ustxtxb_obs_1958_06_13_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

Campaigns Turn On Majority-Minority Issuei Yarborough Defends Labor, Racial Minorities; Blakley Against Foreign Ideas, for McGee Bend; Daniel Studies Unemployment Comp.; O’Daniel Not Withdrawing; Gonzalez Says Governor Not Integrator; Hazlewood for Sales Taxes will abide by the decision of the Democratic primary. The SDEC therefore, on Monday, approved him as a candidate for governor. O’Daniel did not appear. In Corpus Christi at a $10-aplate dinner for him, Gonzalez said he is running to win though he knows some people won’t vote for “that so-and-so Mexican.” He is, he said, “traveling under a handicap,” but he doesn’t want people to vote for or against him because he is Latin. “It’s not a good road that doesn’t work two ways,” he said. The Senate Race Sen. Yarborough had an enthusiastic reception from the Texas Assn. of Letter Carriers in Dallas. He has been a leader in the successful effort to get postmen a pay raise. Leaders of the association openly advocated his support. Yarborough said no organization should go unrepresented in Washington because it is a minority. “No one segment of our population constitutes a majority,” he said He praised the postal workers for organizing, “because in this complex ‘society, organization is the only way.” Lawyers, doctors, employers, businessmen, and farmers are organized, he said, but “There are lots of greedy people who don’t want you to be organized.” “I didn’t see any of those big airlines getting fat subsidies corning in and offering to give up their subsidies if you would give up that pay raise,” he said, thus slamming at William Blakley as principal stockholder in Braniff Airways. Condemning “slanders” of the AFL-CIO, Yarborough said, “Because you belong in the AFL they say you are subversive. I know what sacrifices you have made for your country. Don’t let them slander you because you are organized. They are the ones always criticizing the government, and you’ll be defending the government when the slanderers have turned tail and run.” In Galveston Monday night for a banquet of Greek-Americans, Yarborough called for the extension of the reciprocal trade agreements and also said his Senate opposition “is trying to down us with money. To these rich men, organized labor and minority racial groups are evil things, and they think they can hurt me by associating me with these groups. Well, I hope they keep right on doing it, because we’ll beat them so badly they will always remember that they cannot buy a seat in the United States Senate.” In Houston before the Southwest regional council of the Ntl. Texas Is 41st In State Spending WASHINGTON Texas ranks 41st among the states in state government expenditures per capita for 1957, according to Census Bureau figures supplied the Observer by Congressional Quarterly in Washington. The Texas per capita expenditure from general revenue, $103.20, compares with. Nevada’s most per person, $216.11, and New Jersey’s least, $83.17. Texas ranks 33rd in per capita general revenue with $112.51, Texas total general revenue spending in fiscal 1957 was $923,033, a 9.3 percent increase over fiscal 1956. Nevada in fiscal 1957 collected the most taxes per capita, $137.76, and New Jersey collected the least, $50.92. Texas ranked 38th with a per capita tax collection of $773.66. Texas total tax collection in fiscal 1957 was $658,840, a 5.7 increase over fiscal 1956. Texas in fiscal 1957 ranked 37th highest in per capita debt, with $24.74 per citizen. Texas’s total debt for fiscal 1957 was $221,288, a 3.7 percent increase over the preceding year. The states increased their total spending between fiscal 1956 and 1957 three times as much as the federal government did. Total state spending in fiscal ’57 was $21 billion compared to $69 billion federal spending. WASHINGTON Speaker Sam Rayburn let it be known no oneespecially not the Dallas Newsis speaking for him on whom he favors in the summer elections. The News had speculated he and Sen. Johnson were giving “left-handed” support to ex-Sen. Bill Blakley. Rayburn said in Washington: “One writer said I was giving left-handed support to one of the candidates. When I get ready to say anything about the Senate race, I’ll say it myself, if I say anything. I want it understod I’m tired of this kind of talk.” Johnson says he’s not taking sides. Pressed in Jacksonville by a Daily Progress reporter, Blakley, the paper said, “avoided a direct reply as to whether or not he is satisfied with the Eisenhower administration’s conduct of the nation’s affairs.” Blakley suported Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. He also declined at that point to take a position on the McGee Bend Dam project, but later he said he favors it. “Even though I might learn the power feature is not economically feasible,” he said, he might not oppose its construction because of “the enormous benefits” of the darn. In Beaumont, Blakley told campaign leaders: “I feel that I have enjoyed more blessing than any The Campaigns living man. I have beenand still amblessed with good health. I was blessed by having poor parents and by having to work for a living. I have been blessed for 36 years with a wonderful wife. I want to be a part in leaving the same privileges no more and no less to our children.” Blakley cited flood control projects on the Colorado, Brazos, and Rio Grande as examples of good conservation but said passing out lump sums of spending money is not the way to carry on a solid soil and water conservation program. The Governor’s Race Apart from his state committee appearance, Gov. Daniel passed a fairly quiet week. In San Antonio he endorsed the Alamo city as the site of another medical school. He was there for an annual meting of World War II friends. He called attention to the Belden Poll showing him with 60 percent to O’Daniel’s 16 and Gonzalez’s 6. He said it confirmed what his advisers had concluded but warned against complacency. Daniel said in Austin he would recommend to the legislature that no stone be left unturned to finance public schools with Texas money. “Education has a high price tag” but is worth it, he said. “The only way we can retain an educational system of control of our schools,” he said. Daniel said in Houstonbefore addressing a conservative group concerned with winning the Harris County precinct conventions he is having lawyers brief whether Texas can pass on extended unemployment benefits without a special session. Yarborough and Daniel refused to be photographed together, although they were both in the Rice Hotel at the same time. Chuckling, Yarborough said: “When did old Price move down from the Shamrock? He must be running for office again.” Jim Fritts, an O’Daniel campaign aide, called rumors O’Daniel might withdraw “ridiculous.” A subcommittee of the state Democratic executive committee demanded to know if O’Daniel “has repudiated the Constitution Party,” as whose nominee he sought to run for governor in the general election in 1956 after losing in the Democratic primary. O’Daniel on June 6 wrote that he Don Booker, Orange, withdrew from the race, as Alvis Vandygriff had before him. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to go into the office of governor of Texas,” Booker said. He later endorsed Daniel. Candidate Joe Irwin, Dallas, asked Daniel why “he has remained silent on a statewide scandal which every alert newspaper in Texas has been headlining for months: the loan shark scandal.” He called for a cleanup of insurance liquidations \(his own American Atlas has been old age benefits; he opposed general sales or state income taxes. Other Election’s The state committee refused 27-20 to place Judge Graham Purcell on the ballot against court of criminal appeals judge K .K. Woodley. Purcell has been a lawyer but nine years. The constitutional requirement for the Supreme Court is ten years, but under an earlier provision, this also automatically increased the requirement for the criminal appeals court to ten years. Purcell maintains the voters were not advised of this consequence when they increased the Supreme Court qualifications. The Supreme Court has granted Purcell permission to file a mandamus suit to try to get on the ballot. Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey declined to express his opinion on whether a medical school should be located in San Antonio or Austin. Politics should not enter into it, he said. George Nokes, opposing Ramsey, favors San Antonio. The Dallas News reported a mailing for funds for Nokes signed by Judge Jim Sewell, Corsicana, was sent out under the same Austin postage meter number used in an AFL-CIO press release. “I’ve a lot of people sending out letters for me, both liberals and conservatives,” Nokes said. State Sen. Jimmy Phillips, Angleton, opposed by Rep. Babe Schwartz, Galveston, said partisans of legal horse race betting are pouring money into state legislative races. Sen. Grady Hazlewood, Amarillo, advocated new “special sales taxes on luxuries and non-necessities of life. . . . Certainly every loyal patriotic citizen of Texas,” he said, “should want to pay his part of the tax burden which I hope will include non-essentials of life that he or she is enjoying and indulging.” INSURANCE REPORT STIRS LITTLE NOTE AUSTIN Only attention noted by the Observer to its report last issue on. senators’ connections with William Blakley’s Guardian International Life Insurance Co. was this resume in Stuart Long’s “Austin Report”: “The Texas Observer dug into the reports of Blakley’s Guardian International Life, found it paid $12,300 to three senators in the 1945-51 period while they were either chairman or member of the Senate Insurance Committee. From 1945-57 insurance companies in which Blakley held majority stock paid him $273,750 and his fees. The senators, all now exes, lost the Blakley firm as a client when they lost their Senate seats.” Page 8 June 13, 1958 THE TEXAS OBSERVER Daniel’s leadership is “defective,” his statements on public issues “mealymouth and Polyanna like”; “Corrupt state leaders have injected the race issue to cover bad leadership, poor planning, and corruptness that is reeking and smelling,” Gonzalez said. “There is not a thing a person in the governor’s office or the legislature can do against the constitution,” he said. In Houston he said the segregation bills passed were a “grand hoax” and a political effort to mislead the people into thinking the legislature could do something about a constitutional situation. Addressing the downtown lodge of B’Nai B’Rrth, he said, “Everybody is in one way or another a member of some minority.” Roy Evans, president of United Auto Workers local 893 in Dallas, announced he is for Gonzalez and said some members he talks to are also; that a majority might be if Daniel takes an anti-labor line. He noted Dallas union people supported Stevenson or Eisenhower in 1956, and “Gonzalez’s position is less extreme than the position of those two.” “While I’m not in agreement with everything he has said or done, he has terrific intelligence, a wonderful personality, came up the hard way, knows what the underdog is up against, and can stand up to the vested interests,” Evans said. Businessmen Want Sales Tax, Poll Says AUSTIN letter oriented to businessmen’s points of viewhao announced final results of its poll of its mostly businessmen subscribers on the summer elections. The results: Blakley 90 percent, Yarborough 7 percent, for senator; Daniel 77 percent, O’Daniel 9 percent, for governor; Ramsey 76 percent, Nokes 14 percent, for lieutenant governor; Allcorn 57 percent, Dimmitt eight percent, for land commissioner; White 28 percent, Griffin 15 percent, Kothmann 14 percent, for agriculture commissioner \(the balance in each case On taxes, the subscribers expressed preferences in this order: sales taxes 80 percent, income taxes 35 percent, corporate taxes 19 percent, natural resources ten percent. Surprisingly, 53 percent of the businessmen approved \(m a n y 28 percent disapproved, “the job being done now by state government.” Assn. of Housing Officials Yarborough criticized “miserly pensions” of $40 a month per aged person in Texas, some as low as $15 a month, “not enough to hold body and soul together.” He said Texas is 40th among the states in payments to the aged. He cornmended the San Antonio housing authority’s project of public housing for the aged. Yarborough said he would push to override Eisenhower’s veto of the public works program. It “contains $46 million for Texas,” he said. He introduced a bill in Congress authorizing $200 million in grants annually for five years to public junior colleges, but, he said, leaving control “wholly under the states.” He backed Eisenhower’s approval of a recommendation to review constantly the importation of foreign oil. He asked Congress to “correct the inequities” in payments on claims from the Texas City disaster. He praised a Senate conference committee that approved an increase of ten percent in payments to retired civil service workers. He introduced a bill to provide federal grants to hospitals for the mentally ill. About 150 friends visited his Austin headquarters Sunday for his 55th birthday party. Mrs. Yarborough and the Yarboroughs’ son Richard went on the road for the senator, planning first a stop at the Yoakum Tom Tom celebration Thursday. In Tyler, in a talk billed nonpolitical before the local Texas Manufacturers Assn. c h a p t e r, Blakley warned of “a one-government system away from the traditional arrangement of sovereign states.” Majority rule, a union of sovereign states, and the freedom of the individual has been, he said, a “perfect arrangement,” and “I have never been able to understand” why the country had drifted away from it to “ideas which are not native but of foreign origin.” When a state is denied the right to run its local schools without influence “from the national government or some national association, then I am afraid we are witnessing the destruction of the last stronghold of state sovereignty and the freedom of the people,” he Isaid. Speaking again nonpolitically to a National Jewish Hospital dinner in Dallas, Blakley warned of demagogues using appeals to minority blocs whose members lose their individuality in the process. “There can be no such thing as benevolent paternalism in a government of free men,” he said. Rayburn Repudiates Report on Blakley