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The
Star-Crossed Life and Times of Michael “Max” Nofziger:
Part 4
In 1979 at a time when environmentalism was gaining
momentum, Michael “Max” Nofziger decided to run for the Place One
seat on the Austin,
Texas
City Council. Across the country, baby-boomer peaceniks were
reaching their thirties and coming into their own as confident and
persuasive advocates for taking care of the planet. These activists
were an increasingly powerful force to be reckoned with, and Max was
an enthusiastic participant in this broad-based movement.
Under the banners of the Texas Mobilization for
Survival, the South Texas Cancellation Campaign, and other similar
groups, Austin activists (Max among them) fought the City’s
participation in the South Texas Nuclear Project (STNP) by obtaining
signatures for referendum elections and trying to force the City to
withdraw from the project. Their protests fell on deaf ears in most
local officials. By the time the Nuke’s opponents succeeded in
winning an early-80s election to withdraw from the STNP,
Austin
was mired in contractual entanglements from which its finest legal
and political minds could not extract the City, despite years and
years of serious effort.
A Leg Up
from Tricky Dick
In March of
1979, Max wrote a letter to the editor of the Austin
American-Statesman disparaging Dick Nixon’s attempts to remake
his public image as an honorable former head of state rather than
the man of questionable character who’d been driven in disgrace from
the U.S. Presidency earlier in the decade. Max’s letter took
Nixon’s revisionism to task and worried that Tricky Dicky was
positioning himself for a comeback under an ostensibly new persona.
Upon publication, the letter drew attention and kudos all over town.
The very day
his letter was printed, Max was having lunch at Virginia’s Café on
South First Street when a fellow diner suggested that he run for
City Council in the upcoming election. Says Max, “I thought, ‘Hey,
I’ve got a political science degree . . . I may be qualified.’ So, I
called the City Clerk’s office and was told that the qualifications
were: (1) to be at least 18 years old, and, (2) to be an Austin
resident for a minimum of six months. I was very qualified.”
Max was
instantly energized and itching to run for the Place One Council
seat. Problem was, he had a mere two days to file before the
deadline. To avoid filing fees, he needed signatures on a petition.
(The required number today is 178. Back then, the number was higher,
though Max can’t recall the exact figure.) Adding to the sudden
pressure, Max’s birthday was almost here, and his parents were en
route from Ohio to Austin to take him on a family trip. When they
arrived, he said he’d have to pass on the vacation so he could run
for City Council. His Methodist parents of Mennonite heritage
thought their son had lost his mind. Nevertheless, Max went forward
with the race.
“I actually
thought I had a chance to win,” he says now, shaking his head and
grinning at his earlier naiveté. The race’s result was
disappointing to say the least. “I got two to three percent of the
vote.” Max lost that race to Lee Cook, who became Austin’s mayor
years later while Max was serving on the City Council. Nofziger and
Cook got acquainted along the 1979 campaign trail. Cook confided
that, after this race, he wouldn’t run for a council seat again.
Opportunity knocked.
The
Message and Its Packaging
Following
his 1979 loss, Max aimed to take advantage of the upcoming Place One
opening two years down the road. During the intervening period, he
studied up on local issues, developed a more complete and clear
platform, and saved his flower-peddling income. Max entered the
1981 campaign for the Place One seat considering himself
well-prepared.
To his
chagrin, he fared worse in the 1981 race than he had in the previous
election. True to his upbeat nature, however, Max strove to learn
from his loss to Dr. Larry Deuser. In retrospect, Max relates this
realization: “My opponent was saying all the same things about
environmentalism and neighborhood integrity as I was. It struck me
that Austin’s people liked and supported my message but seemed to
prefer their messenger to be a suit-and-tie, corporate-career,
doctor-type instead of a flat-out hippie like me. But the good news
was, my message was a winner and was gaining broader acceptance.”
Ever the optimist, our Max. It’s really quite genuine and
disarming.
After his
spring 1981 loss, Max spent the summer in Ohio, pondering his future
while painting the barn on the farm where he was raised. His
meditation on his political future helped him see how his upbringing
in a family of educators stood him in good stead. While in college,
he too had earned a teaching certificate to complement his Poli-Sci
degree. Even though he wasn’t winning his political races, he found
comfort in the fact that he was educating the public by raising
relevant issues and elevating overall awareness of Austin’s problems
and their potential solutions. His teaching forum was not the
traditional classroom but the local political stage.
Intriguing
Developments
As the 1983
City elections drew nigh, Max was still undecided on whether he
would run again. A certain liberal up-and-coming councilman was
considered to be the frontrunner for mayor. Then came what Max
describes as that councilman’s “unfortunate incident,” involving the
perceived favorite taking up arms in a gun battle against his garden
hose. So much for that guy’s political aspirations.
City
politicos were left wondering who would be Austin’s liberal
contender for mayor. Max had run and lost two City-wide races.
He’d seen firsthand the toll taken on candidates competing in the
higher visibility mayor’s race. Max was having a good time and
didn’t want to spoil it. He took his time deciding whether to run
for mayor because he knew it would dramatically alter his life — a
life he liked a great deal. “I kept thinking, ‘If it ain’t broke,
don’t fix it.’” Ultimately though, his zeal to advance his causes
won out, and Max entered the 1983 mayoral race against businessman
Lowell Lieberman and incumbent councilmember Ron Mullen.
Max was
without question the liberal candidate here. Mullen’s and
Lieberman’s views were so similar that Max says, “They were two
sides of the same coin.” Today Max gets a kick out of telling how
he referred to his two opponents as one entity, calling them
“Mullerman” and “Liebermullen” interchangeably. The May 1983
election gave Max 10% of the total vote and forced the conservo-twins
into a run-off.
Suddenly
Mullen and Lieberman were courting Max’s endorsement. Lieberman
invited Nofziger to dinner and his chef cooked Max a fine meal.
Mullen held a meeting with Max which Mullen insisted had to be
tape-recorded by his young female campaign staffer, another
up-and-comer who years later would have an unfortunate incident of
her own. Despite all the wooing, Max withheld endorsement of either
candidate. Mullen eventually won.
Undaunted by
his third loss and all the brouhaha, Max was excited that his
ongoing campaign efforts had finally earned him some clout. He felt
heartened that he had at last “broken through” and had gained both
name recognition and influence. Over the years, his stances and pet
issues had remained steadfastly the same, but now folks were taking
him seriously. He’d cleaned up his look too, wearing sports coats
with his sneakers, donning new blue jeans, and shortening his hair.
After the
1983 loss, Max decided to give up flower-vending. He had moved his
sales site from South Congress and Oltorf in 1981 and had set up
shop downtown at 6th Street and Trinity. There he stayed
until post-election 1983. He then went to work for South Austin’s
Abacus answering service.
Max Builds
Momentum
In 1985,
Max’s mayoral bid won him 20% of the vote. Perhaps the most
memorable element of that race was his TV commercial in which he
dressed as a jogger, wearing sneakers and a Capitol 10,000 T-shirt.
His slogan was, “Max is running for Mayor.” Sounds cheesy, but the
spots were handled with good humor and were surprisingly
entertaining.
For the 1985
mayoral run-off, Max endorsed all-around good guy Frank Cooksey, a
mild-mannered mover and shaker in the Save Barton Creek Association
and an active member of the Austin Peace and Justice Coalition,
where he represented a peace group from a normally conservative
Protestant church.
At Eeyore’s
Birthday Party in 1985, Max and Frank Cooksey stood on the stage of
a flat-bed truck to face thousands of revelers looking on from Pease
Park. “There were people as far as you could see,” says Max, “my
supporters. I told Frank, ‘These people will give you your
victory,’ and the crowd went wild.” [Or, the otherwise wild
Eeyore’s party-ers went even wilder.]
Newly-elected Mayor Cooksey appointed Nofziger to the City Resource
Management Commission. There Max worked on energy management and
water conservation in an official capacity, researching and
recommending policy to the City Council. As a City official, Max
learned the ropes and inner-workings of City policy-making and also
expanded his already impressive knowledge on the sciences of
environmentalism, trash management, water conservation, and energy
generation.
Here in the
new millennium, Max still considers public policy-making and
strategy-building to be his favorite part of public service. He
loves the study, research, and learning, the public input and
debate, and the shaping of the final policy product. Nofziger is an
unquestionably talented consensus-builder. Even his critics
acknowledge that he is exceptionally skilled at finding common
ground among adamant citizens with opposing points of view. He has
a history of using his calm demeanor and quick mind to maximal
effect and wants to continue doing so as Austin’s next mayor.
On the
Resource Commission, Max gained the skill and support needed to at
last put him over the top in the 1987 race for the Place One City
Council seat.
Next week, log on to read
about our South Austin homeboy’s first-ever election victory and
subsequent triumphs.
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