ustxtxb_obs_1955_11_09_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

Skelton Blasts Shivers WA co The new chairman of the Demo, cratic Advisory Council, Byron Skelton, accepted his post with a .charge that Governor Allan .Shivers has been politiCally dishonest and that he has “stacked” the State Democratic Executive Committee, which, Skelton said, has been -“utterly disloyal … to the Democrats of this state. . Skelton roused the council members to frequent , applause and one spate of bopsthe first time he mentioned Shivers’s name. “I thought he was a Democrat. He said he was a Democrat,” Skelton said of Shivers. He said -he supported Shivers in the Senate and as Lieutenant Governor and contributed to his campaign for governor in 1950. But, said Skelton, he broke with Shivers after he sent a “paid public relations agent” before a committee that was certifying members of the State Executive Committee at the state conven. tion that year in Mineral Wells. “That agent said, ‘The Governor wants a few changes made. Some of these nominations are not satisfac , tory’,” Skelton recalled. Thus he began “to stack his state executive committee as he’s got it stacked at this time,” Skelton said. Skelton said the present State Democratic ExecUtive Committee which recently named Ben Ramsey the new Texas national Democratic committeemanis ineligible for party office if Wright Morrow, former committeeman deposed by the executive com a mittee, is ineligible. . “Every member of that State Executive Committee is ineligible, and ought to resign and ought to get off and lee good Democrats serve and see.* that the party is not double-crossed as it was in 1952,” Skelton said. “I want to challenge Allan Shivers to have an honest state convention next May,” Skelton said. “Let the people select their delegates.” . He said tactics of Senator Taft’s delegates at Mineral Wells in 1952 were “expoSed by. the press for Gen-* eral Eisenhower.” “I want to say to these newspapermen … II ‘call upon them here and now to express it at the state conven : tion next. May when Allan Shivers tries the same thingto see that we have an honest convention. I want the press and the magazines of the nation to be just as interested in seeing. justice -done in the Democratic Party as they were in seeing juStice_done in the Republican Party.” Stage two in the struggle for control o f the May convention comes in Bill Kittrell of Dallas, right, urges Creekmore Fath of Austin to desist from his plan to introduce a resolution asking the Democratic National Committee not to seat Ben New D. A. C. Head Says Governor Is a ‘Political Dictator’ December. The conservative State Democratic Executive Committee will hold a ‘closed meeting the first week in December, and D!A.C. will: convene Dec. 10 in Austin. Political organization. will’ be the first order of business at both meetines. C ORRUPTION IN AUS-TIN also came in for some attention. Skelton called the Shivers Administration a “disgrace to all Texans” and “a national scandal.” He mentioned an article in Look Magazine. He equated this charge with “corruption in politics.” In a review of. recent Texas political history, he said that Shivers had indulged in “chicanery and ‘double-crossing.” At the 1952 state convention, Skelton said, Shivers “threw out county delegations who were unfriendly to him, regardless of the facts. He elected Wright Morrow, whose record of party disloyalty goes back to 1944 to my certain knowledge, and perhaps further, as__national committeeman.” Wallace,. Savage, chairman of the state executive committee, was ‘”a junior law partner of the chairman of the State Executive Committee of the Republican Party,” Skelton said. Shivers went to the 1952 convention and “took the pledge of that convention and came home and turned his back on the nominees,” Skelton said. Neither Shivers nor Morrow Were thinking . of “honesty in party poli tics,” Skelton said. He recalled a radio introduction of Morrow in 1952 that the Democratic national committeeman would speak for Dwight Eisenhower. \(Continued from Page doubted the wisdom of passing it “at this time.” Jones, who went along with the compromise unhappily, said: “It is Sam says wig-wag and they all wigged.” He said that a minority of the council wants to “roll the D.A.C. under by doing nothing.” RAYBURN EXPRESSED . diSpleasure with the resolution at a private breakfast the next morning. He was particularly displeased with a statement that no one should be a delegate to the national convention in Staff Photo Ramsey as national committeeman. \(That is a portrait of Speaker Sam duced the resolution but accepted a substitute. “Morrow’s conscience told him it was not honest party politics,” Skelton said, “so he resigned by letter.” But, said Skelton, “Morrow’s conscience and honesty in party politics meant nothing to them. They talked old Wright into overriding his own conscience and going back on his resignation. Then poor old Morrow got the well-knoWn ‘axe’ a few weeks ago when Shivers—4hohas always stood `for principle’said he must go ‘for political expediency.’ _ “Shivers abandoned a 1 I political principle when he did that to his friend Wright Morrow,” Skelton said. Now, the new D.A.C. chairman charged, Shivers is threatening “the thousands of his. followers” who left M him because of Morrow “like any political ‘dictator who knows that his days are numbered.” SKELTON said Shivers “has already said he will not support Adlai Stevenson if he is nominated and has indicated he will not support Averell Harriman if he is the candidate. I dOn’t think he will support any Democratic nominee if you .want to know what I think about it.” “Without loyalty to your party you cannot have a great party,” he said. “We will not work with Allan Shivers or anybody that fronts for Allan Shiver-S.” \(He later said he did not mean to refer to anyindividual in this reHe said that Shivers, not the Republican Party,’ is the “real enemy.” “We have no fear of the Republicans, because with Ezra Taft BenAon and the Jack Porter ,postmaster scandal, there is nothing the Republicans can do to carry Texas in 1956.” He called the postmaster matter “a sickening thing.” Skelton lauded Sim Rayburn as one who “has stood like the Rock of Gibraltar against all of this disloyalty of Mr. Shivers and his associates. We look to him for leadership built upon honesty and integrity in party politics.” 1956 who did not support the national nominees in 1952. He took a room in the Hotel Roosevelt Friday afternocur and reporters brought him the resolution shortly’ after it had been passed. He read it through while the reporters waited, and his only direct reaction was a gruff “urn-hum.” Then he commented: “In the first place I want to say that I’m the kind of a Democrat that wants the Democratic Party to succ&d and I welcome everyone in the primaries and conventions who will support the nominee …. I believe in inclusion, not exclusion.” He said he had received a letter from Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler telling him that Ramsey will be seated Nov. 16 with “ease.” Asked if the D.A.C. should “stay in business,” he said : “Oh, yes. They’re just like all other Democrats. I never had too much help in an election in my.life.1 He repeated his support of the council in a speech that evening.. R AMSEY’S NAME was not mentioned at any point _during D.A.C.’s open session. Fath was wearing dark glasses the press a week befOre the meeting that he would press for a repudiation of .Ramsey, and he became the object of various influences. Some sought to have him drop his plan; others urged him to go ahead lest they lose the “bogey” resolution with which they were getting support for the compromise. Fath had planned to ask the Council to open the meeting to the press, but Mrs. R. D. Randolph, the acting chairthan, decided early in the week on an open meeting. After reading his resolution urging the Democratic National Committee to refuse to seat Ramsey, Fath said : Mrs. Jud Collier Files a Dissent AUSTIN Though the protests against Ben RamSey as the new national Democratic committeeman . were all but smothered at the .Democratic Advisory Council meetin g Mrs. Jud Collier, director of women’s activities for D.A.C. and chairman of the Texas Democratic. Women’s State Committee; has written all members of the Democratic National Committee asking that Ramsey not be. seated at the committee’s meeting Nov._16. “This man has been a well known member of the Shivers organization, carrying the burden of holding the line in the Texas Senate,” she said. “He is even now being sued for incorrect statement of expenses in his last campaign ; he has done what he could as presiding officer of the Senate to … and, too, he cross-filed as ‘a Democratic-Republican candidate.” In the second place,. Mrs. Collier said, precedents set by the Wright Morrow case “do not leave the State ity to elect a national committeeman.” She cited Morrow’s refusal. toaccept the positiiin of the loyalist 1948 state Democratic convention and committee that he should not be national committeeman, preferring-, instead, the authority of the national committee. She also said that when the national -committee accepted Morrow’s resignation in 1952 in spite of the state committee’s rejection of it, it added to `a precedent establishing the fact”. that the state committee has no authority to elect the -Mrs. Collier said the Democrats -“have struggled to rid ourselves of these brazen leaders …. Again I beg you this time give us our. chance to clean house.” “I am not going to discuss this resolution. I will avoid the personalities. As Democrats we all understand the situation, and I for one want to go on record as opposing filling the vacancy.” Eckhardt then proposed his substitute. It commends the national corn mittee forrefusing to recognize a “non-Democrat” as committeeman, so that “even the Governor” and the State Democratic Executive Committee were compelled to accept a man “unsullied” by party disloyalty. It said that all persons “now” Democrats are welcome back into the fold an acceptance ‘of Ramseybut said that in the future the committeeman. should be one who actively and publicly ,supported the nominees \(which Ramsey ment of principles in Fort Worth abOut’ a pledged delegatioh but added that no one who did not support the nominees in 1952 should be a Texas delegate to Chicago in 1956. This was co-sio -ned by Maverick, Cooper, Jones,. and Tom Moore of Waco. Fath accepted it. Fath then pressed for his resolution that the Texas delegation to Chicago should be pledged to the candidate “whom most Texans express preference for at their county conventions.” This could have affected a favorite son nomination for Senator Lyndon Johnson. Cooper moved to table, and Fath’s second resolution failed by voice vote: Finally, Fath proposed that the D.A.C. . should not take any ‘position in any. ‘state election. This was aimed at a query which organizer Bob Sawtelle sent,. D.A.C. members about their gubernatorial preference. Mrs. Kathleen Voigt of San Antonio “doubleseconded” this resolution, and it passed by voice vote. The Texas Observer Page 4 Nov. 9, 1955 Loyalists Accept Ramsey