ustxtxb_obs_1962_02_09_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

‘I The Texas Observer An Independent-Liberal Weekly Newspaper A Window to the South Volume 53 TEXAS, FEBRUARY 9, 1962 15c per copy Number 45 General Launches Crusade SIX DEMOCRATS Sweeping Choice In Governor Race AUSTIN Control of the editorship of the Daily Texan, student newspaper at the University of Texas which has frequently criticized administration and regent policies, this week was taken away from the student body and given to a nine-member board, four of whom are from the UT faculty. Bob Sherrill Up to now, the editor was elected by the student body. Now he will be appointed by the Texas Student Publications board and work under contract. With a daily circulation of 17,000, the Texan is one of the largest student newspapers in the country. Editorially it is the most liberal and most outspoken daily in Central Texas and keeps the sharpest eye on administration and regent activities. Some students and ex-students viewed the appointive editor as an effort to silence effective campus criticism. The transfer of power was approved by the board of regents and will take effect this year. The change was recommended by Dewitt Reddick, chairman of the school of journalism, members of his staff, Chancellor Harry Ransom, President Joseph Smiley, and a selected but unidentified group of Texas newspaper editors and publishers serving in an advisory capacity to the administration. Chancellor Ransom told the Observer it would be “idiotic to say that the change would not endanger the circulation of ideas, since there is no way to know,” but he HOUSTON Mrs. R. D. Randolph, liberal leader in Houston and mainstay the last seven years of the Texas Observer, believes the most serious national problem is “the combination of the military and big business,” resulting in what a special issue of the Nation has called “the warfare state.” “What are we going to do when we stop military spending?” Mrs. Randolph asked in her first interview for the newspaper in which she is a partner. “The combination of the military and big business are the ones that are going to fight to keep the military spending high.” Mrs. Randolph’s solution for this problem, as for all public problems, is “work in the precincts.” “I just think all liberals are going to have to become more active,” she said. “The only solution to any of those things is through elections. Electing good people to office: that’s all you can do.” Mrs. Randolph has recently become hostess, along with Mrs. Howard Peacock and Mrs. Gould Beach, to “the Wednesday club” luncheons at the Observer’s Houston office at 2131 Welch in Hous was confident that the change will actually work an improvement, else “the journalism faculty and President Smiley wouldn’t have recommended it.” He said he fully expected Texan criticism to continue under the new policy, “perhaps not of the regents, but of the administrative offices.” Chancellor Ransom assured the Observer that if the appointive system results in a second-rate newspaper, “the faculty and students, who do not want a secondrate newspaper, will seek a change.” To this Maurice Olian, president of the student body, replied: “Students and faculties asked for a change rather overwhelminglyI refer to the desegregation issue last fall, and we didn’t get our way. I think they know very well how the students feel about electing the editor. On desegregation, we wanted to change the status quo, and we didn’t get our way. Now we want to maintain the status quo, and we don’t get our way.” This completes the shift from student body to board control of the permanent editorial staff. Election of the managing editor by the student body was halted several years ago. Immediately after the regents’ action, the executive committee of campus Young Democrats passed a resolution condemning the new policy “as an attempt to silence and control effective student opinion,” and urged the removal of the Texan from blanket tax support. The resolution will he submitted to the Student Assembly at \(Continued on ton. Between forty and eighty Houston liberals turn out for these informal meetings. There is usually a speaker, but there are no officers or rules of procedure. “A lot of people come to the Wednesday club,” Mrs. Randolph said; “they don’t actually lift their hands in the precincts.” People concerned to change affairs in a liberal direction, she insists, “need to join whatever liberal Democratic organization they have and work with it in the precincts. You need to get the vote of the liberals out. That means being willing to organize a precinct club in your own precinct and to take the poll list and eliminate all the people that you know are not with you and find out who the Democrats are in the precinct and get them to meeting and working. It’s as simple as that.” Mrs. Randolph believes the liberal movement may have fallen AUSTIN Edwin Walker is probably the only candidate for governor in Texas history who could have launched his campaign from the Canary Islands, the Straits of Magellan, or Boise City, Idaho. In a somewhat unusual press conference in the capitol last Saturday, with television cameras Willie Morris from two national networks and a dozen or so of the General’s supporters watching from a corner, Walker made it clear that as Democratic candidate he is waging a fight against international communism, both abroad and at home. This also is his Texas program. He is a big man, straight and clean-cut, with a kind of halfsmile that is at best only tentative. When he speaks, it is with the reluctance of a man who prefers silence to words. When he talks he takes a long, long time. He strode into the crowded conference room, just off the House floor, with half a dozen camera lights focused on his form. J. P. Boone, a Houston real estate man and chairman of the Win with Walker Committee in Houston, presented the General with 978 signatures asking him to run for governor. This, said Boone, “reflects the great patriotic spirit in that area” and these people “are delighted to work with you until you win.” behind the conservatives in work of this kind in Texas. “I think the liberals are actually thinking more and are more interested because of Kennedy’s election. However,” she said, “I have to compare most that I do with Harris County. The Birchers and et cetera have now perfected a very strong organization . . through pressures on employees and through money that is furnished by large companies.” Weaker in Houston Houston liberals now seem weaker, said Mrs. Randolph, because they reached their peak by perfecting a precinct organization quietly, without any publicity, “which was what I insisted on when we were organizing. That was the way Harris County was able to elect people to the legislature and carry the county convention. Then these people realized what had happened. They are using the same methods on it, and of course they have a weapon we don’t have, pressure. And they’ve had brainwashing sessions in the tig companies, particularly Gulf Oil and Tennessee Gas.” Mrs, Randolph would like to see Republicans running candidates in all races to build up their party. AUSTIN What one veteran Texas political writer calls “the maddest scramble for the governor’s office in 16 years” is now underway. It may put modern French politics to shame. Six Democrats, ranging from the far fringes of the American right to New Frontier liberalism, filed this week: Gov. Price Daniel, former Navy Secretary John Connally, Atty. Gen. Will Wilson, Don Yarborough, former General Edwin A. Walker, and Marshall Formby. The Republicans, in their biggest primary effort in decades, will choose between Jack Cox, who tried for governor against Daniel in 1960 as a Democrat; wealthy oilman, cattleman, publisher Roy Whittenburg; and Harry Republican Diehl. The middle name is genuine. This will be the sixth time the GOP will nominate by primary, the second time they have had a contested race, and perhaps for the first time they will have a run-off. The rivalries within the conservative Democratic Party leadership are unusually intense. The brief show of amity 15 months ago, when Wilson, Connally, and Daniel went arm-in-arm to Los Angeles to nominate Lyndon Johnson, is gone. The state Democratic executive committee, heavy in Daniel friends and allies, must choose now between Connally and an incumbent governor who chose to run against the wishes of the Johnson wing; patronage and political futures are at stake. Three crucial decisions by Texas liberals are pending. PASO, the This, she said, “would be helpful to the liberal cause. But quite frankly I don’t think the big boys are going to let that happen. They prefer to keep the boys who don’t believe in the Democratic Party inside the Democratic Party to disrupt the liberal movement. The Republicans I can’t see that they’re doing much.” The Kennedy Administration has done a good job in foreign relations, Mrs. Randolph believes, but she has been disappointed in the record of domestic reforms. “Of course they’ve been terribly handicapped in the domestic program by the fact they have so many reactionary representativel3 in the House of Representatives. Until we decide we’re only going to send real Democrats to Congress, any Democratic administradition will be in that position.” Of the governor’s race, she said, “I’m much at sea about it. I’m going all out for Don Yarborough, and I think he has a splendid chance in the runoff and is the Asked her opinion of the Daniel administration, she said, “It’s just like Daniel, namby pamby.” “Of the people who have an nounced for lieutenant governor,” influential Latin organization which will bind all its members to support the candidate finally endorsed, meets in San Antonio this weekend. A floor fight is likely between factions favorable to Yarborough and. others favorable to Connally. Patronage also will be a central factor in the decision. Yarborough, appealing for Latin support in his statewide TV speech this week, cited the need for improvement in Latin job opportunities, housing, and education. The Democratic coalition, as this issue goes to press, is meeting in Austin to endorse for state races. The ranking Texas liberals in this informal organization are likely to either go with Yarborough or not go at all. The state AFL-CIO convenes in Dallas Feb. 17-19 to make its decisions. They will likely endorse either Yarborough or Connally or make no decision at all. Cox is the favorite in the GOP primary. Both he and Whittenburg are Republicans of the Goldwater school. The latter got 186,000 votes against Sen. Ralph Yarborough in the 1958 general election for the Senate. Cox’ impressive showing against Daniel in the ’60 Democratic primary and his political activity in the conservative camp since then should carry the day for him. In the Democratic field: DANIEL The 51-year-old political veteran \(“he’s like a little fox with a sense of melodrama,” one capitol observer said after his TV anthe man to beat. His support will, like Connally’s, come from diverse alignments: conservatives, moderates, liberals. All five Democratic opponents, as well as the Republicans, are firing away at his bid for the unprecedented fourth term. He counters that “greedy lobbyists” for the business interests have thwarted his programs and argues that only he can unify a Texas Democratic Party riddled with desertions. Daniel will likely have some liberal support, including several influential liberals in the legislature and elsewhere who urged him to get into the race to block Connally. Most liberals would probably prefer Daniel to Connally. They feel he will move somewhat to the left under the pressure of the Connally candidacy and because he is seeking what ik likely to be his last term. Some segments of the business community who have supported him in the past may shy away, moving to Wilson or Connally, because of his attacks on lobby influences. His platform is somewhat tepid, though in some instances model. \(Continued on Page ‘We Can’t Live Forever in the Past’ EDITOR APPOINTED Students Losing `Texan’ Control