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CLAYTON WILLIAMS
1931—Texas Oilman Lost
His Way in Politics
C
layton “Claytie” Williams, a
Texas oil and natural-gas en-
trepreneur, diversified into
telecommunications in the
mid-1980s and decided to star in
television ads for his long-distance
service. Though he was only 5-
foot-8, Mr. Williams managed to
channel John Wayne in those ads
as he rode a horse across one of
his ranches.
“Picking the best long distance
for your money,” he told viewers,
“is like picking a good cow.”
The ads, tapping into nostalgia
for simpler times, were so effec-
tive that Mr. Williams found him-
self a celebrity with a platform be-
yond business. He won the
Republican nomination for gover-
nor of Texas in 1990 and was far
ahead of his Democratic rival, Ann
Richards, in polls.
Then Mr. Williams, who died
Feb. 14 at the age of 88, shot him-
self in both cowboy-booted feet. He
made a joke about rape in the pres-
ence of reporters and talked about
having resorted to prostitutes as a
young man. His admission that he
had paid no taxes in 1986, a grim
year for the oil industry, made him
sound like a tax dodger. Worse, his
refusal to shake hands with Ms.
Richards at a public event made
him look ungentlemanly.
In the November 1990 election,
he lost narrowly. “Claytie kicked
the election away,” said a spokes-
man for the Republican National
Committee. His loss opened the
way for George W. Bush to run as
the Republican candidate in 1994
and win the governorship, propel-
ling him toward the White House.
In the early stages of his cam-
paign, Mr. Williams promised “a
real war on drugs,” including boot
camps for first-time offenders
where they would be introduced to
“the joys of busting rocks.” He
suggested Ms. Richards, who had
acknowledged a bout with alcohol-
ism, had been drinking again when
she said polls were moving in her
favor. He threatened to “head her
and hoof her and drag her through
the dirt.”S
he described him as “some
media cowboy who rides off
into the sunset and kisses the
horse instead of the girl.”
Clayton Wheat Williams was
born Oct. 8, 1931, and grew up in
Fort Stockton, Texas. His boyhood
entrepreneurial projects included
raising goats on his father’s ranch
and growing cotton on land leased
from a neighbor. He played full-
back on the high-school football
team, whose ineptitude he exag-
gerated later in one of his most re-
liable campaign quips: “We had a
5-5 record....We lost five on the
road and we lost five at home.”
Mr. Williams graduated from
Texas A&M University in 1954
with a degree in animal hus-
bandry and served in the Army,
which sent him to Mineral Wells,
Texas. He considered a career in
dentistry but was advised by a
great uncle he would do better as
an entrepreneur.
Soon he dived into the energy
industry by negotiating leases forBYJAMESR.HAGERTY oil-drilling rights. He and a partner
also began building gas pipelines, a
venture that evolved into Clajon
Gas Co.
While building his businesses,
he frequented saloons and occa-
sionally got into fistfights. An
early marriage ended in divorce. In
1965, he married Modesta Simp-
son, a former model.
When oil prices soared in the
1970s, Mr. Williams thrived as an
oil-and-gas producer and pipeline
operator.
In the 1980s, he diversified into
banking, real estate and telecom-
munications. He bought ranches in
Texas and Wyoming, including one
with a boot-shaped swimming
pool. Merle Haggard and Charley
Pride performed at his ranch par-
ties. He and his wife went on big-
game hunts as far away as Paki-
stan and Botswana.
When oil prices crashed in the
mid-1980s, he was caught with too
much debt. Part of the solution
was to sell gas-pipeline and tele-
com businesses.
After losing the 1990 election,
he faced another cash crunch and
considered filing for bankruptcy.
Instead, he slashed expenses,
worked with creditors and sold
ranches and other real estate. He
focused on his publicly traded oil
company, Clayton Williams Energy
Inc., and sold it to Noble Energy
Inc. in 2017 for $2.7 billion.
Mr. Williams was a major donor
to Texas A&M, where an alumni
center is named for him. He taught
a business course there in the
1980s and dubbed it Bullshit 489.
He is survived by his wife, five
children, nine grandchildren and
five great-grandchildren.
A lesser-known aspect of the
Claytie legend was his devotion to
Bible studies. He sometimes re-
ferred to that activity as “cram-
ming for finals.”
Read a collection of in-depth
profiles atWSJ.com/Obituariesstabilize the market by encouraging
companies to buy back shares.
Mr. Ruder and other regulators
spent the next several months
searching for ways to make pan-
ics less likely. One result was the
introduction of so-called circuit
breakers to interrupt trading dur-
ing major price drops, giving in-
vestors a pause for reflection.
Mr. Ruder also sought to trans-
fer regulation of financial futures
to the SEC from the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission.
Though widely considered a sen-
sible idea, that didn’t happen.
While Mr. Ruder lacked trading
experience and political savvy, he
dismissed suggestions that he
wasn’t up to the job. Shortly after
the crash, he told a Wall Street
Journal reporter that his concep-
tual skills and intimate knowledge
of securities law qualified him for
the role. “They couldn’t have a
better person on the job at this
time,” he said.
During his 26-month term, Mr.
Ruder called for a larger SEC
staff and pushed for tougher reg-
ulation of shadowy brokers foist-
ing fraudulent “penny stocks” on
unsophisticated investors.
“I don’t regard myself as a con-
servative if that phrase means re-
fraining from strong and positive
regulatory initiatives,” he told
Congress. Though he supported
market forces, he said in an inter-
view, there was “an area of Chi-
cago-school free-market economic
analysis that I simply can’t buy,
and that is the assumption that
people are always rational.”
Theory gave way to practice. “I
sometimes didn’t know what my
policy positions would be until I
was faced with real problems,” he
said later. “I turned out to be
much more regulatory than I had
thought I would be, and I think
more than the Reagan people
thought I was going to be.”
After stepping down from the
SEC in 1989, Mr. Ruder returned to
teaching law at Northwestern and
remained immersed in debates
over securities law and regulation.OBITUARIES
DAVID RUDER
1929—SEC Chairman Endured
Black Monday Ordeal
W
hen he was sworn in as
chairman of the Securi-
ties and Exchange Com-
mission in August 1987, David
Ruder was expected to preside
quietly over the agency in the fi-
nal two years of the Reagan pres-
idency. Mr. Ruder, who died Feb.
15 at the age of 90, swiftly
learned otherwise.
About 10 weeks after his ar-
rival, the Oct. 19, 1987, stock-mar-
ket crash, known as Black Mon-
day, slammed the Dow Jones
Industrial Average down 22.6%,
eclipsing the 12.8% drop of Oct.
28, 1929. Mr. Ruder, a securities-
law scholar and former dean of
the Northwestern University law
school, was giving a speech that
morning and noticed his audience
was distracted. He rushed back to
SEC headquarters to find out
what had gone wrong on Wall
Street, confer with his staff and
decide how to respond.
“I kept asking what we could
do,” he recalled in a panel discus-
sion 20 years later, “and I think
the answer was not much.”
Around noon, he told report-
ers that stock trading might be
halted. It wasn’t, but some stock-
exchange officials said his re-
mark may have added to the
panic among investors. Mr.
Ruder later said his comment
had been a mistake.
On the evening of Black Mon-
day, a senator called Mr. Ruder
and instructed him to tell Presi-
dent Reagan to make a statement
to calm the markets. Telling Mr.
Reagan what to do would be pre-
sumptuous, Mr. Ruder decided. In-
stead, he called a Reagan aide to
pass along the senator’s message.
Mr. Reagan declared the next day
that “economic fundamentals in
this country remain sound and
our citizens should not panic.”
Overall, Mr. Ruder performed
well under intense pressure, said
Rick Ketchum, who then headed the
SEC’s market-regulation division.
Mr. Ketchum said Mr. Ruder helpedBYJAMESR.HAGERTYADVERTISEMENT
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