“Though that “little guy” has had a lot of champions in Texas politics, none was quite as colorful as the hard-hitting (Jim) Mattox, who never turned his back on his blue-collar upbringing as he climbed the ladder from assistant district attorney to Texas legislator, U.S. congressman and eventually state attorney general.

J.B. Fuller, an assistant attorney general in the Mattox years, recalled, ‘I saw Mattox work the crowds in his Dallas district. The adulation that poured over him from those people among whom he’d grown up was almost unnerving. Old folks, poor folks, union folks, minorities, academic types — they all knew him as their champion.’ “

—-editorial excerpt from Austin American-Statesman