NICK JIMENEZ: Neal brought honor to the title 'politician'

No one wants to be a politician. As soon as a candidate who is new to the political stage declares they are running, they say, "I am not a politician."

Loyd Neal was a politician and his local political career reminds us that being a politician can be a very good thing.

Neal is stepping down as Nueces County judge at the end of the year, completing his third term. He is retiring from political life. If any person can be said to have served his community well, it is Neal.

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Neal served four terms as mayor of Corpus Christi, claiming successes in creating a new city arena, a new airport terminal and expansion of the city convention center.

Even outside of elected office, his leadership of the area's military task force and vigilance for any sign of closure or even limiting of the mission of the area's military installations has earned this community's thanks. In that role he has helped saved jobs and kept families from economic disruption. It's not an overstatement to say that Neal saved the city's livelihood when it mattered most.

He did it by means of the arts of communicating, persuasion, and consensus building.  Those are the tools of an expert politician.

Perhaps more importantly, he managed to convince those he encountered that he could be trusted, that he had the facts and that it wasn't about ego or about personal opportunism. That was when he was at his best.

He was lucky politically, too. While he served as mayor, a nonpartisan office, his Republican identification was muted. In his first term as county judge, he was in the minority on a Democratic-majority commissioners court. But then Nueces County became increasingly red and he had a Republican majority to work with. That 3-2 vote margin gave him the political power.

Yet in an increasingly partisan political community, Neal is one of a handful of elected politicians who can go anywhere in town and be well received. The other two, I think, are Republican state Rep. Todd Hunter and Democratic state Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa.

If there is a common denominator among the three is that they have been around long enough to understand that, to coin a phrase, everything that goes around comes around. Last year's opponent can easily be next year's ally. So they don't willy-nilly burn bridges.

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Neal said once that when he first got started in sales, he had a hard time selling his product, soap, to his Asian customers. At 6 feet, 5 inches tall, he was told, he simply intimidated his smaller customers. He learned and began lowering himself so he could speak eye-to-eye with his customers. It was a lesson in humility.

And this ability to speak to the public in all stations of society has served him well and made him a better public servant. It was instructive that he spoke so emotionally recently about the late Abel Alonzo, the disabled public advocate who took upon himself to both praise and admonish public bodies. Alonzo was not a "mover and shaker" by any means, but he was an engaged citizen, the very role that Neal has filled.

Somebody can't spend decades in public life and not have raised some hackles. Or behaved badly. I thought Neal was unnecessarily hard edged in his partisanship when the commissioners court was involved in redistricting in 2011.

He and the Republican majority pushed ahead with making an already red Precinct 1 an even deeper hue. And they did it behind closed doors with an out-of-town law firm handpicked to come up with the desired results. It all came to naught when the Department of Justice rejected the changes.

It was nontransparent, heavy handed and deaf to protest, all stuff so foreign to Neal's track record.

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But it was Neal who bucked Republican orthodoxy by advocating that the state extend Medicaid under Obamacare so as to benefit the county's uninsured. This when the area's own Republican congressman had boasted of having voted multiple times to kill Obamacare.  It was hard-headed economics, to be sure, because indigent healthcare is a heavy county financial concern, but it was humanitarian outreach as well.

And it was Neal, as mayor, who led the council to vote to ban smoking in Corpus Christi restaurants in spite of a business-led opposition. Neal could have sided with the business lobby. That would have been the Republican thing to do. But he was far-seeing enough to see where progressive cities were heading.

So yes, Neal has been a politician and he has made it an honorable title.

Nick Jimenez has worked as a reporter, city editor and editorial page editor for more than 40 years in Corpus Christi. He is currently the editorial page editor emeritus for the Caller-Times. His commentary column appears on Sundays.