Does the list change drastically from session to session, or are there some legislators who make it in all the time?
PB: We make our choices based on what happened in the current session. Every member starts with a clean slate. However, it’s the nature of the Legislature that the leadership pool doesn’t run deep, so the best members tend to make the list frequently. This session the repeaters on the Best list were Delisi, Duncan, Whitmire, and Zaffirini. A lot of members of the Worst list had been on the list before, but not necessarily in the previous session. I haven’t figured it up, but my guess is that from one session to the next, the average change is more than 50 percent on each list. texasmonthly.com: Are there more legislators you would have put on the Best/Worst list if it was a longer list? If so, who? Why? PB: There are always near misses, people who are worthy of being on the list but don’t quite make it. This year, I would say that the closest miss was Senator Todd Staples. He did a lot of heavy lifting, which is the term for passing big bills, like workers’ compensation reform. The pro
