ustxtxb_obs_1958_08_29_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

SAN ANTONIO TEXAS la T T Leaders May Control at San Antone AUSTIN For all the talk about the Sept. 9 convention being “a people’s convention” or “the governor’s convention,” the likelihood now is that it will be a convention dominated by the big four Texas politicians Johnson, Yarborough, Rayburn, Daniel. Neither DOT nor Daniel obtained a working majority of delegates, leaving it to the politicians to jockey for the balancing lever of control. In this situation the portents are shadowy and almost unreportable. For example, there is the repeated story that Rayburn has agreed that Johnson ought to have the delegation to the national convention for president in 1960, provided it is a delegation entirely loyal to the national party. There is the possibility Johnson may choose an inconspicuous role in San Antonio. There is an important conversation which took place recently between Yarborough and Rayburn which cannot be reported at all. There is FIA’s decision to boast a little in an AP interview that it controls Austin’s 113 votes and that without its efforts the conservatives could not have won El Paso or Corpus Christi. There is a story in the Abilene Reporter-News indicating .` on the front page of the Post during the campaign. THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE Yarborough received slightly more news attention in the Chronicle than Blakley. Once again the treatment was stable and uneventful. News stories on Blakley and his campaign took up 190 inches, on Yarborough, 200. Adding in the space taken by the few pictures the Chronicle published, Yarborough’s total is 228.5 inches to Blakley’s 211.5 for the nine-week campaign. The Chronicle favored Daniel with almost twice as much of its space as either of the other two candidates-268 inches for Daniel, 149 for Gonzalez, 143 for O’Daniel. The Chronicle, too, tended to press the politics back into the inside pages, naming only Blakley, Daniel, and O’Daniel in page one headlines, and each of them but once. E. L. Wall of the Chronicle’s Austin bureau occasionally wrote columns tending to make a case for Blakley. The El Paso Herald-Post Excluding from the totals the page one double-column space the Herald-Post devoted to reports on. Blakley’s past as a senator and insurance man, Yarborough received 213 inches of news attention to Blakley’s 65 \(no news pictures in Yarborough was named in six page one news headlines, including one double-line five column head when he castigated Bernard Goldfine from Washington, while Blakley was named four times. In the governor’s race the Herald-Post, which did not endorse any of the three candidates , gave Gonzalez 118.5 inches, Daniel 70.5, and O’Daniel 42. The Gonzalez figure includes 35.5 inches for five pictures; there were no pictures of Daniel or C’Daniel. It is well known that the WASHINGTON The Observer will remark on the 85th session of Congress, especially its closing episodes, next issue. J. Ed Connally, Daniel’s campaign director against DOT, is the likely Daniel candidate for state party chairman, whereas Bob Slagle, Yarborough’s Senate reelection manager, is being pushed forward as the Yarboroughfavored convention chairman. Compounding the possibilities is the behind-the-cuff certainty at this point that Connally has certain powerful support for convention chairmanand also certain powerful opposition. Thus the weavings of agreement and disagreement are as blurred as tire tracks on a gravel road in the rain yet this is where the story is taking on its patterns. ONE CONCRETE EVENT, and one little-noticed page in the Congressional Record, complicated the convention shape-up during the last week. Ted Anderson of Corpus Christi announced he will push a resolution at San Antonio to remove Mrs. R. D. Randolph from the national committee. Sen. Ralph Yarborough had republished in the Record a column by H. M. Baggarly of the Tulia Herald in which Baggarly called Daniel a liar. While neither Daniel nor Johnson were associated with Anderson’s move, these episodes would Herald-Post published exclusive articles from Washington by Scripps-Howard writer Neil McNeil developing objectively somewhat damaging facts about Blakley’s three months in the Senate and his career as an insurance man and airlines executive. Just as the Observer felt impelled to exclude the Sam Wood story on Yarborough’s labor funds because of the difficulty in classifying it, these stories have also been excluded. However, the five of them consumed 151 inches, Blakley partisans no doubt regarded them as friendly to Yarborough, especially since Yarborough’s office distributed half a million reproductions of them, along with the HeraldPost’s editorial, “Blakley Won’t Do,” as campaign materials. While most of the headings on this series were reflections of the stories, Blakley disputed the interpretation of the Braniff subsidies issue on which one of the Herald-Post headlines was based. It read, “Blakley Opposes Federal AidBut He Takes It.” This was a page one news story. Journalistically the most controversial issue of the Herald-Post during the nine weeks of the campaign appeared July 8. The H-P’s front page welcomed Blakley to El Paso with a two-column comment down the left side of the page, not marked as editorial, but hostile to him. A news story adjacent to the editorial was headlined, “Blakley TV Questioners Read Script; Candidate ‘Stars’ in Program Written By His Publicity Men.” Tje I Vauf ‘alum The Times of El Paso gave Blakley 66 inches and Yarborough 46. El Paso, of course, is geographically more identified with New Mexico than with Texas, and the short shrift of the primary election in the Times comports with patterns of general coverage that far west. In the governor’s race, Daniel received 116 inches, Gonzalez 77, and O’Daniel a skimpy 15. Blakley not give much heart to harmony advocates. Anderson said Mrs. Randolph as leader of DOT had worked in diametrical opposition to the state party. He said his resolution would say she has “defected … fb such an extent that she has led a splinter group in opposition to the Democratic Party in an attempt to destroy that party, rendering herself useless to the party she purports to represent.” “He can bring it up but I doubt that it will be passed,” Mrs. Randolph responded. “I can only be removed by the national committee. “His charge of disloyalty is interesting. I have always supported the nominees of the Democratic Party at every level. I even had to pull the lever on Governor Shivers a couple of times. I don’t know Mr. Anderson, but I suspect he has voted Republican at one time or another. I never have.” Pressed on this in Corpus, Anderson said, “Yeah, I supported Eisenhower in 1952. I led the Democrats for Eisenhower here in Corpus Christi.” He said he did so within the Democratic Party. Members of the national committee are elected for four-year was named in three page one headlines, Daniel in eight, Gonzalez in two; but Yarborough and O’Daniel in none. an Antonio &press Although in the last week of the election the Express devoted 64 inches to Blakley and 23 to Yarborough, coverage before that had favored Yarborough in terms of space, and the nine-week total came out 263 inches for Blakley, 251 for Yarborough. Blakley was named nine times, Yarborough six, in page on heads. Although he was a home town boy, the Express editorially opposed Gonzalez with visible zest. On the news side, Daniel received 1\(74 inches in news attention, Gonzalez 148, and O’Daniel 37. Associate Editor Jon Ford’s columns, often headlined eight columns across the top of the Sunday editorial page, discussed Blakley in helpful terms for 105.5 inches and Yarborough not so helpfully in 32.5 inches. When the News published the DOT story, it added San Antonian Albert Pena’s picture to the gallery provided by the Sam Wood original. The Express published, under a large headline, Wood’s subsequent story on labor contributions to Yarborough, and this time on page one. This story used up 85 inches in space and would unbalance the paper’s coverage totals for the Senate race were it inMost of the San Antonio Light staff people were reportedly very much for Yarborough and Gonzalez. A very little comment friendly to Blakley and Daniel appeared, except for the formal editorials, one on each man. At the end of the campaign, Blakley had received 256.5 inches of news attention in the Light, Yarborough 185.5 This imbalance was caused principally by one week of exceedingly intensive coverage of Blakley during a San Antonio visit \(a total of 150 inches, terms and are seated by the national conventions every four years. Mrs. Randolph was elected in 1956. YARBOROUGH, reprinting Baggarly’s column, called him “one of the outstanding editorial writers of America.” The caption was “True Status of Political Affairs in Texas.” Baggarly wrote that Daniel never misses a chance to “promote discord” and has displayed “sneering contempt” for loyal Democrats, and Baggarly said further: “When Price Daniel alleges that he wants or is working for harmony, he liesand that is the only word Webster has that accurately describes his action. He is devotedto one cause kicking everyone that isn’t one of the original Shivercrats out of places of leadership in the Democratic Party if not out of the party.” Jim Lindsey, Daniel’s SDEC chairman, appointed five conservatives to the credentials subcommittee which will meet the day before the convention. Included is James P. Bailey, lame duck SDEC member from Houston and not a delegate to the convention; Earl Sharp of Longview, chairman; Larry Blackmon of Mineral Wells; Mrs. Arthur Harris, Sr., Bay City; and Mrs. Dorothy Gurley, Del Rio. including three pictures, during Gonzalez was heavily favored in the news reporting of the governor’s race-239 inches to 150 for Daniel and 50 for O’Daniel. However, the Light, like the Houston papers, seldom put politics on page one, mentioning, once each, only Yarborough, Daniel, and Gonzalez in page one heads. Nothing about the Light’s news coverage would excite much comment, but a good deal of opinionbased insight was offered readers in columns published Sundays from Austin or under the local Don Politico byline. R.D. Integration Stalled By Election Law AUSTIN Richard Morehead of the Austin bureau of the Dallas News, who conducts the only statewide survey of the development of integration in the school districts, says that 124 districts have now integrated out of the 840 districts which have Negro students. This means that integration has been at a virtual standstill the past year, when 122 had integrated. The state law prohibiting integration without a local election seems to be the proximate cause. During the last school year Pleasanton voters elected to integrate; since the close of the last long term, Boerne voters rejected, and Bloomington voters accepted, integration. No other changes have been noted except for a decision in Austin to desegregate the ninth grade in September \(the high As of last year 3600 Negroes were going to school with 315,000 whites in Texas and another 250,000 Negro students lived in formally integrated school districts with 560,000 white students but were still attending segregated schools. Liberals Sweep Houston Races in your union, in your public schools, in your social functions? “Mr. Eckhardt’s past and present affiliations with various racial organizations proves he is in favor of integrating your entire organization. If you doubt this statement get him to publicly answer or deny his feelings. “The AFL-CIO agreed to allow the NAACP to pick their slate of candidates in order to receive the Negro block vote. Was it the officials of the unions or you as individuals that voted to allow this unheard of undemocratic unAmerican voice in government? Are you as union members considered as the colored race … as block voters? “Ask Mr. Eckhardt who wrote the civil rights bill of your union. I can tell youa Negro lawyer named Edwin C. Washington. Have all of you had the opportunity of reading and studying these laws which you are governed by? “Know the people you politically support. What they will and do publicly stand for … whose interests they will have at heart. … Are they serving you or are you being forced to serve them?” Almost 8,000 votes were cast in the predominantly Negro precincts. The vote in the EckhardtTurner race in these precincts was 7,383 for Eckhardt to 591 for Mrs. Turner. In the same precincts, J. Edwin Smith received 7,383 to only 429 for Hamilton. Mrs. Turner, Murphy, and the TMA slate received the biggest portion of their support in the “silk stocking” areas such as River Oaks, Bellaire, and West University Place. A Full Sweep The liberal sweep in the legislative races completed an unparalleled victory for loyal Democrats in Harris County. In the July 26 primary, three others who were supported by the liberal forces were nominated: Bill Kilgarlin, president of the Young Democrats of Texas, Joe Ed Winfree, long-time member of the House, and Cris Cole, who is blind. Kilgarlin defeated a candidate who had been offered but had declined the support of the HCTC, and Winfree defeated Jack E. Farmer, a member of the HCTC slate. Cole had no opponent. Kohler, the opponent defeated by Dean Johnston in the runoff, had not originally been the HCTC slate choiceCharles H. Sherman, Jr., was first endorsed by the committeebut when he was eliminated in the first primary, the TMA-taxpayers group added Kohler to its ticket.