When attorney Claude E. Welch in 1974 announced his candidacy for county judge, the incumbent — Joe H. O'Quinn, who was "highly controversial" and had made a name for himself in the national headlines as "the birdman," among other things — withdrew his bid to run.

Between 1971 and 1974 O'Quinn, a one-legged character who grew irate with the birds roosting in the trees outside his window in the courthouse trees, took to shooting at the pests from his office window, Welch said.

"A lot of people didn't like that," he said. Among those "forward-thinking people" rallying for Welch's election were his friends in the district attorney's office — the late federal judge John Hannah Jr. and retired state district judge Gerald Goodwin.

"I didn't even have my bar exam results when I announced my candidacy for county judge," Welch said. "I used to lay awake at night looking at the ceiling imagining the headlines of The Lufkin Daily News: 'County judge candidate flunks bar exam.' I was just living in horror ... if I flunked it as a candidate it would become a public matter. "

Welch accepted his friends' encouragement to run for office as a way to launch his political ambitions of being a U.S. senator or congressman, knowing that

President Harry S. Truman began his career as a county judge in Missouri.

"I wasn't six months into being a public official before I lost that political ambition," he said. This he attributed to his exasperation of working with unreasonable and illogical constituents such as a group of people who wanted their properties to be annexed into another school system even though it wasn't legally possible. "That started me thinking, 'am I going to spend the rest of my career dealing with illogical dumb——-?'"

Welch's determination to bring county government practices into compliance with the law, and make decisions within the bounds of the law, cost him many who funded his opponent in the next election. But his success in pushing the county forward, and his open government style, sparked The Lufkin Daily News, four years later, to make Welch its first local endorsement.

"Joe Murray was editor, he liked the way I handled my job over there and he made an exception — but I got beat," Welch said, attributing it to the amount of controversy he stirred up and wears it as badge of honor.

"I truly ... cleaned the place up," Welch said of those "fast and furious four years."

The young lawyer began by thrusting open the windows and doors of courthouse practices to the light of public scrutiny — handing over a key to his office and all its contents to the county reporter for The Lufkin Daily News. And quite often he would arrive to find reporter Lynn Dunlap busily sifting through files. For his own protection against a potentially hostile court, Welch also invited the media to attend closed executive sessions of the commissioners' court as witnesses but on the condition of a gag order.

"I am probably the only public official in the history of the world to invite the news media to executive sessions," Welch said. "They all came. I had a deal with them. I said, 'All right, guys, put your notebooks up, put your tape recorders up. I am doing this so you can have background information for your stories and if you ever say one damn thing about what happened in these executive sessions I won't let you back in again.' And they didn't.

"I didn't do it because I wanted the media in there," he said. "I did it because I needed some help in there up against those four county commissioners. I thought maybe it wouldn't go quite so bad if the media was there. (Of) course, what they should have done is refused to meet with media."

But the "boy judge" got away with it, he laughed.

"For the first time in the county's history we began having tax equalization board hearings ... by the commissioners' court," he said.

Prior to the creation of the appraisal district, it was up to each governing entity to assess property tax valuations. Welch started out to make it a more cooperative effort and a more level playing field by requesting tax appraisal lists from the schools and the cities and comparing notes to what the county tax assessor was charging.

"I went to the school district and got their appraisal cards, and I went to the city of Lufkin and got their appraisal cards, and I compared them to Angelina County's and I saw that there was a great disparity," he said. "It wasn't hard to figure out why we were operating over there in the damn stone age."

Welch obtained an agreement from local industries to slowly increase their level of tax payments over a period of three years until their county assessments were equivalent to those assessed by other entities.

This added $2.31 million valuation to the county tax rolls, according to a story by then Lufkin Daily News reporter Lynn Dunlap.

Frustrated with the "antiquated" system employing multiple tax assessors, Welch testified in Austin on the need for central appraisal districts.

Angelina County's archaic system included a tax assessor, Dan Jones, "who worked out of a cigar box even though he had been appropriated funds to buy a cash register and refused to collect delinquent taxes," Welch said. Ironically, though, Jones succeeded Welch as county judge and "did an excellent job," Welch said.

Welch, constantly stirring controversy, took advantage of his legal designation as chief budget officer by preparing the budget for each department, instead of the auditor — which commissioners refused to even consider, insisting the auditor prepare it, as was tradition. That triggered "the single biggest outpouring of revolt in the county ... there were hundreds of people carrying signs in protest," Welch said.

At this time Angelina County rejoined the Deep East Texas Council of Governments — something his predecessor had been against, nearly costing the county grant eligibility for state and federal funding, he said.

And Angelina County was the first county in Texas to reject aerial fire ant insecticide applications by the Texas Department of Agriculture after several concerned mothers persisted in educating Welch and the court on the health risks Myrex posed for their children. This was the direct result of the court publishing their intended actions, as required by law, at Welch's insistence — which ultimately allowed the mothers to learn in advance about the county's participation in the Texas Department of Agriculture program which would cost the county $67,000.

"The first time I talked to them I didn't take them all that seriously," Welch said. "And the more I got to know them, and that they were educated women of substance, I invited them to speak during the public forum."

Commissioners received the women "very poorly" and "made fun" of the mothers, he said. One commissioner said '"Well, ladies ... you drop your pants and go out there and sit on that fire ant bed. As long as you sit on that fire ant bed, I'll eat Myrex.'"

But the mothers prevailed and Welch scheduled numerous public hearings on the matter, even inviting the state's commissioner of agriculture to attend.

Welch also worked to equalize salaries among in the county and introduced a retirement program for county employees.

"I even included the old county judge who came to me, grabbed me by the tie, and said, 'Judge if you just give me a job somewhere for six months, I'll qualify for my back time for the county.' So we ended up on good terms," Welch said.