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Gov. Rick Perry backed Phil Gramm's stealth 2002 candidacy for Texas A&M president, but the former U.S. senator isn't returning the favor in the governor's re-election bid.
The 67-year-old was one of more than 60 Aggies or those with ties to the university who pledged support earlier this month to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry's rival in the March Republican primary.
Gramm's support of Hutchison over Perry was of particular interest in Aggieland, where memories of 2002 linger as another hunt for a Texas A&M president unfolds.
"I nearly fell out of my chair," said John Fike, a faculty member in 2002 who retired in August, upon seeing Gramm's name on the list of Hutchison supporters. "There were a number of names on the list that were significant ... but Phil was the big surprise."
Not everyone was as surprised as Fike; some said it made sense: Gramm and Hutchison had a great working relationship in the Senate. Others who have complained in the past about politics seeping into university decisions shrugged.
"Nothing surprises me anymore after what we've been through," said Angie Hill Price, a former speaker of the Faculty Senate. "Texas politics are crazy."
Gramm, a former Texas A&M economics professor who has described the university's presidency as his dream job, now works for Swiss bank UBS. He could not be reached for this story.
The unconfirmed candidate
A 24-person advisory committee in 2002 forwarded three names to the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents following a national search. Robert Gates, who would eventually be offered the position and serve four years before leaving to become U.S. secretary of defense, was one of the three names.
In the end, five of nine regents voted to support Gates for president. The remaining four were said to support Gramm, who was not vetted by the committee and was never officially acknowledged by regents as a candidate.
In the moments before the regents' vote, pitches for Gramm were made by the Association of Former Students. Phil Adams, a regent from Bryan who now is serving his second stint on the board, also appealed to fellow regents, saying they were missing a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to name Phil Gramm president."
Many -- mostly tenured faculty members whose job security makes them the most frequent and loudest voices in controversial campus discussions -- criticized the process as politically charged and secretive.
A similar scene would play out five years later, when regents approved the selection of Elsa Murano as the university's 23rd president. Murano was not one of the three finalists that a search advisory committee recommended to regents, but the board, now packed with Perry appointees, supported her selection 8-1. She resigned in June amid a public clash with Texas A&M System Chancellor Mike McKinney, a former Perry chief of staff.
Richard Box, a regent and chair of the search committee looking for Murano's successor, has said mistakes were made in prior searches and guaranteed that Texas A&M's next president would have to go through the search committee. A final selection is expected by February, said Box, a former campaign treasurer to the governor's campaign fund, Texans for Rick Perry.
Fike, a former speaker of the Faculty Senate, said that his colleagues' concerns about Gramm probably had less to do with shared governance and were more fundamental.
"The real concern from faculty was that he would set us back 15 years in terms of national reputation," Fike said. "He had a take-no-prisoners partisanship in the Senate, and people felt, rightly or wrongly, that would extend to campus."
Fike said he didn't believe Gramm would have done anything to hurt Texas A&M, and in fact, that his time as a faculty member may have made him more receptive to faculty concerns.
Republican politics at A&M
The 2002 Texas A&M presidency came down to a sitting U.S. senator backed by a sitting Texas governor versus a former CIA director backed by a former U.S. president. George H.W. Bush supported Gates' candidacy and encouraged him to apply.
Gramm's 2002 candidacy, with Texas A&M as the backdrop, illustrated a split within the Republican Party that to some degree still exists, said faculty members and Republicans.
Five of the six George W. Bush-appointed regents supported Robert Gates for the presidency. Gates had worked in the 41st president's administration, including as CIA director from 1991 to early 1993, when the elder Bush left office.
The vote wasn't supported by all three Perry-appointed regents and Erle Nye, who had been appointed by Bush and was later reappointed by Perry.
"I worked very hard to keep the Christian right -- the social conservatives -- and the Bush group -- the fiscal conservatives -- working together as a team," said Richard Stadelmann, a Texas A&M philosophy instructor who once was in charge of 18 counties, including Brazos, with the State Republican Executive Committee, the party's organization in Texas.
Stadelmann said Hutchison is viewed as less conservative on social issues than Perry, citing her middle-of-the-road abortion stance. He has served as both Hutchison's and Perry's campaign manager in various counties in prior campaigns. He calls both his friends.
"I'm sort of heartsick about all this," he said, referring to the gubernatorial contest between the two.
Stadelmann, a Yale graduate who has taught at Texas A&M for 42 years, said he's "not at all surprised" that Gramm is supporting Hutchison. He said he believed Gramm would stay out of the race altogether but that it makes sense because of the pair's relationship in the Senate. He added it likely was more about support for Hutchison than hostility toward Perry.
Stadelmann also worked behind the scenes to get Gramm selected as A&M president, making private pitches to regents. He said that Perry -- a former Aggie yell leader and bonfire red pot -- cares deeply about Texas A&M, and that his support of Gramm wasn't improper.
"People who are critical of [Perry] do not know how much he loves this school and is dedicated to it," Stadelmann said. "If you get someone who isn't as dedicated, they might have a more hands-off policy."
