ustxtxb_obs_1960_11_11_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

DALLAS Dallas provided more excitement for the election wind-up than all the rest of the state. First a full-page newspaper ad appeared welcoming Johnson to Texas with 3,500 names, including more than 600 of persons who later said they had not authorized this and another 22 who turned out to be dead. Then further to abort the Johnson welcomea crowd variously called a mob to a goon-squad screamed, jeered, and jostled the Johnsons as they made their way to a speech in downtown Dallas. Republicans hoped for gain from the furore against the advertisement; Democrats hoped the extensive expressions of outrage about the demonstration not only cancelled the losses from the ad, but made votes. The ad welcomed Johnson to Dallas and asked for a Democratic vote. Vice-President Nixon, speaking in Fort Worth as he left Texas, used the ad to note Democratic desperation in voting people who are dead. He did not care how many dead people they voted, the Republicans would win, he said. The Times-Herald apologized, explaining the ad had been received in good faith from the Kennedy-Johnson group. Campaign leader Barefoot Sanders said it had not been placed by the official Dallas committee. A spokesman for the group that had placed it explained letters had been sent to 4,000 names, asking for notification if use of the names in the ad would not be all right. The letter was dated Nov. 1; the deadline for a negative reply was given as Nov. 2. Congressman Bruce Alger and Senate Candidate John Tower were very much in evidence as 300 Nixon women gathered at a downtown hotel where Johnson was to speak. Alger took up one of the anti-Johnson signs \(“LBJ Later Alger denied seeing any jostling or discourtesy, saying if it had happened he was sorry. Sanders said Alger asked him what he thought of the demon John Tower, the Republican who garnered 41% of the popular vote in his bid for Johnson’s Senate seat, is also expected to run in the special election. Atty. Gen. Will Wilson, an active campaigner for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket, may also make the race. “I’ll just sit tight for the present,” he said, adding that he believed the election Tuesday proved “it’s going to take a middle-road Democrat to winand I’m a middle-road Democrat.” Others being mentioned: Jack Cox of Breckenridge, the conservative who ran against Daniel in the Democratic primary last summer; Maury Maverick Jr. of San Antonio, a liberal and former member of the legislature; Martin Dies of Lufkin, who served 10 terms in Congress; Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey of San Augustine; John Ben Shepperd of Midland, former attorney general; John Connally of Fort Worth, long-time Johnson supporter; Wright Morrow of Houston, former Democratic national committeeman and a Nixon backer; and Cong. Joe Kilgore of McAllen. Dallas News political reporters Allen Duckworth and Jimmy Banks speculate that William Blakley, who was appointed by Gov. Allan Shivers to an interim Senate term and later lost to Sen. Ralph Yarborough in the regular stration, and Sanders said he thought it was “trushy.” Sen. and Mrs. Johnson made their way through the crowd in about half an hour. Johnson refused to use a side doorthis was not Cuba, he later said. Johnson told police he did not want them to clear the waylater he told the banquet crowd he addressed that if the time had come he could not walk through the lobby of a Dallas hotel, he wanted to know it. Mrs. Johnson’s hair was messed some during the incident. Some press reports indicated one woman received a bloody nose and two others were slightly hurt. Others on the scene reported injuries from hat pins and said a woman carrying a KennedyJohnson sign had two teeth knocked out. Republicans in defense argued the reports were unfounded and exaggerated; Democrats condemned the display as a disgrace to Dallas and the country. The press uniformly condemned the event the Houston Post called it “most un-Texan,” the Fort Worth StarTelegram said it ranged from “Discourteous to Disgraceful,” the Corpus Caller-Times called it “shameful,” the Waco and Austin dailies said the issue was whether “Texas joins the Congo on the roster of undisciplined savages”but the Dallas News qualified its regret, saying apologies were due to Mrs. Johnson, “but Mr. Johnson was paying the penalty” for the outrage felt against the unauthorized names in the welcomeJohnson ad. At 4:44 p.m. Monday, before the voting began the next morning, Alger filed a $200,000 libel suit against Pool, alleging Pool had defamed him in a TV speech about the demonstration. The suit alleged Pool said Sen. and Mrs. Johnson were spat upon and roughed up “by Alger.” Pool pooh-poohed the suit as a defeated candidate’s last-minute act. Alger also defended his conduct in the affair in full-page ads in Dallas newspapers, denying jostling of the Johnsons, spitting, profanity, or heckling of Johnson’s luncheon speech. election, will have “first refusal” as Daniel’s interim appointee this time. Former Congressmen Ed Gossett of Wichita Falls would be the second choice, the News has reported. E. L. Wall, Austin bureau of the San Antonio Express-News, said “one of the racier rumors bouncing around Austin” is that Gov. Daniel will run for the vacated seat and that Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey would succeed him as governor, “with the understanding Ramsey would ‘step aside for Atty. Gen. Wilson in 1962.” Sen. Ralph Yarborough said Wednesday he would try to get Johnson’s vacated seat on the senate appropriations committee. As new senior senator, Yarborough will get first chance at any committee appointments coming to a Texas senator. Yarborough now serves on the interstate and foreign commerce committee, the labor and welfare committee, and the post office and civil service committee. Under Senate rules, a senator may hold two major and one minor post. If Yarborough is appointed to ‘appropriations, he might drop his interstate and foreign commerce assignment. In Austin, Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia said Sen. Mike Mansfield of Montana will succeed Johnson as Senate majority leader unless Sen. ‘Kennedy wants someone else. Johnson has not said. A QUIET MOMENT IN AUSTIN AUSTIN An important moment in history came and went without much fanfare in the studios of television station KTBC Wednesday afternoon. Vice-President Nixon had conceded the election only shortly before. President-elect Kennedy was on television from Hyannis Port when Lyndon Johnson and his party descended from a private room in the Johnson-owned station to the main studio for a national telecast. It was just before one p.m. Gone were the swirling, noisy crowds who had waited in the Driskill through Tuesday night and early Wednesday to celebrate the electoral victory which seemed never to come. With Johnson were his wife Ladybird, two national television reporters, and close friends. A handful of newsmen from the national and state press filed into two viewing rooms above the studio floor and watched Kennedy’s acceptance speech on TV sets there. The CBS newscaster in New York read the telegram sent to the president-elect from the Vatican. “Anybody heard from that man Criswell?” a reporter shouted, drawing laughs from the sleepy-eyed corps of newsmen. On the studio floor overhanging lamps cast bright lights across the platform where Johnson, Mrs. Johnson, and the two reporters waited. Technicians scurried about the crowded room, and Johnson glanced occasionally at a TV set several feet away at the image his running-mate weaving his way through the Hyannis Port crowds. For one brief moment there was silence. Then the face of the pretty CBS reporter flashed on the screens in the viewing rooms: the whole nation was there. Looking exhausted and drawn after the all-night ordeal, Johnson read his brief statement from a teleprompter. “A mature and responsible people have turned to courageous leadership and have declared they are willing to face squarely the problems of our modern world,” he began. “I am particularly pleased,” he said, “with the results of the congressional races. “This election demonstrates our country’s willingness to move beyond the divisions of the past into a new era of national unity. No American harbors in his heart any malice that would prevent our moving together as one united nationas one peopleto face the urgent demands of world leadership during the next four years.” He called his campaign with Kennedy “one of the greatest experiences of our lives. “We now look forward,” he said, “to sharing with him a partnership to Americaand service to the worldin an administration that pledges itself to work for the greatest good to the greatest number.” Mrs. Johnson, dressed in a bright-red suit, said the election was “the crowning moment in more than a quarter of a century” of the Johnsons’ married life. In answer to the reporters’ queries, Johnson said he would probably confer with Kennedy within a week. “My relations with Jack Kennedy are the finest,” he said. His activities as vice-president would “largely depend on the president himself.” The program was over in minutes. The reporters moved downstairs into the lobby. Art Linkletter had taken over on the TV screen as Attorney General Will Wilson strolled in and took an elevator to the Johnson suite. AUSTIN Running along beneath the last-week din of debate in the campaign for Texas was a stream of blunt, often abusive newspaper advertisements. The major themes of the ads for Nixon were: Democrats cause war; Democrats are socialists; Walter Reuther, not Kennedy, will run the country; a vote for Nixon is a vote for Texas and the oil depletion allowance. The major themes of the ads for Kennedy: The economy has suffered under the Republicans; Republicans hurt the farmers; Kennedy’s position on oil will help Texas independents; a vote for Kennedy is a vote for Texas and Johnson-Rayburn influence in Washington. Ads in the Dallas dailies proclaimed “Nobody wants WAR” three wars this century have come under “a Democratic president,” and “for an America … without Lodge.” The ad was illustrated with a half-page picture of a GI sitting on a jeep beside a column of troops. An ad in the Abilene ReporterNews showed war-years under Roosevelt and Truman and noted, also in red ‘ink, “2 Wars Under Democrats in Eleven Years!” An ad for Bruce Alger, the Dallas GOP congressman, quoted him condemning Kennedy’s “policy of appeasement, apology.” An ad signed by four individuals in the Dallas News asked “Do you want a president who is strongly “Extreme liberals, like Kennedy, are constitutionally unable to be hard on communism since their ideology of socialism is close to it.” Ads election morning in the Houston Post and other dailies declared in headline type an inch ard a fourth high, “SOCIALISM IS A THIEF” and condemned “Kennedy’s socialistic programs” that would “hurt your pocketbook.” The Alger-Nixon-Lodge ads in Dallas said the challenge was “Freedom or Socialism.” “Puppet Government, U.S.A.,” a full-page ad in a number of dailies, showed Kennedy and Johnson as puppets at the end of strings and called Reuther, the United Auto Workers’ president, “Moscow-trained” and the “master puppeteer” of Kennedy and Johnson. A photograph of a speakers’ platform with a sign, “Reuther Kennedy,” noted that Kennedy “gets second billing” in Michigan. Nixon “thinks the Texas Way,” not along the lines of “the socialistic, anti-Texas platform of Kennedy,” declared another Nixon ad. One frequently-appearing pitch said “Texas Democrats are Voting for Nixon-Lodge” because they are qualified men, because of the Democrats’ “most radical platform,” because the Democrats are committed to “the NAACP and other radical pressure groups” for a national FEPC, integration plans from every Southern school by 1963, and other civil rights reforms, and because “Kennedy is the ‘yes man’ of Walter Reuther and the national labor bosses.” An ad paid for by 116 Abilene oilmen said “Nixon is the Man for Texas … for You … for Us” and reviewed his support of depletion, tidelands, oil import controls, and opposition to federal control of gas, maintaining Kennedy has taken contrary positions. A 32-page tabloid-size supplement showing Nixon ‘at various phases of his life was printed as a political advertisement in the Corpus Christi Caller Nov. 4. In other pro-Nixon ads, Kennedy’s “contradictions” in public life and congressional absenteeism were reviewed; his opposition to more farm controls was emphasized; the theme that “There’s no Santa Claus for Grownups!” was developed; his support of “a safe, honest dollar’ was upheld. An ad paid for by Houston Lighting & Power Co. urged election to office of those favoring “self-reliance.” It stated “the takers of handouts become weak and dependent.” One unsigned ad appearing in the Castro County News argued that Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt had “poured cocoa for Khrushchev” and that “radical liberals simply refuse to recognize the evil of communism.” A number of Nixon ads explained that voters could vote for Nixon-Lodge and state-level Democratic candidates. A frequently-appearing Kennedy-Johnson ad was headed, “Keep the Voice of Texas strong,” arguing that Texas’ dominant position in the Democratic Party has led to jobs, educational opportunities, military installations, defense projects, water and soil projects, rural electricity and telephone systems for Texans. Other Kennedy-Johnson ads declared that interest rates are historically high under Republicans and low under Democrats; that voters should not be satisfied with eight days’ oil production, declining foreign prestige, or the farmer’s steadily declining ‘income; that voters should not want more “Nixon-Benson Republicanism”; and that Kennedy is for a farm policy “sympathetic to the needs and interests of farmers” ‘and protection of “the family type farm.” An ad by W. F. Sutton, independent oil producer and drilling contractor in San Antonio, contended that Kennedy is for cutting depletion only on producers grossing more than $5 million a year, that this would hit “a few extremely large companies,” and that oil produced in other lands should not have the same depletion allowance as domestic production. This drew two rebuttals. One came from H. H. ‘Phillips Sr., another San Antonio independent, who said that Kennedy’s idea of graduated depletion rates by gross income “is pure socialism inasmuch as … it separates parties according to gross income … and further ignores skillful labor and management.” A number of oilmen signed another ad saying Sutton “has been backed in business by Kennedy money”that Nixon is for the de