ustxtxb_obs_1962_02_16_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

WALKER CHANCES SPECULATED LIBERAL ENDORSEMENTS PEND IN RACE LABOR, frit In another major develop ment in the first round of the political races, the state AFL CIO’s COPE meets in Dallas this weekend, after this issue goes to press, to hear candidates and de cide on endorsements. The deci sion on the governor’s race, if there. is one, will probably be made late Saturday. Most statewide can didates from both parties will address the 220-member group. Labor is known to be split be tween John Connally, Don Yar borough, and Price Daniel, with the warmest and widest feeling for Yarborough. Atty. Gen. Will Wilson earlier had asked COPE not to endorse any gubernatorial candidate in the first primary, Political Intelligence and with Daniel in the race just that might happen. This would not preclude, however, the possibility of an informal, closed-door endorsement of Yarborough and a public policy of hands-off. Some Washington labor circles, the Observer has reported, want Connally … Hank Brown, state AFLCIO president, issued a statement refuting what he called “misrepresentations” in press coverage of the PASO convention \(see sepbut was obviously referring to news reports that he spoke in favor of Daniel. “At this time,” he said, “the Texas State AFL-CIO is not for or against any candidate running for any office. I did not recommend, suggest, or intimate that PASO should support any candidate.” . . Speaker Jim Turman is likely to get the COPE endorsement for lieutenant governor, Tom Reavley for attorney general. g 000r The Democratic Coalition leaders of labor, independent liberals, Latins, Negroesmet in Austin for closed-door discussions on the political races, will convene again shortly for final decisions. Yarborough had the strongest backing for governor, with some sentiment behind Daniel. Sympathies were with Reavley for attorney general, though there was a sprinkling of support for Les Procter. Turman drew strong support in a floor discussion, but was attacked on his segregationist record -by San Antonio Negro leader. G. J. Sutton. Hank Brown defended Turman. Houston liberal leaders at the session supporting Turman said he is “in bad trouble” among Negro voters there and among many liberals if he doe; not face the segregationist issue soon. vf The Bexar County Demo cratic Coalition set up a candidates steering committee and will decide on endorsements next week. Bexar labor leaders await the COPE decision. Latin leaders are at least formally committed to Daniel, the Negroes and Teamsters are pro-Yarborough, and most independent liberals want Yarborough. t o of Fort Worth Labor News, writing on the “soul-search ing” of labor delegates to the COPE convention, cited these factors. One, “the intense and sometimes bitter struggle between Sen. Yarborough and Vice-Presi dent Johnson. Yarborough has many devoted followers in the labor movement. It’s no secret that he has used the pre-season political months to harass the Vice President, who has usurped some of his senior-senator prerog atives. It’s no secret either that Lyndon Johnson has powerful connections with labor leaders in Washington and some in Texas THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 8 Feb. 16, 1962 and that many hard-headed Texas union members think it would be a matter of practical politics to put no obstacle in the way of Mr. Johnson’s great and good friend, John . Connally.” Two, Daniel’s record and his “comprehensive platform.” Three, “the warm esteem of many labor groups for young Don Yarborough.” frof Sam Wood of the Austin American, noting the irony of 1960 LBJ workers Daniel and Connally now running against one another, said their hope will be to keep the party united against the GOP, and added that “moderation” in the Connally-Daniel campaign debate is necessary . . . Connally scheduled a 22-station TV speech for Thursday night after this issue goes to press. Speaking to a seminar on national affairs at Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, he urged Americans to meet the communists on every frontmilitary, political, ideological, technological .. . Yarborough, making a pitch to the Railroad Brotherhoods, accused politicians in control of state government of having failed in making improved rail passenger service possible. Franklin Jones, veteran liberal from Marshall, endorsed Yarborough in a letter circulated to friends around the state . One of Texas’ best known political writers, not based in Austin:, quotes in private talks what he calls “Austin’s finest political minds” who predict a Daniel-Yarborough run-off. g o or Democratic governor candi date Edwin Walker was squeezed out of a forthcoming Madison Square Garden rally in New York this week by Sens. Barry Goldwater and John Tower, UPI in Washington reported. Young Americans for Freedom, the sponsors, said Walker was advised his appearance might be viewed as an endorsement of his candidacy. A spokesman for the Texas junior senator, who will speak along with Goldwater at the March 7 rally, said Walker’s appearance was questioned even before he got into the governor’s race. Goldwater told the organization he would not speak if Walker remained on the program .. . Washington AP says Walker “seems to have become the witness nobody wants” in the Senate muzzling hearings. Leading proponents of the muzzling investi-, gation, including Sen. Strom Thurmond, privately say Walker’s entry into the Texas race “greatly diminishes the potential impact of anything he may tell the committee.” Walker praised the Birch Society and pledged to campaign against “professional liberals,” of whom President Kennedy is one. . . . Concensus in informed Texas circles is that Walker won’t do so well in his Texas race, getting at very most 75,000 votes and more likely in the neighborhood of 50,000 or less barring nuclear warfare, depression, or a permanent Hurricane Carla. With conservatives like Goldwater, Tower, and Cong. Bruce Alger against him, he has a rough road ahead. Predicts one Austin politico: “Take his vote in Houston and Dallas and multiply by two and that’s about how many he’ll get.” . . . Mike Quinn of the Dallas News interviewed Alger, who said: “I will oppose General Walker just as completely as I can because as far as I’m concerned he has joined the party in which his effectiveness as a conservative will be at a minimum.” Maurice Carlson, former Dallas GOP chairman, predicts Walker won’t poll over 20,000, 8,000 of them from Dallas County. Joe Bailey Humphreys, ranking Dallas Democrat, predict ed conservatives will not “squander their votes” on Walker. Lee Smith, Dallas Democratic chairman, said Walker’s entry “proves what we’ve said all along,” that the Democratic Party “offers a selection of candidates on a broad base.” A Dallas John Bircher said Walker has “lost the respect of most conservatives because they feel there was political motivation behind his retirement.” Another Bircher said “most of the rightwing conservatives” will support him . . . Keith Wheatley ‘ of Stamford, candidate for the Railroad Commission against Ben Ramsey, called Walker a “Daddy Warbucks” and said he couldn’t work too well with the General if the two were elected. frof Wheatley in a statement asked the RRC to investigate oil companies that buy Texas crude. “It is these same companies,” he said, “that actually import foreign oil in competition with Texas producers.” Tower made endorsements on two fronts this week. He praised an article in the current issue of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review sharply attack ing Robert Welch of the Birch Society. The magazine said Welch is splitting conservative ranks, is irrelevant and ineffectual, and “has revived in many men the spirit of patriotism and the same spirit calls now for rejecting out of love of truth and country his false counsels.” Tower’s endorse can’t beat the radio and roadblocks. Escapees nowadays are born dead” \(caught before they it, though the new ones keep trying.” Fifty-five days later McKenzie was captured in St. Louis when police raided the apartment house he was hiding in. It was just luck. The police didn’t know he was there. “They didn’t know me from Jay Gould.” Eighteen months later he escaped againsame farm, same method. He was out sixty days. On the sixtieth day, Sept. 10, 1927, he got in a gunfight with four cops in San Antonio and one of them, a detective by the name of Sam ,Street, was shot to death. Then the Knifing McKenzie was sentenced to , die in the electric chair, but instead of dying there, he became protagonist of what he calls a “comedy of error.” He escaped from the Bexar County jail, and was recaptured. He was moved to death row, spending six months one stretch and seven months another. During one of these terms, the notorious gangster Raymond Hamilton and a couple of cohorts escaped from death row with the aid of a smuggled gun, and offered to take McKenzie along, but he refused. He was judged insane in 1929 and wasn’t judged sane again until 1945; meanwhile, . in 1939, Gov. Pappy O’Daniel had commuted his sentence to life. Always a game-cock, McKenzie frequently won the admiration of his equally tough guards in the 1930s, and in 1935 he, was let off death row from time to time to walk in the yard for exercise. “This wasn’t a nice place back then,” he said. “There was always somebody getting killed in the yard. Guards walked two and two for protection. You could get killed for a five-cent piece. Well, one day this convict says to me, `You must have talked, or they ment of the article was supported by Goldwater, Cong. Walter Judd, Fulton Lewis Jr., and others . . . Tower also backed Texas newswoman Sarah McClendon, whose query about security risks in the State Department angered President Kennedy. He placed several editorials favorable to Mrs. McClendon in the journal. frof Lincoln Day was celebrated at Bostick’s Cafe in La Marque when a small group of former Democrats made the switch to the party of Thaddeus Stevens, Thad Hutcheson, and Tad Smith . . . Bill Hays of Tem ple, GOP lieutenant governor can didate, has accepted the challenge of Kellis Dibrill, his San Antonio Republican opponent, to a series , of formal debates . . . Dawson Duncan of the Dallas News, not ing GOP bids for governor, lieu tenant governor, and attorney general, 17 of the 23 congressional places, ten state Senate and 68 House seats, said this full-scale activity may hint at a GOP lead ership bid in Texas . . . Demo cratic and Republican leaders took potshots at one another over whether the GOP should hold primaries in all the state’s pre cincts and counties. The Demo crats argue that any party re quired to have a primary must choose its statewide candidates by a vote of the whole state. Harris County GOP chairman James Bertron said this would be un wouldn’t have let you off death row. I think I’ll kill you one of these days.’ “I told one of the guards about it, and he said, ‘Why, if I was you, I’d cut his head off and throw it back in his face.’ I decided I’d better have some protection, so I made a knife out of a wood chisel. It wasn’t long after that when this convict comes up to me in the yard and says, ‘I think I’ll kill you today,’ and I said, ‘It might as well be today as any day.’ “He picked up a board and started hitting me on the head, and I pulled my chisel and hit him four or five times In the left side,” That was killing number three. Fortunately for McKenzie, three guards saw it all and testified in his behalf before the grand jury. He was no-billed. Life was raw in Huntsville prison when McKenzie went there in the ‘twenties. The toilet was an individual bucket. Prisoners slept on corn-shuck mattresses. Punishment was with the bata leather thong whip. Work was from before sun-up to after sun-down. “In those days,” said McKenzie, “guards and convicts understood