ustxtxb_obs_1957_05_21_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

JOUST GENTLY CARR, BURKETT AUSTIN Both Reps. J o e Burkett, Kerrville, and Waggoner Carr, Lubbock, are optimistic about their chances for the 1959 House speakership. Burkett said he has ’75 pledges. This is not a majority of the next House, as there is a high turnover each two years, but it is a substantial body of votes. Burkett said he is confident and optimistic. Carr, the present Speaker, also expressed confidence after receiving 20 additional pledges from members. “As far as I am concerned, there is no doubt now about the final outcome,” he said. The pledges were delivered Carr by the representatives Wednesday afternoon after a caucus Tuesday afternoon at the house being rented for the session by Reps. Hughes, Korioth, Kennard, and Mullen. Ramsey Wins Tuition Play AUSTIN Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey employed all the procedural maneuvers and persuasive powers at his command to guide the controversial state college tuition increase bill to 15-13 passage of the Senate. In order to get the bill up for consideration, since it did not have the required two-thirds for a rules suspension, Ramsey followed the calendar, an extremely unusual procedure for him. Handing the gavel to Sen. Dorsey Hardeman, San Angelo, Ramsey worked the floor for more than an hour, presumably informing senators with bills high on the calendar that they were coming up. The maneuver to get the bill up for consideration came just a few AUSTIN A new force must now be reckoned on in Texas politics. Even the skeptics at the press table left the Democrats of Texas convention here Saturday convinced that a heavyweight organization had at last been formed by the liberal loyalists. More than 1,000 tough-minded Democratic partisans from 106 counties came, sang, speechified, cheered, and welded themselves together into a statewide team geared for action. DOT, they decided, will endorse candidates, try to take over the 1958 Democratic convention, and work for party registration, an end to the poll tax, and majority rule in party affairs. They decided they would not adopt a detailed program on current issues at their first meeting. The group’s interim officials will probably fall inactive for the summer and start a series of dinners and organization drives in the fall. The delegates, filling an Lshaped hall on the mezzanine of the Stephen F. Austin hotel, roared and stomped through speeches by Sen. Ralph Yarborough, keynoter Byron Abernethy, and Charles Brannan, former Secretary of Agriculture. They elected Mrs. R. D. Randolph, Democratic national cornmitteewoman, their permanent chairman when factions disputing over other candidates could not agree without a serious schism. They approved a constitution which gives the initiative of candidate endorsements to a ruralcontrolled steering committee but retains urban primacy in the statewide meetings by a system of proportional representation on the basis of qualified voters. They adopted a $36,000 annual budget to be raised by county. quotas of four cents per vote for Adlai Stevenson in 1956, but they refused to reduce county repre sentation to the extent to which a county does not meet its quota. Mrs. Randolph opened what she called “this wonderful meet, ing of the loyal Democrats of the state.” “You know the wherefore and why of this meeting,” she said. “It developed directly from the treatment we received in the September convention in Fort Worth. “Everything has been done to try to intimidate us, to try to see that we would not have this meeting. We are going forward until we the Democrats will control the 1958 convention.” Mrs. Randolph said she and Byron Skelton, Democratic national committeeman \(who disapproved of the DOT meeting as not necAUSTIN Ralph Yarborough was interrupted with applause and laughter two dozen times as he told the Democrats of Texas meeting here, “You have been my friends in time of need, and I’m your friend in this time of our triumph.” The senator and Mrs. Yarborough came onto the convention floor late in the afternoon and broke it up for a while. Yarborough stood at the head table while the delegates sang “The Eyes of Texas.” Chris Dixie, the chairman of the meeting, introduced Yarborough with an improvised limerick: “He saw the price of freedom, and he paid it; He ran and ran and tried and tried, and finally he made it.” “A great day for me,” Yarborough said to “you who are my friends and to whom I owe so much.” “You and those you represent have made it possible for me to represent you today,” he said. He introduced Mrs. R. D. Ran Daniel from Washington recently asking him “please t o push through t h e party registration bill.” She said he had not answered the wire and had done nothing to support the bill. Yet, she said, “Daniel has been very anxious to protect Democrats from the effects of their associating with each other. He tried vainly to get the legislature to say to Texas Democrats, you can’t meet and work for the party unless the Governor says it’s all right.” She said that “the identity” of the Democrats in Texas had been “destroyed by an almost unbelievable laxity about party membership. The minimum principle a dolph as “the greatest Democratic national committeewoman in Texas history,” and that drew a rising ovation. Then he remembered: “I remember a march out in the rain in San Antonio in 1952.” Cries of “oh yeah!” went up. “I see that bearded patriarch from Palestine, Bonner Frizzell,” Yarborough went on …. He remembered Maury Maverick, Sr., led the march to La Villita and that a Padre rose to give the invocation and said, “Lord help them, they have so far to go.” “That,” said Sen. Yarborough, “was five years to the month ago.” The Buchanan Dam meeting four years ago was, he said, the “greatest Democratic meeting prior to this in Texas, and there were not a third the number that are here today.” Far from dropping the question of his presence at the controversial meeting, Yarborough became explicit about why he was there. “Now, you take us Democrats political party must have if it is to exist with any meaning is that its essential affairs are limited to its members.” Republicans boasting they elect Dixiecrats in the Democratic primaries “is like Adlai Stevenson inviting Herbert Hoover and friends to a decisive strategy conference,” she said. She said the state Democratic executive committee and its leaders “have, by deliberate inaction, abjectly betrayed the best interests of Texas.” She said DOT will be a broad organization. “You, the people in the precincts, you must control this organization.” She congratulated “people that can’t really afford trips like this making a sacrifice to be here for the welfare of your state and your country.” After Edgar Ball gave a report on convention procedure, the delegates designated Chris Dixie of Houston chairman, Jean Lee of Austin secretary, Jim Wilson of Floydada sergeant at arms, and. W. 0. Murray, Jr., of San Antonio parliamentarian. Dixie said bearers of “counterfeit credentials” in party matters have “insufficient moral equipment to deal with their problems.” He said the meeting was to “return to three rights: the right to vote, the right to have your vote counted, and the right to have your vote counted right.” He alluded to the remark of Jim Lindsey, state committee chairman, that DOT was a splinter group, and said: “Jim, you’re wasting your time, there’s no more chance to convince the people that Fort Worth was all right than there was to convince them that what Bascom Giles did was all right. If Fort Worth was clean we would not be here today.” He also urged Republicans “to get out of those back alleys of politics and raise their standards on Main Street so the people can see ’em.” He said “the liberal Democrats stand up and say what DOT Enters ‘Heavy’ Class `MY FRIENDS’ The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth. Thoreau Orxa Mbstrarr W e will serve no . group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we fins it and the right as we see it. An Independent Liberal Weekly Newspaper Vol. 49 TEXAS, MAY 21, 1957 10c per copy No. 2 FLO D OF DECISIONS END 5 th SESSION Originally, Ha r dem an and I just so long as he waited until AUSTIN With adjournment likely for Thursday at 6 p.m., the legislature this week rushed through a flood of final decisions that affect the entire state. The $399-a-year teachers’ pay raise zipped through both houses. Reports indicated it might leave a $7 million shortage in the treasury and therefore cause a special session. The Governor’s insurance reorganization plan was stalled in conference. Finally passed was the $200 million local project water program. The $12 million transfer from the permanent to the available school fund cleared last hurdles. Gov . Daniel’s signature is also awaited on the redistricting bill giving Houston another congressman. A walkout of 44 members in the House Tuesday evening stymied the bill requiring the state to pay half the cost of right of way purchase. After a stalemate Monday, legislators began working to salvage a minimum strengthening of the workmen’s compensation law, The Lobby Snarl only, if the Senate would drop its provision that everybody trying to influence legislation, whether they were paid to do so or not, would have to register. others in the Senate would not permit any lobby bill to be passed unless it eliminated all exemptions. House pushers of the legislation urged Sen. Charles Herring, Austin, to accept these terms in order to get to the conference committee stage. Herring secured passage of his amendment, which he said provides a “stronger” bill, mainly because it “eliminates all exemptions.” Said Zbranek: “This means that anyone who talks to a member of the legislature, at home or anywhere else, about any legislation would be required to register as a lobbyist.” Zbranek believes such a provision would be unconstitutional because it would “deny the right of petition.” ing legislative sessions on their expenditures. “Under that provision, a lobbyist could give every member of the legislature an airplane without having to report it, the end of the session to do it,” said Seeligson. Wednesday a fight was to break out over the lobby bill. All efforts of the House conferees to obtain a bill acceptable to them had failed as of Tuesday night. Angry floor debate was in the air. The House version called for registration of all persons hired to lobby on legislation and required that they file expense accounts monthly showing all expenditures over $25 for gifts or entertainment of legislators. Comp Bill Lags The proposed workmen’s compensation increase law appeared in serious danger of failing after the Senate added two amend ments which had been refused House passage. Sen. Searcy Bracewell of Houston pushed the bin through the Senate. Basically, he said, it raises the maximum weekly worker compensation from $25 to $35. The amendments were objected of by Sen. Doyle Willis, Fort Worth, who said they “keep a man who gets injured from getting partial disability compensation when he returns to the job and provide that the amount of compensation an injured man receives will be figured on the basis of a percentage of the maximum weekly benefits allowed under law instead of a percentage of the salary he was receiving at the time he was injured. The Willis motion was to table the amended bill was defeated 17-11, and the bill was finally passed 19-9. Monday the House snarled over H. B. 433 fruitlessly. Teacher’s Pay The treasury, legislators have learned, may be about $7 million short of funds to pay teachers the minimum $399 per year \(withwanted. The bill passed the House last week after additional raises Speaker Waggoner Carr appointed members to the conference committee very friendly to strong lobby regulation, especially including R e p s. Zeke Zbranek, of Daisetta; Charles Hughes, Sherman; and Frates Seeligson, San Antonio. Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey to the contrary appointed senators who delegated to Sen. Dorsey Hardeman full authority. Hardeman let the House sponsors of the legislation know that if they did not take his bill, they wouldn’t get anything at all. At that point Seeligson crossed the aisle to ask Hardeman if he would accept a cornpromise on this basis: The House would yield on its insistence that lobbyists have to report monthly on a year-round Seeligson also objected because basis and grant the Senate view the Senate version only requires it should be during the session lobbyists to report monthly dur