ustxtxb_obs_1960_06_24_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

`Folks, We Might Just Prevail on This Great Leader to Respond To This Great Public Clamor’ THE LIBERALS AND LABOR: WHAT NOW? AUSTIN Many factors helped cause the failure of the liberals’ bolt from the state Democratic convention. pne was the numerous defections from the liberal community by those who, for various reasons, decided they would be for, or act as though they were for, Senator Johnson, or fall silent and skip the battle. Their reasons ranged from greed for plums and fear for jobs or reputation to the sincere expediency of those who concluded Johnson could not be stopped in Texas. However, the reason why the bolt became absurd was the decision against it by the leaders of organized labor in Texas, Jerry Holleman and Fred Schmidt. When they announced to the labor caucus that they advocated no policy on the bolt, they were saying, we are cutting out. The rejection of their recommendation against the labor caucus taking a position was caused by revulsion from the prospect of leaving the liberals cornmitted to the bolt out on a snowy limb. The fact remained, Texas labor failed to take a stand on boiling. The labor position until Monday night before the convention, announced in the AFL-CIO News by the state officers, had been that if the state convention failed to require individual loyalty pledges from the state delegates, “all loyal . Democrats shoul,d refuse to participate in such a fiasco.” The convention passed no such pledge. Maintaining a semblance of consistency, Holleman and Schmidt said if they were delegates they would still walk out of the convention, but they wanted no policy set for labor. They did not go to the Rock Garden at Barton Springs. They helped break the bolt. Why? FIRST, not why. We cannot make biscuits with the explanation that the DOTC caucus the night before the convention was inflexible leaders had endorsed the DOTC propman was negotiating Monday for concessions from these same principles. We cannot, either, buy Holleman’s indignation upon realizing that part of the motive for the bolt was the desire to advance liberalism in the Democratic Party instead of Senator Johnson. Everyone knew this. A fight was to be made, ground was chosen on which a bolt could be constructed. It is inconceivable that labor did not know what was going on. What, then, motivated the decision ? We believe it was the desire for ideological power to bring into existence more liberal laws and government, more friendly to workers and the people. This is an honorable organizational objective. . Specifically, labor is concerned that it not lose too mu’ch face in Texas any more, fighting losing causes, especially since the legislature is becoming more liberal. When power for doing good is in reach, but is jeopardized by doing good, even a good or. ganization decides on power. There was also, as is admitted, “pressure.” If the man in the street knows that Johnson is vindictive in the use of his power, if 3,000 people heard Rayburn say Monday night nobody had better bolt Johnson’s convention, and if anyone did, Rayburn said, he would be speaker of the 87th Congress, and “I will never forget it,” surely Holleman and Schmidt knew it; surely Meany and Reuther know it, too. Now understanding this, the results, nevertheless, were two fiascos, what the labor paper calls this week “the big Lyndon Johnson pep rally, known as the State Democratic Convention,” and the last stand of the bolters at Barton Spring.” Texas has dispatched, to the great Democratic national convention, in this historic year for American and human destiny, a powerwielding senator’s presidential campaign, financed by business trying to take over the Democrats. Johnson has been given full power to use the name of Texas Democrats in welding together the South for his own nomination and then, if he can’t get it, for what “moderation,” he can foist off on the national liberal party. The Austin outcome was mitigated faith in Democratic Party affairs, through the loopholes of which hypo’ crites can anyway, later, be espied, Randolph did not buckle under the pressures, but led those who still followed her to the hill where they took their stand. The light ahead is the prospect that the Los Angeles convention will nominate an enlightened liberalStevenson, Kennedy, Bowlesand all the Texas trading will subside into the footnotes of contemporary history. WE HOPE that whatever comes in Texas now, there will be an of fort to understand. We do not see, either, why a man who is for Adlai Stevenson wants to be a member of Lyndon Johnson’s delegationcommitted to him hand-and-footor why a Negro leader wants to be a delegate bound to a man who has stayed with the South against effective civil rights. But we are all human, and much goes on in -each mind none other knows. There are .”areas of service,” and liberals wishing to advocate the right as they see it can approve labor and others wishing to exercise power for the attainable right. We think, at this point, that independent liberals should better ,define their own area of service, not again so deeply commit themselves to power politics, and organize a committee, a Texas Liberal Group, to support the hoped-for liberal Democratic nominee in Texas. Prohibit the binding premeeting caucus. Cooperate with labor, but function separatelythe separation is already a fact. Wishing the unions well, in their thrust for power, still Texas liberals must hold apart, not again subjecting either themselves or their sincerely expedient friends to the bitterness now flowing from the Rock Garden Disaster. R.D. Even in Defeat, the Facts Are Still the Facts The party loyalty problem of Texas Democrats is not a mere shibboleth, slogan, pretext, but a real problem based on real facts. There is no telling, really, how many of the delegates to the state Democratic convention June 14 were Republicans and Dixiecrats. At the county conventions Johnson forces fought off loyalty tests. The loyalty requirement for individual state convention delegates was swept aside by the convention, some liberals running out on the fight to join the Houston and Dallas conservatives, for example, on the roll call. For all anyone found out, Eisenhower Democrats could have had a majority in the convention. We do know that the liberal Democrats from Houston, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth were not inside the convention. They had lost at the county level, in Austin, however, as the result of vote-juggling by the Johnson forces. The Harris and Dallas delegations were dominated by hypocrite-Democrats. Chairman of the Dallas dele WASHINGTON Sen. Stuart Symington of Missouri has performed a service that might be considered above and beyond the call of duty for any presidential aspirant. He assigned one of his principal lieutenants to make a personal state-bystate survey of the strength of his rivals. Symington did not fare too well in the study.’ He decided nonetheless to make the results available to the press. The survey shows that on the first ballot at Los Angeles, barring sudden and unexpected switches between now and the convention, Sen. John F. Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson .a’re likely to be running neck-andneck. In fact, the Symington survey found that there may be only 12 and a half votes between them. I found no surprises in the states listed as proJohnson. The estimated first ballot figures were : Kennedy 420 1/2, Johnson 408, Symington 135, Humphrey \(still com1/2, Stevenson 31, unde gation was Ed Drake, the pro-Eisenhower Dallas County Democratic chairman who’ has never supported a Democratic nominee. The ‘ Houston delegation rejected, in caucus, a loyalty pledge to the national Democrats, even voting 3-to-1 against endorsing Johnson, and designated as its presidential electors, whom the convention ratified, two Dixiecrats. One of these, Hall Timanus, was vice-chairman of Democrats for Eisenhower in Houston in 1952, and the other, George Charlton, boasts he has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1924, and flies his Confederate flag at half-mast on the anniversaries of Texas’ entrance into the American union. The chairman of the Travis County delegation, Pearce Johnson,’ refused to deny Fagan Dickson’s charge he is an Eisenhower Democrat, and his delegation included Marlin Sandlin, secretary of the Allan Shivers state Democratic executive committee which, in 1952, led a full-cry charge against Adlai Stevenson on behalf of Eisenhower. cided 53, favorite sons 198. Then the Symington interviewers projected the possible release of the favorite son delegates. They arrived at this breakdown : Kennedy 4941/2, Johnson 430, Symington 205, Humphrey 32 1/2, Stevenson 64, undecided 98. Finally Symington’s study allowed all the claims made by Kennedy of his potential strength in Montana, New York and Pennsylvania. His peak vote was still found to be 102 and a half short of the victory margin needed. It now looks as if Symington might become a very powerful figure at the convention if -he becomes convinced that he cannot become the nominee himself. But Gov. David Lawrence of Pennsylvania and Gov. Pat Brown of California could become equally important. Between them they have 162 votes. If they threw in with Kennedy he might make it on the first ballot. Generally it is agreed he has to make it first, fast, or not at all. . ROBERT G. SPIVACK. Everyone knowledgeable realized that neither the Dallas nor the Houston delegations would have pledged to the Democratic nominees. Theywere there, going along with Johnson, because they want control of the Texas Democratic Party in September and evidently believed Johnson will not stop them from getting it. Who can say how many of the other delegations engaged in this duplicitous play? The convention’s voicevoted loyalty resolution was not a pledgeas Fred Schmidt said, it doesn’t require anybody to pledge anything. It is clear that’ Johnson’s convention included the Texas Republicans who work through the Democratic Party, and that Johnson designed his loyalty resolution to keep them quiet and still mollify most of the liberals. JOHNSON KNEW he had to have a delegation to Los Angeles that would pledge to support the nominees. Stuart Long, his former Austin leader, estimates 25 people on the list will not support liberal nominees. Ed Drake and the conservative slate from Dallas are cases in point. But it is likely that a majority of the national delegation will support the nominees. The delegation includes some interesting people. E. B. Germany, president of the union-fighting Lone Star Steel . Co., and Ed Clark, attorneylobbyist for oil, gas, insurance, and George and Herman Brown interests, were included among delegates at large, while the liberal banker, Walter Hall, was made only an alternate. The state labor leaders refused to go ; the 188-person liSt includes only five union men, two of them H. A. Moon and E. L. McCommas, the UAW leaders in Fort Worth who joined the Johnson coalition there from the beginning. There are two Negroes and one Latin-American to represent the state’s 2,500,000 members of these minorities. The three of them, Dr. Everett Givens, G. J. Sutton, and Albert Pena, stood up in a tight little group during the delegation caucus after the convention. Gov . Daniel and Sen. Johnson asked the delegates to buy tickets to the July 10 .dinner at L.A. They were $100 each, or $1,000 for a table. Some of the big-wigs bought two tables, many more bought one table, and a few paired up to go together on one table at $500 apiece. When all this pledging had died away, Dr. Givens called for Gov. Daniel’s attention and announced that he, Pena, and Sutton would pledge to take one table. Their races are the poor. There they were, in the midst of the well-off and c’ the wealthy, standing in a little group. Pena evidently had wanted to be named to the platform and resolutions committee. The convention had given Johnson full power to name the Texas committee members. Johnson thanked Pena for his “understanding and cooperation in this matter” and appointed Paul Kilday to the committee. Pena did not say anything. As J. F. Christian, president of the Orange County Democrats, says, the delegates are shackled to “the single judgment and personal ambition of their leader, Lyndon Johnson.” ROUTED on party loyalty, divided on Johnson, and poignantly isolated on the national delegation, the Texas liberal movement has sustained, at Johnson’s hands, the worst defeat imaginable. Nevertheless, the facts are still the facts. R.D. The Washington Post and Times-Herald The Count-down