The Texas Senate has its first female dean. What Sen. Judith Zaffirini hopes to accomplish

Growing up in a small town in South Texas, her goals were to get an education, become bilingual and always be polite. But Sen. Judith Zaffirini said she never imagined those principles would carry her through a decades-long career in the Texas Senate, leading her to become the chamber's highest-ranking member, with a perfect voting record to match.

After winning election in 1986, the Democratic senator from Laredo became the first Mexican American woman to serve in the state's upper legislative chamber, and at the start of this year, she began her tenure as the Senate's dean — a distinguished position overseeing much of the procedure, timing and logistics of the Texas legislative process.

Zaffirini, 77, is proud to drop the "dean-in-waiting" tag, which was affectionately given to her over the years by her colleagues, after Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston — who as the longest-serving member was the chamber's dean — resigned Dec. 30 to become Houston's mayor on Jan. 1. Zaffirini now takes her place as the first woman to serve in the high post, and she said she will further promote and educate about the chamber's procedures, craft bipartisan policies and spur camaraderie in an often divided political environment.

"It's exciting for that reason, but it's also disappointing that it took so long," Zaffirini lamented to the American-Statesman about it taking so long for a woman to serve as dean. "But when you consider that only 24 women have ever served in the Texas Senate — that's 24 women with 952 men — then you can understand why that statistic" exists.

Zaffirini has earned her colleagues' respect through decades of work in the Capitol by consistently showing up, amassing a record 72,132 consecutive votes, and having a willingness to share institutional knowledge in bipartisan fashion.

However, in the early days of her legislative career, Zaffirini said, it was difficult to get a handle on the inner workings and procedures of the Senate as both a newly elected lawmaker and a woman in the male-dominated chamber.

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"I always think back on when I was a freshman, and nobody helped me; not one person helped me," Zaffirini said. "And I saw that there was a great difficulty in articulating motions."

As a result, Zaffirini made a dedicated effort, which she has maintained ever since, to catalog, script and make available to senators the language required to make the appropriate legislative maneuver regardless of the situation.

Crafting the language that senators often use to make motions on the floor, move bills for a vote and place official comments into the record, Zaffirini over the years has provided lawmakers more than a dozen editions of a handbook to understand and correctly convey the arcane and specific legislative procedures required to advance a bill from the Senate.

"Some people might consider that unimportant, but I think it's important for the protocol and the decorum and the accuracy of the work of the Texas Senate," Zaffirini said.

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Her drive to identify a problem and find its solution started at a young age, as Zaffirini was heavily influenced by the service-oriented nature of Ursuline nuns while growing up in Laredo.

Appreciating the nuns' attention and respect for details and good habits, Zaffirini looked up to them as role models in place of women in the professional world, of whom there were few in Laredo in the 1950s and ’60s.

There were "many role models in terms of what counts — which is character and conduct and service," Zaffirini said. "Many role models in that respect, but no women role models in terms of a professional."

After graduating from high school, Zaffirini did not expect to attend college. Eventually, she was persuaded by her future husband to take classes locally in Laredo.

That decision led Zaffirini on a path to earn master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Texas, and it also kick-started her advocacy in the Texas Senate as she joined an effort to create a four-year university in Laredo.

"It goes back to I didn't want others to struggle the way I did," Zaffirini said, reflecting on her time commuting between a teaching job in Laredo and attending graduate courses more than 200 miles away in Austin.

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In 1967, working across the hall from where her current Senate office is, Zaffirini began serving as an aide to then-Sen. Wayne Connally, D-Floresville, in hopes of seeing the Legislature approve a new university in Laredo, which became the "driving force" in her decision to eventually run for office.

"And then in 1993, I passed the bill establishing Texas A&M International University, which I cannot say without smiling," Zaffirini said of the legislative achievement in her hometown.

Now, Zaffirini said, her experience within the institution can be further used to promote bipartisanship and find common ground as she takes over as the presiding officer of the Senate Caucus of the Whole, which is made up of all the Senate members and where private meetings and discussions on legislation and politics happen.

"That is the place to reinforce bipartisanship, to reinforce friendship, to reinforce the decorum and the protocol and the efficiency of the Texas Senate," Zaffirini said. "So I will be doing a lot of things that I have been doing, but from a different perspective, from a different position."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Judith Zaffirini never sought to lead the Texas Senate. Now she's dean