Dallas' Political Designing Woman

"Well I know I have the right person for the job," Tower told her. "A minute ago you didn't even know what the job was, and now you want more money.

In 1978 Reed helped run Tower's re-election campaign against Democratic Congressman Robert Krueger. It was a razor-thin race, and it took three days of recounts to determine that the incumbent won and by a mere 12,000 votes.

Only 10 years removed from partying with Hollywood stuntmen, Reed was now a devoted Texas Republican who started making a name for herself in local party circles.

"I just remember her being very smart and savvy politically, and she had a gift for fund-raising," says Gary Griffith, the former Lakewood council member who ran for mayor against Leppert this spring. "It was just clear early on that she had the kinds of skills needed to be successful."

After Tower retired from the Senate in 1984, Reed worked for U.S. Senator Phil Gramm. She also started her own public relations and consulting company and became involved in Dallas politics. In 1987, she stunned her Republican friends when she directed Annette Strauss' mayoral campaign against Fred Meyer, who was then the local Republican chairman.

"Everybody was horrified that she would go work for Annette Strauss, a Democrat," says Pat Cotton, a Republican political consultant. "That cost her a lot of support in the Republican community, but she was doing what was best for Carol."

People who know Reed well portray her as a pragmatic businesswoman whose opportunism came out of necessity. While some of the women Reed played tennis with in the 1970s could afford to lick envelopes for the Republican Party for free, Reed had no such luxury. Her husband switched jobs throughout their marriage, and sometimes money was a little tight.

Then one day, Gerald announced he was going back to school to become a professor. Reed asked her husband how they would be able to maintain their lifestyle.

"He said, 'I don't care about this lifestyle; if you want to keep it, you have to figure out a way to keep it.'"

In 1998, in the wake of the winning arena and Trinity campaigns, the Reeds divorced after 30 years of marriage. By then the one-time California girl had made her mark as one of the best political consultants in town. She worked congressional and district attorney races, bond campaigns, referendums and U.S. Senate races. She lost here and there—she wasn't perfect—but after any race, win or lose, she moved on to the next. Maybe she had a lifestyle to keep. Or maybe she just really enjoyed a gig that she stumbled on by chance.

"She's lost some races, but she never lets it destroy her like it does other people," says Sharon Boyd, a political activist who has both worked with and against Reed on local campaigns. "There are some political consultants who were big shots in this town 15 or so years ago, and then they lose a race and they're done."

If you dig around for gossip and inside info deep in local political trenches, you'll find a few criticisms of Reed. The main one is that she wins as often as she does because her campaigns have the most resources. Reed's side almost always has more money to spend than its opponents since it's invariably the unspoken choice of the business community. In addition, Reed typically works for establishment candidates such as Chamber of Commerce heavyweights, high-profile prosecutors and business-friendly inanimate objects like the toll road and American Airlines Center. That almost guarantees her hearty support from respected and entrenched political, business and opinion leaders. In fact, all three candidates Reed has run for mayor won the endorsement of The Dallas Morning News.

Reed is also good friends with former city council member Donna Halstead, who runs the Dallas Citizens Council. A powerful, guarded organization—just try asking a question about their private deliberations—the Citizens Council is made up of some of the most well-known business leaders and attorneys in town. The group typically pushes for public financing of big, developer-friendly projects, and when a referendum holds one of them in the balance, the Citizens Council picks Reed to fight its battles. The two are so close that Halstead acknowledges that when Angela Hunt's petition succeeded in placing the future of the toll road to a vote, she didn't even think about choosing anyone but Reed.

"We have no formal relationship with Carol," Halstead says. "But certainly because she is very professional and very good at what she does, our paths cross frequently."

That works out well for Reed. In the Trinity campaign, the Citizens Council contributed nearly $300,000 to the Vote No! effort that was organized to defeat Hunt's initiative. Although some in the business community stood to make money off the planned highway between the Trinity River levees, others felt, with scant evidence, that killing the road would jeopardize funding for the park. More than anything, Hunt's initiative was a direct challenge to the authority of the business establishment, and that meant that Reed was going to get all the money she needed to fend off the peasants with pitchforks.