or doesn't permit

him to do and then kind of dovetail that in with Texas statutes. Did you have any problems advising governor White? What do you mean by problems? Fortunately, he's a lawyer and lawyers are basically the easiest ones to advise. They tend to take your advice, so it's kind of a lot easier than advising some business men I've worked with. The amazing thing about voter registration was how much it went up over a man because we actually went up a real 300,000 people registered over May and we lost about 800,000 who got perched in August. So together, they registered about 1,100,000 people between the May primaries and the general election, which is kind of incredible numbers. It did not turn out into a comparable large turnout for vote. We did not vote as well as did the rest of the country, the rest of the country about 52%

of those adults over 18 actually voted and only about 50% of adults over 18 Texas actually voted. So we were not as good. We had a turnout for the voters that was exactly the same as it was for the presidential election in 1980. At the moment, the Election Revision Committee, which was set up by Harvey and Lewis is working on recodifying the election code and third-party access is one of the questions that has been brought before them as whether or not that committee votes it into the kind of occasion as they see it remains to be seen because we haven't actually gotten to vote on that yet if I recall correctly. There will be, however, many separate bills that will be presented to the legislature haven't due with the election code and I suspect that that will be one of them. So even if it's not part of the codification effort, it will be presented to the legislature

as a separate bill as to whether it passes or not, your guess is as good as mine. I believe that the direction we should go is working very hard on the education reforms which were passed last summer and that if we are successful in putting those into place that we will see an improvement in education in the state of Texas and I'm sure that there will be a lot of legislation dealing with education in the upcoming session as to whether I don't have a further political plan so Geraldine Ferrara doesn't have much effect on my particular political career to be honest with you. I think that in the past 10 years I personally have seen a dramatic change in the number of women that there are in various positions and there certainly are more of us. As an individual I was a management analyst back in the 50s and when it was unusual for a woman to be doing so certainly had a lot of respect when I was doing that so I can't

complain. Mrs. McDaniel has life changed that much since being appointed Secretary of State. I'm somewhat much more as I said before, I'm sorry, I spend a lot more time talking to the media than I ever did before, that's what you mean by life changing. I'm still very, very busy, I've always been very, very busy. Certainly some of the kinds of things that I do are different but in terms of the way I organize my life that probably has not changed very much. Have you thought about any changes you may introduce as Secretary of State in some of the divisions or offices within your division? We are going to be as I say working very much so with our data processing because that's an area in which we need to make a lot of change because of the budgetary problems that the state is facing. I am going to be looking at doing as many kinds of things to operate sufficiently as possible because I think that's what we're going to have to do.

You're not going to be able to just add new machines despite the fact that they might be helpful or more people. The number of corporations in the state is growing because business in Texas is growing rapidly. The number of people are growing so my business actually is going to increase. And in order to do that, if continue to effectively serve the state, I think we'll have to become more efficient operations and that's what I'm going to look at. What about the elections? We always have problems with statewide elections for us getting the tabulations into Austin and back out to Texans. Well that's one of the kind of things we do with election central which worked pretty well. I think we are also going to try to work on getting some direct computer hookups from the big counties that they build input their data directly into our computers. We had a couple of them that were almost online this time and I think by the time the next big election rolls around, we'll see that that has been affected. You said you had no aspirations of running for any political office.

If we were your point, will you accept the reappointment to the Secretary of State's office? No, I will not. Okay. What do you anticipate I'm doing going back to private law practice? I'm going back to private practice a lot, yes. And into what specialty? I will be probably doing administrative law representing people before state agencies and doing some trial work, civil trial law. Myer McDaniel was Governor Mark White's first choice for Secretary of State, a post that has often been a boost toward statewide elective office. Mrs. McDaniel wants to make voter registration a priority of her tenure at Secretary of State and says she is now looking ahead to an elective office and says she hopes to return to the private practice of law. If you have a comment or like to purchase a cassette copy of this program, write us. The address is in Black America, Longhorn Radio Network, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That address again is in Black America, Longhorn Radio Network, UT Austin, Austin, Texas,

78712. For in Black America's technical producer, David Alvarez, I'm John Hanson. Join us next week. You've been listening to, in Black America, reflections of the Black experience in American society. In Black America is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services at UT Austin and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin

or the station. This is the Longhorn Radio Network. This is the Longhorn Radio Network.