Jon Fisher

“We did not think Hightower was gonna win until Reagan (Brown) stuck his hand in the fire ant mound and we just said, “Oh my God, this guy is going to come up and beat him…
The Hightower years were the early part of my tenure at the Texas Chemical Council. Even though there were a lot of adversaries, I made a lot of lifelong friends also, Dee Simpson for example. Dee and I ended up being pretty good friends and quite a few other folks. Mike Moeller, who later worked for him. I still communicate with Mike to this day. Mike was always a dear friend…
I wrote that (the Agricultural Resource Protection Authority). It was in the Sunset Bill because Gibson had the bill, and it was the Perry Amendment.The Agricultural Resource Protection Authority, they met and their whole purpose was to review any new regs, and it basically served its purpose, it just put a lid on new regs. They really didn’t do anything. It was just put there so we wouldn’t do anything. ..The irony was when Rick became Ag Commissioner, they never convened it again.”

Jon Fisher joined the Texas Chemical Council in 1981, shortly before Jim Hightower was elected Commissioner of Agriculture. Doug Zabel, Hightower’s media strategist, recalls that when Hightower took office in early ‘83, Jon Fisher invited him to meet with a group of communications people from other state chemical councils. Jon said they were meeting in Austin and they were all curious about this guy Hightower. Doug Zabel went to meet them and Jon introduced him. Doug got up and said, ‘We expect to have all agricultural chemicals banned in the state of Texas in three months.” Doug remembers there was deadly silence. Then Jon, who was standing in the back, started chuckling and then everybody started laughing. It was one of Doug’s favorite moments there. He says admiringly that Jon earned his money there.