San Antonio — IN the last decade and a half, James Leininger figures, he has invested more than $100 million in a calculated bid to transform Texas.
His money helped elect the three most powerful politicians in the Lone Star State: the governor, the lieutenant governor and the House speaker. It helped Republicans capture both houses of the Legislature in Austin for the first time in more than a century. It allowed business-friendly jurists to take over the Texas Supreme Court. It let Republicans control the state Board of Education, allowing social conservatives to screen schoolbooks for hints of anti-Christian bias.
In short, the doctor-turned-entrepreneur is proof that one rich man's ideology can change life for everyone in a state of more than 23 million people -- though most Texans have never heard of him.
When Leininger, 62, assesses his legacy, however, he can't contain his disappointment. The one thing he feels most passionate about remains out of reach: He has never been able to get the Legislature to pass a voucher program allowing poor children to use tax dollars to attend private schools.
"If it doesn't pass, it's all been for nothing," Leininger said.
The soft-spoken man friends call Dr. Jim could certainly be doing other things with his life. He took over a struggling company that made high-tech sickbeds and prayed for it to turn around. It did. He is now worth more than half a billion dollars.
He owns a piece of the San Antonio Spurs basketball team, which is competing in the NBA finals, and he jets around the planet on a private plane. But he's not the kind of man to be satisfied with a leisurely life.
The former emergency room physician can't forget the boys he saw bleeding from stab wounds -- boys he felt never stood a chance in neighborhoods where low expectations seemed predetermined by poverty. He can't forget the day he learned that some high school graduates who worked for him couldn't read.
"It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor: Parents love their kids and want the best for them," Leininger said. "But I've become acutely aware that not everyone gets the opportunity to succeed."
So he has put his money behind school vouchers, because he is convinced that such a program would improve education for poor youngsters by forcing complacent public schools to compete for the right to teach them.
