At Key Moments, Evans Has Been at Bush’s Side

WASHINGTON —  In tapping Don Evans for Commerce secretary, President-elect George W. Bush turned Wednesday to a master fund-raiser and time-tested friend, a loyal confidant who has stood at Bush’s side during crucial moments throughout his career.

At home in the West Texas town of Midland, Evans is known as a successful energy executive and faithful Methodist who tries to watch his son play Little League baseball whenever work allows. At Commerce, he will be the new administration’s ambassador to corporate America, with an influential voice on the economy, trade and technology.

Yet it is also a role that has landed some of his predecessors in controversy over how the White House doles out its commercial favors, such as seats on trade missions. Evans, a multimillionaire, adds to a growing tradition of political financiers ending up at the helm of Commerce.

Evans, 54, will stand at the head of one of the odder arrangements of government, a grab-bag of departments involved in everything from predicting weather to promoting exports. Awaiting him is the explosive matter of how minorities should be counted by the Census Bureau, which also is part of Commerce.

But his overriding mission will be to maintain a tight connection with the business community, which may see in him an advocate for corporate concerns, whose decisions in matters ranging from technology export controls to trade policy enforcement can transform the fortunes of individual companies.

A Houston native, Evans is widely described as a thoughtful, self-effacing executive who combines a down-home Texas drawl with a genteel sophistication that many find disarming.

“He’s such a nice guy that you don’t think he’s as smart as he is,” said Clayton Williams, who heads an energy firm in Midland and has known Evans for 20 years. “He’s a quality individual, a well-rounded individual.”

During the presidential campaign, however, critics assailed Evans’ aggressive money-raising tactics, an effort in which well-heeled contributors solicited donations from many others, often in the same industry.

“Evans now is in a position to take care of the businesses that took care of the campaign,” said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a political watchdog group.

Evans’ special relationship with Bush goes back to the mid-1970s, when both men were venturing into the Texas oil fields and forged a close bond.

Bush, recently graduated from Yale, looked up an old friend from elementary school, Susan Marinis, who introduced him to her husband--Evans. The two men, both born in July 1946, became friends, shooting baskets, playing golf, even painting Evans’ house.

When Bush last piloted an airplane--a somewhat hair-raising flight over Midland in the 1970s--Evans was at his side. When Bush decided to quit drinking in the 1980s, Evans also was there. The same can be said for some of the landmark ups and downs in Bush’s political career, including his failed quest for Congress in 1978.

Indeed, as Bush’s political fortunes later rose, some in his inner circle were said to joke that Evans seemed a more likely governor than his outgoing friend.

Evans’ business career blossomed along with his friendship with Bush, as he transformed Tom Brown Inc. from a struggling oil company into a successful, Denver-based firm with more than 1,000 oil and gas wells, concentrated in the Rocky Mountains and Texas.

As chairman and CEO of the company, Evans was paid a salary of $355,698 last year and earned a $275,000 bonus, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As of April 10, he owned 937,570 shares of stock in the company--worth roughly $28.3 million at Wednesday’s trading price--and 50,000 stock options, worth $1.5 million as of Wednesday. Tom Brown reported revenue of $214.9 million in 1999, with profits of $5 million.

Bush put Evans on the University of Texas Board of Regents in 1995. Two years later, the regents made Evans their chairman.

In a 1999 interview with the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Evans, who was finance chief for both of Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns, explained his highly successful approach to political fund-raising, which relied on careful organization and effective use of donor lists.

“So we set up a pyramid of sorts,” he said. “One person calls 10, 20 or 50 people, and then asks those people to call 10, 20 or 50 people. In other words, we’re encouraging supporters to recruit other supporters.”

On Wednesday, some observers said that Evans’ campaign fund-raising background raised alarm bells. One critic cited the example of Ronald H. Brown, President Clinton’s late Commerce secretary, who was accused by Republican opponents of favoring Democratic campaign contributors with seats on trade missions. Those charges were never proved.

“The fact that Mr. Bush has placed a fund-raiser again at the Commerce Department is not a good omen,” said Larry Klayman, general counsel of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group and critic of Clinton.

But some described the Commerce job Wednesday in more traditional terms, emphasizing its role in the economy, trade and technology. If the economy continues to slow in 2001, Commerce will be under great pressure to stimulate exports and ensure that import surges are legal under the trade rules.

A Commerce secretary’s power “derives from the secretary’s relationship to the president . . . and the times you’re operating in,” said Pete Peterson, who held the job in the early 1970s.

“The fact that Mr. Evans is not only a successful businessman but a close friend of the president augers well for him.”

The new Commerce secretary will face an urgent political question as soon as he takes office: How to handle the release of census data to help states redraw legislative boundaries. In an effort to ensure that poor and minority populations are counted accurately, the Clinton administration has developed a system that will adjust the traditional count with figures derived from a statistical sampling. The Census Bureau is scheduled to begin releasing the adjusted data in March.

Republicans have fiercely resisted the sampling system, saying that it is mere guesswork. Democrats reply that sampling is based on science and that the head count itself is just an estimate. Both sides have a political and financial stake in the dispute. Census data affect how federal funding is allocated and influence the shape of legislative districts from Congress to local school boards.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), top Democrat on the House census oversight panel, said that the Senate should demand to know where Evans stands on the issue before he is confirmed.

“Coming on the heels of Florida, where many blacks and Latinos feel their votes were not counted, this is a very important issue,” Maloney said. “If you don’t have the corrected, or most accurate [census] number, then literally millions across the country will not be counted. There will be tremendous fallout. . . . Fight doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

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Times staff writer Nick Anderson contributed to this story.