ustxtxb_obs_1964_04_03_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS HAS PROUDLY ANNOUNCED THE MAY PUBLICATION OF THE MEMORIAL EDITION OF THE GREAT FRONTIER by Walter Prescott Webb with an introduction by Arnold J. Toynbee The HOUSE OF BOOKS, INC., 9215 Stella Link Road, Houston, Texas, 77025, is now taking reservations for copies of the new edition of this book \(out of print Please reserve cents tax each. copies of THE GREAT FRONTIER at $6.00 plus 12 Name Address City Enclosed find check Charge and send Political Intelligence A Dynamic, Moiling Electorate Statistical data on ten major metropolitan areas prepared by candidate Don Yarborough’s headquarters shows an increase in paid poll tax holders \(and those to 1,576,807 in 1964an increase of 39 percent. An Associated Press survey of 17 selected counties that cast more than half the presidential vote in 1960 showed that “at least” 68,200 persons qualified to vote in federal elections only in those counties alone. This 1964 electorate is therefore more unpredictable than electorates usually are. There is the question how many of the voters will choose to vote in the Republican primary this year in response to the straw vote and senatorial contest lures and will therefore be lost to conservative Democratic candidates. There is the question how many of the “federal-only” voters would ordinarily have qualified to vote in state elections, too, but did not for financial reasons and are therefore probably lost to liberal Democratic candidates. There is the question how many of the newly qualified voters are strongly Democratic in orientationone veteran liberal worker says “four out of five of these new people are ours.” PASO has been claiming that 450,000 Latin-Americans are registered: this would be unprecedented. Texas has more Negroes than any other state in the union except New York \(the Texas total: 1,187,to be more active politically than before in light of the civil rights movement. Tit for Tat go/ Sen. Ralph Yarborough has been made a member of the Select Subcommittee on poverty of the Senate’s labor and public welfare .committee. This was a choice appointment for the senator, a co-author of the Administration bill to implement the President’s call for a war on poverty. Sen. John Tower, the Texas Republican senator, represents, in his reaction to the war on poverty, quite the other viewpoint. “The only real, lasting solution to joblessness is obviously the creation of new jobs,” and therefore, he said, “the logical route would be for the Administration to encourage, by every means possible, the economic well-being of those who provide jobs for American workers.” The two senators also divide sharply over the civil rights bill. Sen. Yarborough voted to take it up last week: Tower was paired against doing so. Yarborough was joined in his vote by a number of borderstate senators, but not by any from the Deep South. The Observer defers a discussion of the developing Senate race in the two primaries until the April 17 issue. pot Both Cong. Bruce Alger and Ed Fore man, the Texas Republicans in the lower House, have raised questions suggesting they may not support the Republican presidential nominee if he is not conservative enough for them. Sen. Tower’s position is that he will support the GOP nominee, regardless. Alger is stumping the country for Goldwater now. g# 1 Dan Sullivan, busily consolidating lib eral-labor support for congressman-atlarge, appointed Minnie Fisher Cunningham of New Waverly his campaign chairman and spurned the State Democratic Executive Committee’s resolution that everyone, including conservatives, participate in the Democratic primary May 2. Bob Baker, who sought but did not get the labor-liberal endorsements, backs the S.D.E.C. on the point. Pool on JFK Bills tof Congressional Quarterly inadvertently dealt Joe Pool, the Democratic con gressman-at-large, a hard blow. The au thoritative periodical reported that Pool opposed the late President Kennedy’s legis lative proposals in 1963 more frequently gor A phenomenally lage electoratesome say as large as 3,500,000 qualified votersis prepared to vote in Texas this year. Just 2,700,000 were qualified in 1960. Estimates of the “free riders” who didn’t pay their poll taxes but did qualify to as 150,000; they seem to be principally an additive to the electorate, rather than voters lost from state elections. Partisans of conservative Democrats for a time hoped the repeal of the poll tax in federal elections would cause a substantial drop in poll tax payments, but evidently not. The Observer persists in holding a strong suspicion, On the basis of figures otherwise not readily understandable, that the President’s assassination in Dallas made large numbers of Texans who never voted before decide to get with it. The four major counties have a total increase in qualified voters over 1960 of 24%, from 971,355 in 1960 to 1,201,593 in 1964. The assassination factor might reasonably be inferred from this comparison between the state’s two largest cities: Houston’s qualified voters increased, between 1960 and 1964, from 392,000 to 463,000, or 18%. Qualified voters in Dallas increased, between 1960 and 1964, from 270,000 to 353,000, or 31%. 10 The Texas Observer