Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2012 > January > 16 > Entry
Johnson-Bentsen-Richards Dinner for Ben Barnes at Four Seasons Hotel
Imagine meeting U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, the rehabilitating Arizona Congresswoman, and former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi during one short Austin weekend. Both interacted with your correspondent in a warm, relaxed and personable manner.
Nancy Pelosi and Donna Howard
Pelosi served as keynote speaker at the Johnson-Bentsen-Richards Dinner for the Travis County Democratic Party at the Four Seasons Hotel on Sunday. The benefit was meticulously organized and rigidly hierarchical. Big donors squeezed into the VVIP lounge upstairs; mid-level types crowded into the larger reception room downstairs; while others were left to wander the lobbies leading to the banquet room. (At least one judge was turned, gently, away from the middle room.)
Osita and Rae Nwosu
The dinner lionized former Texas Lieutenant Gov. Ben Barnes, now an enormously influential consultant. Barnes doesn’t lend his name to just any group — Boys & Girls Clubs of the Austin Area is a rare exception — but he bore his laurels with dignity on Sunday. He introduced me to Madame Speaker as if sparking up a casual acquaintance on the street.
Ben Barnes and Ben Sargent
Of course, the place was packed with Dems. I spoke at length with Dr. Jay Stein, formerly of Baylor College of Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center and University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Naturally, he spoke in calculated cadences about the campaign to bring a medical school to town, so I encouraged him to write up some of his thoughts for our Insight section.
For a brief time, I regretted making a previous engagement to share gumbo and bread pudding with our friends Christine Perrault Moline and Terrence Moline, recently returned from Belize and Guatemala, at the same time as the Dem dinner. Yet as soon as Kip and I arrived at their home near McCallum High School, we entered conversational and gustatory paradise.
Non, je ne regrette rien.
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