Twenty-five years ago, Democrat Tim Richardson and Republican Scott Bennett came up with the novel idea of publishing a political newsletter covering Texas politics. Their vision? Pick up coverage where the newspapers left off. Although the venture met with limited early success and tested the business acumen of its founders, Quorum Report was born.

QR has gone through a few iterations.

When the Texas economy crashed and burned in the late 80s, Richardson decided to head up to D.C. where he joined the staffs of Senator Lloyd Bentsen and later, Congressman Greg Laughlin. Bennett, who had worked for Governor Bill Clements subsequently, became a columnist for the Dallas Morning News.

Publisher Ted Siff was caught up in the late 80’s economic bust, which put QR on the market.

Houston apartment developer David Mincberg bought QR.

I happened to see a two-paragraph story in the Austin American Statesman in 1989 reporting that Mincberg had bought the publication. Although my wife and I owned our own business, Austin Flag and Flagpole, the economy was so bad we both were doing other jobs to keep afloat. Since Mincberg and I had known each other since junior high school, I called to see if there was an opening to do a little free-lance. A few weeks later, David called to see if I would be interested in running the publication.

I told him that I was good enough to do an occasional story, but did not know enough about politics to do the whole newsletter. After a few more days of thinking about it, David and I cut a deal. I couldn't quit for a year and he couldn't fire me for a year. After that, we would see what happened.

I was blessed to walk into the workers comp special sessions in 1989. No better way to lose your political virginity.

It took most of the year, but I finally began to get in a few good story licks and subscribers began finding the biweekly 8-page publication.

By then I was hooked.

In 1998, I bought the publication from Mincberg intending to hire a writer, limit my participation and start focusing on Austin Flag and Flagpole. No sooner was the purchase complete than our print and mail house went into the ditch. Suddenly, it took 6-7 days to turn an issue around and get it into the mail.

I called a friend, Peter Steinhardt who was managing our IT issues at Austin Flag and asked him to explore other distribution systems like blast fax. He called back a few days later and said that blast faxing was a disaster. No economies of scale and no way to assure that the subscriber received their issue.

He suggested I look at the internet.

I laughed because in the fall of 1998, the internet was AOL, Prodigy and 26K downloads after dialing up. I told my friend that nobody in politics would have the patience for such slow connections. Peter thought that the internet might be the "coming thing" and wanted to figure out how to program for it. He volunteered to do a test run for me to try.

Six weeks before the 1998 election, Quorum Report went online. It was a static page, no interactivity and nothing dynamic. But it was online!

I called a dozen friends and asked what they thought of the new product. That was our only promotion.

By election day, QR was getting over 3,000 hits a day!

I was sold. Since there was nothing off the shelf in 1998, Peter and a programmer named Michael Kline had to invent everything. Most of our software were things like Cold Fusion, Version 1.0. Different software interconnected with other software awkwardly at best.

Nevertheless, we rolled out with a dynamic QR within months and by the middle of the 1999 session, we were transitioning our Luddite print subscribers to online copy while also doubling our subscription base.

The rest is history. Even in slow periods, we gather a million hits a month.

So to all of you have joined us at QR for this journey, a million thanks. It’s been a hell of a ride. QR is 25, QR online is 10. And next March I will have been at this for twenty years.

What started out as a part time job to help make ends meet became the adventure of a lifetime.

Harvey Kronberg