ustxtxb_obs_1963_03_07_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

Enjoy the big D Hotel, 3 blocks from Turnpike on U.S. 80 & 77. 400 air INconditioned rooms, suites … FAMILY PLAN \(Children un dining ample parking … Bus to downtown areas at door. Austin The Texas Senate’s refusal in a secret session to approve W. St. John Garwood as a University of Texas regent has probably received more publicity in the dailies than any single event this legislative session. Lists of the twelve senators who voted against Garwood, thus blocking him, have been published*; the press has copiously reported the ragged aftermath of the affair in the Senate, during of Galveston has sought, without success, Garwood’s reconsideration, and has announced that he will make the votes of senators on future nominations public. Senators have made angry statements for and against GarwoodSenator Franklin Spears of San Antonio even saying, in a taped radio interview, that the John Birch Society had a hand in the sudden appearance of the decisive opposition to Garwood. The most interesting question, now that it is certain that GarWood cannot be reconsidered by the Senate, is what has impelled Babe Schwartz to take the stand he has. There have been a handful of noteworthy instances of iconoclasm in the legislature in the last ten years or so, but none quite as bold as this. With careful attention to the implications of what he is doing, Schwartz is spurning a gentleman’s agreement among his colleagues in the Senate that they will not reveal According to the Houston Chronicle and Long News Service, the 12 senators voting against Garwood were Sens. H. J. Blanchard, Lubbock; Louis Crump, San Saba; Ralph Hall, Rockwall; Dorsey Hardeman, San Angelo; Grady Hazlewood, Amarillo; Frank Owen, El Paso; George Parkhouse, Dallas; David Ratliff, Stamford; Bruce Reagan, Corpus Christi; Andy Rogers, Childress; Murray Watson, Jr., Mart; and J. P. Word, Meridian. This list coincides exactly with one put together by the Observer after the vote. DON BROWN Sun Life of Canada Austin, Texas GR 6-1942 Observations W…^…./W..,….,,,, how each other vote on nominations in. secret sessions. This agreement is actually breached in private: any intrepid reporter can get several lists of how the senators voted in a secret session, although such lists often vary. But Schwartz has declared, to his colleagues and the press, that on the record he will tell reporters who ask him how his colleagues voted in secret session. This is a new kind of rebellion in the Texas Senate, and while some of the senators are privately convinced Schwartz is right on the issue itself, none of them side with him publicly. He is more isolated on this stand than Henry Gonzalez was when he filibustered the segregation bills in 1957, for Gonzalez had a handful of senators openly helping him. Babe Schwartz is alone. The Observer sat down with him a good while to get next to him about this; to see what makes a man risk harsh treatment for legislation he is sponsoring, bear the pressure and the hostility of his colleagues, and face up even to talk that he may be expelled from the Senate, in order to inform the public how senators vote on the governor’s nominations. THE SENATOR sees the stand he is taking now as a stand against clubbiness in public life. He respects his colleaguesthey wouldn’t be senators if they lacked courage, he says. He is willing to protect them from personal attack or SUBSCRIBE OR RENEW THE TEXAS OBSERVER 504 West 24th Street Austin 5, Texas Enclosed is $5.10 \(or if the subscriber lives outside of Texas, tion to the Observer for: Name Address City, State This is a renewal. This is a new subscription. exposure of their legislative discussions. And, he insists, he is abiding by all Senate rules. The rule on nominations prohibits a senator from revealing any remarks in executive sessions touching on the character or qualifications of a nominee; it does not prohibit a senator from revealing how other senators vote on a nomination. His colleagues have told him that by gentlemen’s agreement, they do not; but he will not be so bound. “When you come up to the Senate, you have the .impression of a social atmosphere. There is a silence about the things you don’t talk about, as in aristocratic familiesabout which I know nothing. You don’t mention the fella who didn’t make good, or got in trouble, because it would damage the public idea of the family,” he said. “What are you willing to do to conform to tradition, and where do you draw the line? At the social? One step above that, in their legislative affairs, or their motivations? Or are you willing to protect ’em? “The ultimate demand on a senator is the agreement that_he protect his goi ng ro stay at the HOTEL DALLAS Wood at Houston & Record Streets Across from Union Terminal Phone Riverside 2-6101 March 7, 1963 15