Judge, thanks very much for doing this.

Appreciate you joining us in what you helped recreate here.

Big courthouse.

Big courtroom here in the courthouse.

There are so many things we could talk about in your past and we'll get to.

But I want to start with what a lot of people don't know is you're born on the south side or in a house.

That's right.

I grew up in San Antonio, South Side, and then private businessman.

All this history before you became a politician.

Tell me about growing up on the south side and what that was like.

As everything also already was growing to the north side.

Well, it was a beautiful place to grow up.

Mission Stadium, the original Mission Stadium was there then, and I was at Riverside Elementary School, Riverside Park, I believe, and we'd walk over to Mission Stadium and then ride across as Rick your fail where semi-pro team played in I and my brother and I were bat boys for it.

So everything was pretty much in walking distance.

It was our working class people that were over there and it was a really thriving part of the city back in the forties and and in the fifties.

So it was a lot of fun to grow up there.

But then you also then you went to Houston.

Well, yeah.

Well, yes.

I ended up in high school in Houston.

I was at Paige Junior High.

My dad was transferred to a company he worked for Texas Consolidated.

He was transport at transfer there as a terminal manager.

So I went to Baylor High School.

It happened to be a very, very good high school.

I played football, I played baseball.

I chased girls.

And I learned by osmosis, by selflessness.

I just somehow started it.

Wow.

And now to the south side.

North Side Division at the time, did you feel that there was that whole stratified thing that you would maybe feel more later as an adult and see the power divisions in town?

Well, that changed after I grew up.

That changed when everything started going north.

I think it was probably in the sixties when the decisions were made to put the airport out there.

That was earlier in the probably forties and fifties, and then that University of Texas out there, the Health Science Center out there.

So everything went north and all the bad stuff went south and south, went way down over a long period of time.

Now, thank goodness I've lived long enough to see it come back in the last ten, 15 years.

But that did change after I grew up.

You've written a number of books and a story, and one of them said When you were a young businessman, you were playing poker with a group of men, some other quote unquote, powerful men, and you had a pretty good hand and you didn't have a lot of money.

And it told you something about San Antonio.

Well, my dad ended up working for a small company and eventually and Brownsville, and it went broke.

And so we all came back home together, loaded our furniture up into 49 bobtail trucks.

The train horn broke down.

We pulled the other one in a chain, broke at six points.

That was our reentry into San Antonio.

And we started hauling roofing for other companies that went to, I think they used to call it the lumber mines.

And there was a little poker game there.

And I had $40 to my name and my dad and my cousin had laughed and I got in a pot.

I had three knives on the first three cards and.

And seven cards.

In seven card stead, which means you go all the way to the end.

I got my $40 in it.

They said, Well, if you're out of money, you can't take your money back.

I separate the pot.

We don't prorate.

I said, let me write a check.

We don't know.

You were not taking a check.

They took my $40 and I had to leave.

That was probably made me more angry than anything that's ever happened to me in my life.

And I said, one day he said, our guys are going to pay for it.

We started selling roofing off of their street corners at Southwest Military.

We built it into a big company over 20 years and ended up having something like eight or nine stores through South Texas and selling it.

And we competed against the sorry guys that did that to me.

Yeah.

What did that tell you about business in San Antonio and you couldn't get along?

No, no.

We were outsiders.

We were outsiders.

We were not part of the establishment.

Never really have been.

And are you couldn't get a loan from from our bank.

But my dad, even though he never got beyond middle school, was really smart and a hard worker.

And he learned it, showed us how to do some things.

We'd write a check, wouldn't come back to the bank for a week, wasn't any good.

When we wrote it.

We had a week to get the money in the bank and then we started selling sheet rock and we saw sheet rocket cost because they gave us terms on it and everybody thought we were going to lose everything we got.

These guys are crazy.

They're selling it at cost.

Well, we got all this money, then we bought other products that we did make money out.

So we found ways to grow it and we all worked.

I didn't make any money for two years.

My brother got married and we got making $20 a week, so we put everything into what we were doing and built a successful company was called Alamo Enterprises and then eventually sold it, I believe in 78 or 79, but it was a lot of fun and now and so much.

And was it resentment against certain.

Yes.

People on the north side?

And how did that shape your political life when you got?

Well, it did, yes.

There was some resentment, particularly against our competitors, because they would do everything they could to convince the people that we were buying from it, we wouldn't pay our bills and that we wouldn't survive.

And now but it was a close establishment back then.

You got to remember, guys like us, we were not part of it.

And they hung together, you know.

And so there was a lot of resentment by me and my dad against the what we've been the establishment.

Did that drive you when you went to college, got a bachelors in Saint Mary's, you got a law degree there, but never practiced law.

That's right.

Why?

Why did you get.

Well, what happened?

I did get a degree at Saint Mary's and went to law school and I would go to school at night sometimes sometimes on the weekend, during the day, maybe two or 3 hours in the morning and worked full time in the business, obviously, to keep it going.

I'd come home, take a little and a half at eight or 9:00, get back up and steady to one or two.

And so I was able to do both things and then eventually ran for office and 19 started running in 1969.

And by then we were starting to prosper and starting to do pretty good.

We've been in business about eight or nine years and so had a little bit of time and won that race and I changed.

State Rep Yeah.

State Rep. And you were a state rep for two years and then ran for state Senate, ran.

For the state senate and won and then I was part of the Constitutional Convention.

Yeah.

Explain to people about that because this is one of those episodes that a lot of people today don't know.

But it was a big deal.

It was a big deal.

I had passed that when I was a freshman member as a lead sponsor.

And then in the Senate, I was on the planning committee and set up the whole thing and and we went through the convention.

Is House and the Senate working together?

Wanted to redo the whole Texas.

That's right.

The Constitution.

And because it was so out there.

That's right.

A lot of people, too.

That's right.

And so we lost by three votes to get it out because it took a two thirds next legislature submitted it and was resoundingly defeated.

I got defeated in a congressional race, got defeated in another one.

So I was in and out for years at a young age and out and was out for 13 years now.

Were you discouraged after that or obviously you got back in?

Yeah.

So what was the time like before you got back in 13 years, back in the private sector?

What happened?

Of course, some of the worst blows you get in life turn out to be a good boss.

And and that's when we were able to start sun harvest natural foods and spend a lot of time at it.

I was an easy guy to get along with, not at all.

No.

I was better after those two defeats.

And now not like I used to be.

A lot of people didn't really want to be around me too much because I worked myself to death and I wasn't happy.

Did you realize that at the time?

Did you?

Yeah, I did.

I tell you how bad it is.

I had 14 acres out on burning stage road and trees there.

After I lost my last race, I thought, you know, it'd be a good idea to count these trees, measure them and see how they grew over a period of time.

So I counted about two or 300 trees and that tells you something's not really going on really good with you.

That's what you're going to do later on and that's it.

Why in the world ever do that well?

So how did it affect the rest of your life that.

You know.

Did you get any help for that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like I say, I wasn't real easy to get along with.

And our role was just take my son Kevin, you know, I'd make him work every weekend.

And I was very rough on him.

And that's why he became a Republican.

Yeah.

And that's why after two months in high school, he left and joined the Navy.

So I figured.

He figured the Navy was easier than I would be.

So, yeah, we're really easy to get along with.

And then what changed?

Tracy and I got married in Vietnam, so I thought 34 years ago now and she really changed my life and was very supportive of my political life, willing to take the gambles that I felt were necessary.

And she was a power in her own self.

So yeah, she changed my life.

So what was the timeline then in terms of running again for council.

And was a member of the City Council and we got married.

I dropped out of the race before because because of my life was changing and whatnot.

And so we were married two years and well, not quite two years I guess.

And now and I said, Well, are you really ready to take a big gamble?

Yeah, ready.

Took a big gamble.

So we ran against the incumbent mayor at that time, who was Lola Cockrel in 91.

And we had ten opponents, Jamie Foxx.

Walker was in that race.

Katara was in that race.

Maria, that is our a whole bunch of people.

And we gambled everything out for $300,000 and our marriage was new and we gambled and we won.

And you had already had a change of attitude.

But yeah, I was a much friendlier person, much friendlier.

And what was it like when you got back in, back.

Up just a little while?

Henry Cisneros is the one that really changed my life.

Also, I was on the council when he was there and he got me appointed to head up Target 90, which gave me a base to really get around the community and get to know everybody.

So he was very instrumental in kind of easing me back in.

Ran for the council in 87, then mayor 91 and.

Did he have to convince you to get back in?

You weren't ready to get back into public life.

No hit.

Henry really came to me and said, you need to get back active again.

I supported him when he ran in 83 and so I did and I got really interested in local government and I began to learn that you do a lot more locally than you ever do in the legislature or up there among four or 5000 congressmen.

So he was the one that got me back in wrong.

Now, that was the era of term limits.

Yes.

And you were term limited out as mayor.

So what are your biggest challenges, your failures, as well as your accomplishments in that area?

I think some of the big things that were positive, we got the public library built when I was mayor and worked our way through that, getting it opened right before I left.

It was a 250,000 square foot or so library.

We created source, which is the San Antonio water system today out.

Of different entity, three.

Different entities and put it together appointed Cliff Martin to chair that board and we hired Joe Savings to be the first president of it.

And now you see it as a, you know, major going institution.

We did a lot of work with young people back then.

We were having a lot of drive by shootings and we created the correlation, brought together the private sector, put a lot more money into parks and summer programs and really turned that dynamic around.

So I'm proud of some of those things that we did like that.

What about things that you weren't able to get done?

The biggest failure that I had was not being able to convince people to support the Apple White reservoir we had reconstituted.

It would use reused water just like Calaveras.

It would've been exactly the same thing as Calaveras.

But Flora, were you in that era of fluoride?

That was a little bit later, I think.

Well, actually, it was when Henry was mayor and then finally came back and Warren later on.

But they were so much better about water.

And so that was my biggest failure, was the Apple White River.

Before I move on, that brings up that you have written so much history over the years about things in San Antonio as it happened even back in 1975.

You wrote the first book Challenge and Change about what happened in Austin.

Why do you write these books and why do you write them the way you do?

Well, you.

Know, I I think the first thing that I ever really wrote was an article when my son joined the Navy and I went out to the ceremonies and he was a top graduate in there and the class that went through.

And so I wrote about it.

And it you know, I found out well, I you know, I can do a pretty decent job of that.

And and then the challenge it change was more of a technical book, but the one that was really I mean, it's a technical book about the convention itself but there weren't really help me writing was with the job that we did as the first book mayor.

It was like 402 pages long and packed the history of Mayor Cisneros and even before that, in laid out the issues.

So that was the first one.

And that took me about two years to do that.

I did it after I left for mayor, had a lot of stuff to go through.

So, you know, I got into it and I just keep.

Writing and you do it on a regular basis and if people read the books, it is basically a chronological play by play of who did what and how.

Right?

How often do you write?

Because you have to keep pretty good notes.

Well, what I do, and this is probably totally wrong, right?

I would go home at night and I'll just start typing.

I don't know.

Well, computer, I guess you'd say and I would have you know, really literally hundreds of pages and then maybe over a thousand or 2000 and then try to extract out of that and put it together.

That might be a way of having a coherent book, you know, back there, changing the face of San Antonio and transforming San Diego, picking some of the major issues, kind of putting it together and weave it in a story.

But I just got stuff, you know, written and saved and.

Still doing it, still going to have another book coming in.

I still have a lot of stuff.

And need we need to get to so much of your accomplishments is and again failures because you're pretty open about what you got done and couldn't get done there.

Why did you get back in as county judge?

You're out in 94 as mayor.

Yeah.

And then were appointed in 99 or 2000.

One.

As County judge.

Well, it was kind of lucky.

I got out of office when I was in in my term as mayor, took over our company, bought out our partners, spent five years building it out, doubled the sales up in four or 500 stores.

And then in 1999, I think it was we sell it to Wildlands Corporation and I was doing a consulting agreement with him, and that was when the talk was that Cindy was not going to run again.

She said she.

Sent me.

To terms in Accra, so I started talking to people about running, and then Judge Crier decided to go on the Board of Regents and the court appointed me.

Now, there were two Republicans who voted for me.

That's when bipartisanship really meant something.

They point to me, even though I was a Democrat, one promise I made their Senate choir.

And I've always Geppert.

Who is a Republican.

Is a Republican that I would be bipartisan in fact, I just endorsed a Republican yesterday.

So but so much that's gone away today.

And that is a real, real tragedy.

When you get into office as county judge, you describe the government of the county as weird and then you helped change.

That.

Yeah.

Describe that.

Very weird.

I came from a city where you have a city manager, you know, straight lines of authority.

That's the way it was in the business that I was in.

Came over here.

You had five commissioners hired ten different people, you know, their lives in a matrix that was just jumbled up.

And I must say quite a few incompetent leaders.

But it took me a long time to kind of change that.

It took me a few years to get rid of at least five of the worst ones and then to give more authority the budget bill and then creates different departments that we think were critical to the government today.

Public information we created that the Economic Development Foundation, the Criminal Justice Planning Council.

Now we're doing a new department on preventive health.

So we we created more departments to handle some of the major.

And we also created some new funding mechanisms and, and basically, you describe in one of the books the the competition with the city to get something done.

Yeah.

And tell us about that.

When you realized that the county could be a player and should be a player?

Well, for so long, that county, it really wasn't much of a player.

There's one dramatic thing that Judge Crier did.

The city fumbled around and didn't address the Spurs issue and she went to vote and won it.

And that began to show that, hey, you know, the county could do something more than just a traditional stuff they do every day, which is not much.

And so I built on that and spread it out to a number of different issues that we think are important and started changing the dynamic where the county is really a power play.

You use something that was a law that maybe people didn't know or realize that the hotel, motel tax and car rental tax could be used by the county.

Yes, which wasn't really well known.

No other county did that.

And I happened to be reading their statutes and I think it was Jim Plummer that helped me go through it and found out how you could use it for a lot of other purposes.

If the voters agree.

So we did the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, 100 million, 85 million in sports, parts hundred 25 million for the nation reach.

We did put money in there for their improve their spurs arena but also building 350,000 feet of exhibit space in the coliseum and went to the voters on that issue about 414 million in 2008 and they approved all of them and that that was a whole new dynamic of what a county never did before.

And then moving forward, San Pedro Creek Project more recently, what are some of the things that you have done when people ask you, what's your legacy?

What are the big projects you're most proud of?

Well, I think for sure I would say the mission reach of the river that was eight miles is the largest ecological restoration of an urban river in the United States.

It also created something like 2100 2400 acres of land adjacent to the river.

That includes the nations and our parks.

Three times the size of Central Park.

So that was important.

And when we did that, then we realized we could do San Pedro Creek.

And now, you know, we just had the opening of the downtown section.

There's two more sections under under work, but it's restoring, you know, where we grew up, you know, and what the city was about.

And it brings back cleaner water, takes flood, flood zone property out.

It creates more like vegetation.

So I think those are important.

Those two are really important.

What are some of the frustrations that you didn't get done you wanted to get?

Streetcar Yeah.

Before Apple Wired some of the other projects there, man, if I had more time before I got more votes.

Yeah.

What are you really for?

Well, the biggest failure, I think, during my term as county judge is our rail passenger rail.

We actually.

We Austin.

Yeah, we went, we went to the voters.

Well, I think I wouldn't quite guarantee Josie, but I chaired the effort for light rail.

We got crushed.

I think the vote was 7230 and and we had the election results at the office.

I think I was the only one that showed up because we got beat so bad.

And then for five years I tried to say, okay, let's get started with a something smaller, a streetcar system that train transition to a larger light rail working on that five years, every obstacle in the world that came.

And finally we had to give up on it because public opinion had turned against us.

And so that's a failure, you know, in being able to have an up to date transit transit system, not sure what's going to happen in the future, but that was that was my grade.

But no regrets.

No regrets for trying.

For for all of what you've done.

No, I don't regret anything I've done.

I regret that I lost didn't win every time, but I don't regret anything I've done.

How about now at 82 you are are almost 82.

Yeah.

Birthday in a few days you have a lot of energy.

You could have run for office again.

Now that you're not, what are you looking forward to?

What are you going to do?

Well, I'm working on that right now.

I've got a place to office that's been provided me by Pat Maloney.

Really cool.

Building.

Nice old building.

Yeah.

1886, our Brackenridge Building.

That was first National Bank, I think.

And be cool their office they're working on trying to use what talent I have to maybe help students, particularly at the college level.

But I don't have all that nailed down yet.

But that's where I'm kind of looking.

Toward another book.

And another book.

A little more.

Well, you mentioned about politics these days and you're talking about what's going on in Austin now and haven't made friends with.

You've supported the governor in some policies.

And and what what do you say to present politicians and those coming up about.

Well.

What you've learned and what they should learn?

Unfortunately, civility is got lost by partizanship Scot lost truth got lost in it at best.

A social media crazy lunatic theories about things that people are buying into that make absolutely no sense.

Conspiracy theories.

All that's changed in the last several years, and it's very, very depressing to me.

As a former member of the House and the Senate, I have a right to go on the floor.

I just can't make myself do it is too alien to me.

I the things that they stand for, I don't stand for.

So you won't be up there lobbying?

No, I'm not going to be lobbying, that's for sure.

I'm going to lobby for anything.

Teaching.

Teaching.

That's what I want to try to help in some way about that.

Professor Wolff of titles.

Well, thank you very much for sitting down with us.

We appreciate it.

And we will talk with you again about the next chapter of your life.

Good.

Thanks very much, County Judge Nelson.

Thank you.

A lot.

Thank you.