The Star-Crossed Life and Times of Michael “Max” Nofziger:  Part 5

  With four lost elections under his belt (two for City Council and two for Mayor), the ever intrepid Max Nofziger entered the 1987 Place One City Council race early.  Incumbent Mark Rose dropped out of contention, choosing instead to run for Mayor.  Max was the initial front-runner for the vacated seat.

           Quickly, however, other heavies threw their hats in the ring, the most threatening being Gilbert Martinez, who had substantial backing from developers, and Sam Griswold, a well-known liberal fronted by the Democratic Party.  Despite the stiff competition, Max had an unshakable conviction about the outcome — a feeling of inevitability that his time for winning had arrived.  “The incumbent bowing out was a good sign,” says Max.  “Through the whole race, I kept thinking, ‘This is it!’”

           But winning wasn’t easy — far from it.  In the ’87 primary, Nofziger and Griswold split the liberal vote, Martinez took around 35% of total ballots cast, and Max squeaked into the run-off with 25% to Griswold’s 23%.  Max had made it by the hair of his handle-bar moustache.  A few weeks later, the run-off election proved to be even more hair-raising.

           Just prior to the run-off vote, Marcia Ball and Timbuk 3 headlined a downtown fundraiser for Max.  It was especially heartening for Max to have Marcia Ball’s support since she had played a big part in making him fall in love with Austin back in 1973.  Barbara and Pat of Timbuk 3 performed their set and left Max’s gig in a rush to fly to New York City and appear on national late-night television. (Max thinks the show was Letterman, though he couldn’t swear to it.)  The benefit crowd was big, and, according to Max, “it was an energetic scene.” He was thrilled all the way ‘round.

  Election night was a nail-biter with Martinez and Nofziger neck and neck throughout the evening.  As the late votes were tallied, Max held tight to his belief that he would win.  He finally pulled into the lead, only to face what he calls “a suspicious midnight computer crash” of the vote-counting system. Yikes.

 Still anticipating eventual triumph, Nofziger supporters struck up a victory party at the Texicali Grill on South Lamar.  When Max made his entrance at the restaurant about 2:00 a.m., “the place went nuts.” 

TA-DA!

   An hour or so later, Austin American-Statesman writer Bob Banta showed up with the newspaper’s morning issue hot off the presses.  He held up the headline announcing Max’s win, and the crowd “went crazy” in celebration.  Eight years and two months after his quest for city elected office had begun, Michael Max Nofziger was the victor at last.  That night, a happier man could not have been found anywhere on the planet.

Not long after sunrise that morning, Max kept his promise to serve as a judge at Spam-O-Rama, taking place that year at the venerable Soap Creek Saloon on South Congress.   Max’s eyes were red from his mere two hours of sleep, he was wearing a yellow hog-head T-shirt, and he was having an exceptionally bad hair day.  In excellent humor though, he described himself to the attending press as “a developer’s worst nightmare.”  That quote became a headline in the Dallas Morning News, accompanied by a photo of the disheveled Councilman-elect making an ugly face after tasting a particularly nasty Spam concoction.  Max says with a laugh, “Leave it to the press to paint you in your worst light.”  His sense of humor is one of his most endearing qualities and would serve him well in his upcoming years at an elected — yes, elected! — official.

 An important fact that should be noted about Nofziger’s first win:  he spent $30,000 on the campaign compared to Martinez’s $150,000.  Pretty darned impressive.  Nowadays Max says wistfully, “I may never know what it’s like to have a $100,000 campaign.”  His victory came from the large support base of volunteers and small donors he had meticulously built over his years of campaigning — the folks to whom Max is forever grateful and for whom he works so tirelessly. 

Lassoing the Economy

 When Max took office in mid-1987, Austin’s economy was in shambles.  Due to the head-on collision of a local housing glut, the rollback of federal real estate tax-shelter incentives, the Savings and Loan crisis, and the collapse of the Texas oil market, Austin real estate had lost 20% to 30% of its value during the preceding 18 months.  The town was plagued with high apartment and office vacancies which at one point climbed to more than 30%.  With the property tax base thus depleted, local taxing authorities (the City, Travis County, AISD, and ACC) were forced to increase property tax rates, yet they still faced severe income shortages. 

 Reverberations rattled through most economic sectors state-wide, resulting in record numbers of foreclosures and bankruptcies plus the shutdown of many of Austin’s favorite music venues and other businesses, both large and small.

 A veritable dynamo of energy who took his charge and the voters’ trust seriously, Max immediately launched into plans to revitalize the City’s economy and to make Austin the Live Music Capitol of the World.  Max was big on promoting local “organic” business growth rather than courting multinationals to squat in our midst on the public dime.  He became the Council’s chief voice for getting Austin’s financial house in order and cranking up its economy.  He led the drive to get the new convention center’s planning and construction underway, and he organized better City support for its unique music industry.

 The late-80s economic slide was too big for any one man or even one city or one state to hold back, but Max’s efforts did help make the fall less catastrophic and set the stage for an ultimate turn-around, even as things worsened through 1988 and into 1989.  By mid-1989, the slide had leveled out, and, though no one could be sure, the general feeling, and hope, was that we had hit bottom and had nowhere to go but up.

 Another Squeaker

 Come 1990 campaign season, seven people, none of them well-known, ran against Max for the Place One Council seat.  One local pundit labeled the field of candidates, “Max and the Seven Dwarves,” and most everyone assumed that Nofziger would win.  But, oh what a vicious campaign ensued.

 Max’s hope to win the election outright in the primary was doused when he received almost 48% of the primary vote and was forced into a run-off with developer-backed Lee Lane. Actually, most of the campaign season’s meanness was directed against the Council’s two other seated liberals, George Humphrey and Sally Shipman, in a heated movement to dump the incumbents.  Shipman made it to the run-offs where she lost her bid, but Humphrey ran a distant third and didn’t even qualify for the run-off. 

 Max’s own race was not so bad considering the atmosphere.  The run-off returns between Lane and Nofziger were close all that long election night.  Late in the evening, Lane surged ahead with only a few boxes left to count.  Luckily for Max, those boxes were large and liberal and gave him another squeaker victory with roughly 51% of the vote.  The public was apparently pleased enough with Max’s work on their behalf to re-elect him, which naturally pleased Max as well.

 During his second City Council term, Max worked on trying to move the airport away from the central city and the neighborhoods and schools that were tormented by its noise, pollution, and danger.  Additionally, Max foresaw that the existing airport facility simply wasn’t big enough to handle Austin’s growth and increasing airline traffic.  He pushed for building a new airport by instigating a search for sites and funding as well as undertaking a quest to earn voter approval.

 In June 1990 shortly after Max’s second term began, an all-night City Council meeting took place in which the chambers were packed with opponents to what Max refers to as, “Jim Bob’s pet project.” Otherwise known as the proposed development of Freeport McMoran’s Barton Creek project right smack on top of the environmentally sensitive Edwards Aquifer, the subdivision project was hotly contested because it threatened the crystal waters of Barton Springs.  Fierce opposition to any and all development potentially damaging to the Springs steadily multiplied from there, and the Save Our Springs Alliance (SOS) kicked into high gear by early the following year.

 The Austin Convention Center opened in the summer of 1992.  Max Nofziger was the only City Councilmember who had served on its subcommittee from inception to completion, an accomplishment he’s quite proud of.  The City’s economy was recovering by then, and many things were right in Councilman Nofziger’s world.

 These days Max is correct to assert that he was instrumental in Austin’s economic recovery once before and that he’s the only candidate in the current mayor’s race with such valuable experience.  His economic platform is practical and well thought-out, relying heavily on supporting the health and growth of Austin’s existing industry and business plus the entrepreneurial activities of its citizens.  To Max, it only makes sense to assist the homegrown endeavors that give Austin its magic and to keep our local dollars recirculating through the City economy rather than lining the coffers and executive pockets of large corporations based elsewhere.

 Max has already seen his ideas jumpstart Austin’s economy in the very recent past, and they will work again if we only give him the chance to lead us in that direction as our next mayor.  We’d have to be crazy not to take him up on the offer.

 Next week, log on to read about Max’s last race for the City Council, his ensuing term, and what he’s been up to since leaving office in 1996 . . .