Senator Tower’s aides and assistants often played key roles in enabling the senator to carry out the functions of his office. Although the work of aides and assistants is found throughout the papers, this series contains files that were clearly created or maintained by particular aides and staff members, including several of Tower’s administrative assistants in his Washington, D.C. office. The materials which concern politics, nominations, legislation, casework, projects and a broad range of other issues help reveal the role of aides and assistants in the political process: writing speeches, providing background material and memoranda to assist in decision making, and handling correspondence and casework.

Files for legislative aides and assistants are described under the Legislation Series.

The files belonging to William Ball and David Martinez are among the more complex files in this series. Mr. Ball, who became Secretary of the Navy under President Bush, was Senator Tower’s administrative assistant from July 1981 to 1984. The majority of his files contain material of a political nature relating to the 1984 Presidential election and include files on the Reagan-Bush campaign in Texas, fund-raising efforts, political opposition, background information on Republican and Democratic candidates, economic progress reports, and preparatory work for Senator Tower’s reelection campaign. Mr. Martinez, who was a special projects aide and executive assistant for the years represented here, did considerable work related to Mexican-American groups such as the Texas Migrant Council and the National Education Task Force de la Raza. His papers include 22 rolls of microfilm. The files of Robert Vinson, who worked as an aide to Senator Tower during the early 1970s, focus on oil and gas legislation as the realization of U.S. dependence on foreign oil became a top political concern.