Enron Ascending

Chapter 7Political Lay

Six years into Lay’s Enron career, the Houston Chronicle ran an in-depth Sunday feature: “What Makes Kenneth Lay Run? Big Business May Not Be Big Enough for Enron Chairman.” Author Kyle Pope interviewed many movers in search of the common denominator behind “Houston’s best-known rainmaker.”

Pope described the 49-year-old business, civic, and political force as “an anomaly” and “one of the oddest natural gas executives in America.” A former employee gave praise, yet called Lay “an enigma.” An industry consultant opined: “The rap on him is that his ambitions are in places other than the natural gas business.”

Here was a businessman seemingly after something other than business at its highest. (Enron was about to edge out Tenneco as the largest Houston-headquartered company.) A politico who was neither Republican nor Democrat—and certainly not libertarian. A business and civic dynamo who sought alliances in numerous, unusual places. He was, although the term escaped Pope, a private-sector politician.

This change maker had doubters and detractors. Lay’s two-front civil war within the fossil-fuel industry—between natural gas and coal on one side, and natural gas and petroleum on the other—made enemies. (“All fossil fuels are not created equal,” Lay would say.) Many industry toes were being stepped on, although important segments of the gas industry were coming around to Enron’s political model.

Kyle Pope found one Lay enthusiast in a sitting member of the Federal ...