When Texas Monthly began cataloging the state’s Best and Worst Legislators 52 years ago, power manifested behind closed doors at the Capitol, in boardrooms, and in private associations, such as the Petroleum Club of Midland. This January, at 5 a.m. on the first day of the Eighty-Ninth Legislature, you could find it in a church parking lot off the Katy Freeway in Houston. Hours before newly elected lawmakers would even get up to dress themselves for one of the most memorable days of their lives—when they each would take the oath on the floor of their chamber and be invested with the power, they thought, to run the state—about fifty right-wing activists in red shirts boarded a charter bus to head to the Capitol. There…
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