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FIVE WEEKS TO GO Campaign Fire Reserved for Price, Connally Walker V Every candidate in the race for governor claimed major progress this week, but none but ex-General Edwin A. Walker could claim to have been supported by a giant sing-along-with-me rally. It happened in the Houston Coliseum, where about 2,500 supporters of the taciturn military man hoisted “Win With Walker” banners and sang: “Put on your Pro Blue Bonnet With the Lone Star upon it, And we’ll put Ted Walker on the way! For when he’s in Austin, From L.A. to Boston Texas leads the U.S.A. “Put on your Pro Blue Bonnet With the Lone Star upon it, And we’ll bid Price Daniel, ‘Sir, Good Day!’ For, on terra firma, We want no fourth-termer; Here’s your hat and final pay! “Put on your Pro Blue Bonnet With the Lone Star upon it And we’ll pack old Lyndon on his way! He thinks he’s in clover, But his game is over; Now’s General Walker’s day!” Walker told his followers at,the rally he is a “target of the communist conspiracy . .. These enemies respect and fear what I do.” While he spoke inside the Coliseum, picketers marched outside with signs such as “Hitler Hated Communism Too.” A Walker supporter knocked several signs out of picketers’ hands before police broke it up. Political Intelligence Before Walker’s arrival in Houston, an aide told newsmen he couldn’t reveal where Walker would stay for “security reasons,” but Walker later scoffed at the notion and said “I want people to know I’m in Houston and where I am staying.” Earlier at Bryan, Walker had told a rally that the only co-existence he recognized was that on the battlefield, and he again warned of Mexico as a source of communist infiltration. In Dallas, speaking to the Dallas Association of Retail Credit Managers, Walker lashed at Eisenhower for “practically destroying” the Republican Party. He said the government’s ultimate plan was to put our guns at the disposal of the United Nations so they can be “turned not only on your friends but on yourselves.” He mad e a sweeping reference to “radical, left-wing professors” in Texas’ major universities, and he said the fuss at the University of Texas over the regents’ making the Daily Texan editorship appointive is indicative of the undisciplined character of nioCern youth. On matters of state administration, Walker said he would “work to eliminate the necessity of a sales tax.” He said he would broaden his platform as he goes along. He said he has no views to express on horse racing and the poll tax until the people have spoken via a referendum. “It should be interesting,” he said. In his first attack on a fellow candidate, Walker called John Connally “Lyndcn Johnson’s handpicked candidate,” accused him of “superficial campaigning” while ignoring the communist advances in Cuba and Mexico. Instead of Connally’s proposal for a $500,000 fund to attract tourists, he urged a concentration on improved rela tions with Mexico. Both Will Wilson and Marshall Formby have been stressing the theme –that Connally is LBJ’s choice. Don Yarborough and Price Daniel have not criticized him on that score. Wilson frof Attorney General Will Wil son, candidate for governor, in addition to making some newsworthy remarks about his rivals, hit the headlines this week by tending to his duties long enough to file the first suit under the escheat law passed by the legislature last fall. This suit was something of a formality, being requested by State Treasurer Jesse James, who is also the defendant. James’ office holds about $103,000 in trust for the unknown heirs of 400 persons. Wilson also made news, at the cost of any labor support he might still have, by requesting the National Labor Relations Board to back out of its proposed move to test the validity of Texas’ rightto-work laws. Wilson wired the board: “The people of Texas have clearly decided that they do not want to be compelled to join a union in order to earn a living. You should honor and uphold the democratic processes rather than seek to destroy them.” Later he said Texas organized labor “must accept its responsibilities in helping maintain a free, competitive economy or face tighter control . .. A more vigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws on the state level is necessary if we are to preserve American free enterprise.” Put Wilson . wasn!t i ,too rhusy,-to use the law books in an effort to embarrass his rival, Gov. Daniel. Thumbing back through old rulings, Wilson came up with a 1952 opinion by then attorney general Daniel to the effect that a county clerk cannot challenge the certification of party nominees for a place on the general election ballot. Among Wilson’s out and out political jibes: “I don’t know what Daniel’s idea of economy is, but when the people of Texas are burdened with an $86 million debt because of Daniel’s deficit-spending, red-ink government, I’d hardly call it economy.” . . . Again urging an end to the two percent selective sales tax, to be replaced by a one percent across-the-board tax, Wilson said, “Daniel has tried to pull the wool over the eyes of Texa.s by claiming he fought against a sales tax, while paving the way for the two percent. I think it’s time to end the silly nonsense of taxing candy but not cookies, or socks but not shoes . . . Daniel has failed to give Texas anything but lip-service on letter law enforcement and loan shark legislation, and now he’s trying to ride these issues into a fourth term.” Of candidate John Connally, Wilson said he is “trying to buy the governor’s office with a million-dollar campaign but he’s going to find out that the people of Texas are not for sale.” Wilson noted Connally’s announced plans for state-wide TV appearances three times a week for the rest of the campaign. “Not even the Republican Party is spending that kind of money,” he said. Wilson also challenged Connally’s proposal to shift the balance of legislative power to urban areas. Over 100 counties are losing population because of neglect, but instead of trying to help these counties, Connally “wants to help speed up their decline,” which would also “hasten the centralization of Texas’ vast population in a few areas,” resulting in further decline of rural areas. Connally’s proposal, Wilson charged, is “typical of the power-politics thinking of a man whose philosophy of gov. ernment was shaped as a lobbyist in Washington.” Daniel frof Gov. Daniel spoke out in favor of more crime curbs and safety campaigns. He also stated his support of a four-year term for governor, instead of the prevent two, although he stressed he would not favor changing the length of tenure until he leaves office. Once again he told his desire to spend more for advertising Texas as a tourist attraction, to remove ‘inequities from our sales tax law,” to establish more control over lobbyists, to try again to get the legislature to do something about his requests for a better juvenile parole program, loan shark shark regulation, a n d stronger penalties for narcotics peddlers. “When a man feels these things in his heart, and in his mind, and when the lobbyists have run over him and defeated him time and time again,” said Daniel, “I believe_ he.!..p ,the man that’ll make a fight to get these things put over in Texas.” Daniel, in a 37-station television speech, decried his opponents “spending the greater part of their time making personal and political attacks on your governor,” but he said the public resented this, and if it kept up, “I predict . . . the people of Texas will re-nominate your governor by an overwhelming vote in the first primary, without a run-off.” Yarborough fr e The youngest candidate in the gubernatorial derby, Don Yarborough, was vigorously opposed by Dr. Robert T. Brinsm -ade, publisher of La Prensa, in a front-page editorial in that San Antonio newspaper. He said the endorsement of Yarborough by the Democratic Coalition of Bexar County is a “farce,” and that the leaders of the Coalition carry no weight on San Antonio’s West Side. Meanwhile, Yarborough was busy making accusations of his own. He said the University of Texas board of regents, by “stamping out free elections on the Daily Texan,” are “trying to muzzle our youth and destroy the practical teaching of our basic American freedoms . . . A restricted newspaper cannot be a stepping stone to academic excellence.” Speaking in Corpus Christi, Yarborough struck at what he called Daniel’s efforts “to aid the wind of land speculation” by setting up a Padre Island study commission, which is, said Yarborough, no more than “a scheme to disrupt the proposal” for a national 88-mile seashore area on the Texas coast. He also accused Connally of aiding U.S. Sen. John Tower in his efforts to cut down the length of the proposed national part so that speculators could get rich on the remainder. The condition of state parks was also an object of Yarborough indignation. He shamed the present administration for letting the state park at Washington-on-theBrazos be eroded and washed away. He pointed out that one pecan tree that “shaded the signers of 1836,” the signers of Texas’ Declaration of Independence, “is already leaning and ready to topple into the river.” When it goes, he said, it will join $4 other pecan trees that have been uprooted and washed away by the river. He said Washington-on-theBrazos, like the crumbling San Jacinto Monument, “are symbols of the ruin that has befallen our drifting state government.” On state finances, Yarborough blasted Daniel for “double-talking on the tax problem.” He added, “On one hand, the governor takes credit for a new tax to relieve the deficit. On the other hand, he denies having anything to do with the passage of the same law, the general sales tax.” Yarborough favors revoking the sales tax. He also accused Daniel of favoring large out-of-state corporations, and he typed the small businessmen as victims “of the anti-competitive laws passed by the Austin lobbyists for big business.” Yarborough called for a master plan for higher education to handle 100,000 more students in the next decade. That Texas does not now have such a plan, he said, can be blamed on “this generation of timid leaders.” Formby , loaf Marshall Formby joined the chorus of critics of Daniel’s leadership in matters of finances, and he said that Connally’s leadership Would he just as bad. Speaking in Beaumont, he stormed: “I haven’t seen much effort on the part of LBJ, who is John Connally’s coach, or on the part of Gov. Price Daniel to try to lighten our tax load. If you want to see this continue, then just re-elect the present governor or put LBJ’s pupil, Mr. Connally, in. Don’t ever forget that Connally has been trained for 20 years by LBJ and that both Daniel and Cnrinallv are doing the bidding of LBJright down to the final degree.” Formby agreed T. ,ith Yarborough’s argument that Daniel double-talked on the sales tax. He said, “People who promise something to get elected to office and then turn around and do the exact opposite . . . is that what you want as governor? That is what we’ve had in the pastand the result is the sales tax. Is this something we can brag about? I don’t.” Formby, everywhere he went this week, also stumped hard for doing away with the merit rating Plan on auto insurance rates, and in favor of increasing the speed limit to 70 miles an hour on fourlane divided highways. Connally ILO