***Kay Bailey Hutchinson physically abused her staffers***

Maddy McCall

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Apr-01-06 04:28 PM
Original message

Edited on Sat Apr-01-06 04:29 PM by Maddy McCall

Blast from the past:

In 1993, Hutchison and her team of attorney's - led by Dick DeGuerin, the $700-an-hour hotshot criminal lawyer and defender of Branch Dividian David Koresh - were fighting charges that she had abused her office as state treasurer. The evidence portrayed Hutchison as a termagant who verbally and physically abused her staff, including testimony that while in a tirade, she hit executive assistant Sharon Connally Ammann, the daughter of former governor John Connally, on the shoulder with a notebook binder. Another deputy had been Warren Idsal, the son-in-law of Hutchison's best friend and mentor, legendary ultra-right-wing Texan and Nixon adviser Anne Armstrong. She fired Idsal and later cited his removal as a threat to a frustrated staffer of her tough approach to personnel management. The evidence also showed she ordered a purge of backup computer tapes containing personal and political documents her executive staff produced for her. Conviction for the Nixon-like charges would have ruined her politically. Hutchison claimed the chief prosecutor, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, was part of a sinister conspiracy against her.

http://www.famoustexans.com/kaybaileyhutchison.htm

Collectively, the files describe an obsessive, de-manding and paranoid woman who was at times brutal to her staff, berating and pinching aides, and even, in one now-legendary incident, whacking a subordinate on the shoulder with a notebook.

snip/

Most of those who displeased the boss escaped with a caustic scolding. But Hutchison hit, pinched and shoved employees with enough regularity to make such outbursts a kind of leitmotif of her management style.

Trilby Babin, who served as Hutchison's scheduler, recalled one such minor assault during a drive to the Capitol. Inside the automobile, Babin recalled, Hutchison was trying to maintain a conversation on the car phone and, at the same time, instruct Mark Toohey, her press secretary, to remove an item from her attache bag. Toohey apparently couldn't determine from Hutchison's silent gestures precisely what the treasurer wanted.

"She was becoming very irritated," Babin recalled. "Mark was flustered. It seemed to escalate. And she lost her temper, and pinched him." Babin testified that Hutchison got Toohey on the arm. When they returned to the office, Babin recalled, Toohey half-jokingly compared battle scars with other members of the Treasury staff.

Hutchison's too-close encounter with Executive Assistant Sharon Ammann generated so much embarrassing publicity after Ammann detailed the incident to reporters on the eve of the special election for the Senate that the treasurer took a lie-detector test -- she told reporters she passed -- to buttress her denial that the incident ever took place.

But both Ammann and secretary Sharon Snead provided sworn testimony about the encounter to the grand jury. The two women testified that Hutchison had grown angry at Ammann for failing to find a phone number fast enough. Hutchison had asked Ammann to find the telephone number of a wealthy San Antonio doctor who had contributed to her campaign, assigning her aide the very sort of minor political chore that would later provide the basis for her criminal indictment.

In this case, the treasurer was traveling to San Antonio and wanted to inform the doctor of her visit. But Ammann couldn't uncover the number anywhere. She went into Hutchison's office to apologize for her ineptitude, only to discover she was searching with an incorrect spelling of the name. Ammann then learned from directory assistance that she needed to provide the doctor's specialty to narrow down the list of numbers. So she returned to Hutchison's office to ask about the doctor's practice.

That query apparently struck a nerve. Hutchison came into the secretarial area, screaming and banging on the desk, Ammann and Snead recalled. Stunned, Ammann stood near a file cabinet, where she was frantically searching for the number in other records. That's when, the executive assistant testified, Hutchison punctuated her tirade by whacking her subordinate on the shoulder with a notebook. "She just pounded me every time," Ammann testified. According to the two women, Hutchison ended her tantrum by walking back into her office and slamming the door.

This was not the last physical encounter between Hutchison and Ammann. In mid-summer 1991, Treasury employees peering out of office windows -- including Barron and Snead -- were startled to see the two women out in the parking lot, pushing and shoving one another.

Snead testified that the incident began after Hutchison told another staffer that she no longer trusted Ammann. After Ammann heard about the remark, she followed Hutchison out to the parking lot to confront her.

Ammann left the Treasury in September 1991. She had worked in the agency for nine months.

http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/1994-06-23/news/feature_full.html

SO MUCH MORE to read at the links in this post.