Tall lady summons spirit of Alamo in fight for hearts and homesteads

Austin - On Saturday nights at the Broken Spoke dance hall, a country band picks and yodels through old hits by Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and Bob Wills. Long-neck bottles of Shiner Bock and Lone Star beer are on the tables. Many of the couples dancing the Texas two-step or the cotton-eyed Joe are regulars here; he wears boots, pressed jeans, a western shirt and white hat and she wears boots and a dress with a flouncy skirt.

Their ride home in the family pick-up truck takes them away from urban Austin to the surrounding farms and ranches. When these and other rural Texans think about the forthcoming election of 5 November, they look for candidates who agree with them on the primary issue of property rights.

"Goddammit, whose land is this, anyway?" is a common refrain in a state where the sanctity of the "homestead" is so strong that banks are not allowed to offer a loan against a person's main residence.

These Texans don't think their ancestors died at the Alamo and fought for independence from Mexico more than 150 years ago for government bureaucrats to tell them what to do with their property. In 1994, some of the region's farmers and ranchers formed a group called "Take Back Texas", when they felt they were under attack from the federal Endangered Species Act, under which landowners can be forced to preserve habitat for rare plants and animals. Farmers believe it deprives them of the full use of their land and reduces its value.

Enter Susan Combs, a tall Texan with the power as state representative to respond to their cry. She and other Republicans came up with Senate Bill 14, known as The Takings Bill. It provides for monetary compensation for, or exemption from, a state regulation if the value of a holding can be shown to have been diminished by it by at least 25 per cent. The bill was passed in 1995. But it did not address the Federal Endangered Species law, which Republicans also want to overhaul.

Texans are paying special attention to the campaign for Congress from the 14th district, which is largely rural and runs south and west from Houston to the outskirts of Austin. Ron Paul is the Republican; Charles "Lefty" Morris the Democrat. Mr Paul, who already has served in Congress as a Republican and was the 1988 Libertarian Party presidential candidate, is gung-ho on property rights issues, saying it is unconstitutional and immoral to lose control of one's own land - as long as you don't interfere with your neighbours.

Property rights are important in the election, but even they could be washed by water wars. The region is undergoing the worst drought since the 1950s. Parched fields are yielding no crops and no feed for livestock. Some rain has fallen in recent weeks, but predictions of a long dry spell have riveted attention on water supplies; the race is on to stake out rights. City mayors, county commissioners and state legislators, some of whose jobs are on the line in the 5 November ballot, will be in the forefront of this battle.

Farmer and ranchers have asserted what they, as Texans, believe is their God-given right to pump unlimited water from a big water-holding rock formation, the Edwards Aquifer, which stretches under most of central Texas. And that has focused attention on the fact that San Antonio, about 80 miles south-west of Austin, relies on the aquifer for water for its 1.5 million people. Issues of land and water are as old as the hills. But they are being contested against the ideologies of individual versus societal rights, of unlimited versus controlled growth or no growth, and of new urban Texas versus old-range Texas. They are sure to outlast the election.