ustxtxb_obs_1956_06_27_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

Your Democratic Candidate for t 1 LT. GOVERNOR “HONESTY IS STILL THE BEST POLICY” Reduce high taxes State utility commission $75 monthly pension at 65 HDQRS.: 1901 RALEIGH AYE., AUSTIN NIP. .01. THE TEXAS OBSERVER SUBSCRIPTION BLANK Please enter the following name for one year’s subscription Name Address Mail the subscription to Texas Observer, 504 W. 24th Street. Austin, Texas P. S. Should you get more than one new subscriber list them on separate sheet of paper ; careful to give name and address. A Month to o ecision With the first Democratic pri mary only a month away, Texas’s six gubernatorial candidates are loosing the reins and applying the lash as they maneuver for favored position with the voters. ‘Ralph Yarborough used the whip. He branded Senator Price Daniel the “Crown prince of Shivers and Shivers’s Republican executive committee” and challenged him to meet him in a San Antonio debate. Senator Daniel, declaring at Dallas that it was “time for a political showdwon” with the “extreme leftwing eltment,” called for unity and harmony among “true moderates and true conservatives.” He said . he refused to stoop to “mudslinging.” Reuben Senterfitt drew shouts of approval from a Texas Citizens Council audience at Dallas when he proclaimed: “Barriers of race were erected by God. God made the colored man and the white man, and intended for them to stay seyparate.” dently annotinc d at Kenedy : “From the response I have received on my tour of Texas, it looks like I have 85 to 90 percent of all Texas voters.” J. Evetts Haley , .before leaving Dallas, also sized things up.: “This is not a stampede. The two candidates who are supposed to be out front \(in It’s a wide-open campaign.” J. J. Holmes cancelled all speaking engagements to hunt the man who tried to kill land scandal witness Sam McCollum III with a car bomb. As a result, Holmes got much more publicity than ever before. `Mortally Unsound’ Yarborough dared Daniel to debate him in a wire: “I note” your schedule for this week brings you to San Antonio June 21.. The North Central Lions Club, which has offered to sponsor a de AUSTIN District Attorney Tom Moore, candidate for state attorney general, told a television_ audience that he is “not satisfied” with the . investigation of Texas insurance scandals. “I felt that some of the state senators we questioned in McLennan County in connection with the U. S. Trust and Guaranty case should have been indicted,” Moore . said. He explained that “their alleged offenses” did not occur in his district. Ross Carlton, Dallas attorney who is also seeking the attorney general job, opened his campaign at Big Spring. A former leader in Texas Citizens’ Council activities, he said: made the first legal move to prevent integration in Texas. I have come back here to tell you that this was not the last move in this fight for the rights of your state, and to tell you that, in the words of .a famous, earlyday American hero, we have just begun to fight.” Attorney general candidate Will Wilson of Dallas, speaking in Fort Worth, promised to “organize the attorney general’s office so that it would reflect credit on Texas. It is of supreme importance that the vast property interest of Texas, its schools and __colleges, have capable, efficient and highly organized professional service and representation.” A candidate for .lieutenant governor, C. T. Johnson, said he believed the drouth has put Texas in “the first stages of a depression” and proposed a statewide water conservation program. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 5 June 27, 1956 bate between us on the issue of the governor’s race for benefit of handicapped children, informs me they will secure an auditorium and set the debate for Thursday. I have eight speeches scheduled in the Panhandle for Thursday, but will cancel all of them if you will reconsider your earlier decision.” Daniel’s state campaign manager, Joe Greenhill, sent Yarborough this answer : Cr this headquarters has learned that the entire affair was conceived and sponsored by one of your .state campaign managers of your Unsuccessful 1954 campaign, one.. Harry O’Connor, and we resent the use of the Lions Club and. a crippled children’s program for ‘political purposes. We will not be a party to any scheme designed to .further the publicity of a candidate. for office.”, Lyle Gunderson, preSident . of the Lions Club, said the .debate was pro. The State Roundup posed as a public service event with the aim to raise funds for the club’s -crippled ‘children projects,and Wasentirely free of partisan politics. Yarborough, in _Wichita ; Falls, ad= vocated higher pensions for Texas aged. “Malnutrition, that’s what they are writing on the death certificates of hundreds of old age pensioners,” lte said. “Malnutritidn, that’s just, a fancy way of saying: starved to death on a Shivers pension.” He said that the average pension is now declared to be $39.10, “but I find thousands of them at $8, $10, $15, or $25.” He said as governor he would see that a mini mum of $30 was added to theni. “I think it is morally and. economically unsound to let federal tax money, collected in. Texas and . earmarked for old people of Texas, to pile up in Washington just because Shivers doesn’t want any federal aid,” he said. Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey, seeking reelection, endOrSed the code of fair campaign ethics circulated by three church groups. Former Lt. Gov. John Lee Smith, who is seeking return to his former office, charged in a radio broadcast at Center that “corrupt officeholders and certain conniving lobbyists” have bilked Texans of millions of dollars. Land Commissioner Earl Rudder, who is seeking his first elective term, speaking at Kilgore, said . that during his term of office the average bonus paid the state for oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico has increased to $221.30 per acre compared to $54.43 per acre during the previous 17 years. He said the increase represented -a total additional revenue of $48 million annually to the -Permanent School fund. :A candidate for Commissioner of Agriculture, Jim Barber, said in Dallas that the program of -John White, the incumbent, “has been a curse. to the fruit, vegetable and peanut growers and all the agricultural interests in the Valley.” Yarborough hit at Daniel. before a Plainview audienCe. He declared .. that he had always been in favor of 9Q percent parity supports and “I .am for them now. Ezra Taft Benson and fellow Republicans in Texasclaiming .to be Democratshave cut parity supports from 90 to 70 percent. The junior U. S. senator from Texas by his support of the Republican Party and Benson has been a party to this cut in price supports.” Speaking in Childress, Yarborough criticized Gov. Shivers for “allowing a disaster drouth contract with the federal government to . stay unsigned on his desk for more than two weeks.” Noting that Daniel had stated at a press conference in Austin that he would match his work for the Democratic Party against any candidate in the governor’s race, Yarborough . said he wanted to ask Daniel these questions: . “Did yotf support the Re -publicans in 1952 ? Will you support cans again in 1956 ? Where ‘were -you during the May,’ 1956, State Democratic convention ?” True. Moderates’ EARLIER, in the week, Daniel already had made his strongest statements of the’: campaign con# cerning Democratic. Party loyalty. He :said at Austin that he intends to “Jive and work” in the party and knows “of no issue now’ that would prevent my support of the 1956 Democratic presi. dential candidater , “What I am trying .to get over, to You,” he told newsmen, “is that I Want to support the’ Democratic tandidarte, but’ at the same time I don’t want. to tie my hands if an issue comes up that seriously affects the state.” . In Dallas, Daniel called on “true moderates and true conservatives to win this battle with the extreme leftwingers. I, for one, do not intend to let these people capture Texas,” he said. “Texans do not want a man in their governor’s office who is :tied . hand and foot by the radical leftwingers whose entire philosophy is based upon a system of government where everything is centralized in Washington. They do not want a ‘man who will sit back and let the Federal Government do as it pleases and continue, to take away the authorityof our state and local governments.”‘ Turning to the racial issue at Longview, Daniel said he refused to “demagogue it” and declared: 1.INDEPENDENT. The working editorial staff of the newspaper have complete authority and control over everything in the paper, with no interference from any source. 2.LIBERAL. It is dedicated to critical, independent-minded editorial liberalism and is committed against the service of any group or party. 3.STATEWIDE. It is read by subscribers in 248 of the 254 Texas counties \(as well as in about 35 states of the union and various foreign Whom Do You Know “If the colored and white people of this state are left alone by outside agitators, they will be able to work this problem out on a local level and maintain separate ,but equal schools.” Texans “should not be forced to commingle in public schools or any other place -of that kind.” Discussing the veterans’ land scandals, Daniel declared to a Huntsville audience : “I am proud of my record on the land board; and, if elected governor, I will insist that all the facts be investigated and the guilty punished. I stand on my record of the past and my platform for the future.” `Radical Journalists’ SENTERFITT, reviewing Supreme Court decisions on states’ rights issues, declared at Dallas: “This is a trend which I think is -more dangerous than any since our country was founded. Our heritage is at stake.” He reiterated charges that Senator Daniel, because of hiS failure to resign his office, is not eligible to seek the governor’s chair. Pressing the racial issue, Senterfitt said the -problem was being used to “dupe naive do-gooderS, futzyminded intellectuals, and radical journa lists.” Haley, a states’ right crusader, told a Dallag. audience, “there is a tremen\(bps undecided vote. People are weighing things. “Integration is the biggest issue in the easteLn part of the state, and we’re really beginning to make a dent. We are finding states’ rights the biggest overall issue, involving integration, oil and gas, and the right to work,” he told newsmen. O’Daniel, at Gonzales, said to the usual accompaniment of fiddle music that he was “just a poor boy who never had any money” intent on getting back ‘in the governor’s job to learn “who stole how much.” He spoke against “graft, fraud, bribes and corruption” and assured that when he was governor “those nine old men in Washington \(the Supreme . not cram desegregation down the throat of Texas.” Holmes, following up his offer of a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the man responsible for the land scandals bomb murder-attempt, said he had talked with a woman who had information on the case. He expected to get additional information soon, he said. More. Indictments-a-Moore The Texas Observer has developed t h e third largest weekly circulation in Texas. 4.RECOGNIZED. It has been remarked upon favorably in Harper’s, Look, The Reporter, The Nation, and Coronet magazines. Observer articles have been widely reprinted. 5.GROWING. But it will grow; faster if each friend of the Observer will seek to obtain one new subscriber from among the many people who are interested in public affairs and, need a steady source of light on Texas issues. 1 Who -Should Subscribe? 4