ustxtxb_obs_1964_05_15_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

liberal state-level resolutions, and a threeway split among the delegates, liberal, conservative, and moderate. nally’s without contest and therefore did not endorse Johnson’s program. Connally told UPI his forces also took El Paso, Lubbock, Midland, and Webb counties and have 1,650 of the state convention votes, well over the 1,418 needed to control. Liberals won Jefferson County, endorsing Johnson’s conservatives usually control, but where liberals Saturday declared Sen. Yarborough “Texas’ Mr. Democrat.” A number of the conventions pledged specific support for Yarborough. In almost every county, Johnson and Connally were endorsed ; but in Walker County, conservatives tabled a resolution urging Texas delegates to support Johnson for nomination by a vote of 31-18, replacing this with an innocuous statement of pride that a Texan . is president. Houston Dailies and the Senate Race V Hardin County politics were rent this spring by a pitched battle between Kountze News editor Archer Fullingim and Houston Thompson, attorney who launched his own paper, the Pine Beetle. Fullingim acknowledges that Thompson’s candidates swept the field; Fullingim him self was beaten for precinct chairman, 800 200. The Observer does not know what the issues were, and if we did, we dassn’t say, for fear of coming under Fullingim’s “Both Barrels” or the Pine Beetle’s baleful scan. V The Texas Poll, Joe Belden, prop., made just one appearance in the Texas governor’s race this spring, giving John Connally a 77%-12% margin over Don Yarborough on March 17. Presumably Belden sold any subsequent pollings on the governor’s race to private parties. . . . The Houston Chronicle’s poll April 26 predicted Connally by 64-36% and Ralph Yarborough by 58-42%. V The Chronicle endorsed Sen. Yarbor ough, but just barely, in a manner reflecting considerable internal strain on the question. On April 28 the paper’s third editorial endorsed the senator on grounds that President Johnson is for him and Texans should “heed the need of the President.” The Houston Post did not endorse anyone in the Democratic primary, limiting itself to support for George Bush for the GOP nomination. The Chronicle not only endorsed Connally; it plugged fOr him in frequent editorials. The Chronicle also endorsed a slate of candidates, some liberal, some conservative, for the legislature; in the most controversial race, Rep. Bob Eckhardt vs. Art Forbes, it was silent. V The Fort Worth Star-Telegram joined the Dallas News in unabashed advocacy of voters’ deliberately voting Democratic in May and Republican in November. The pro-McLendon Star-Telegram editorialized in advance of the vote: “As Gordon McLendon realistically has pointed out, conservatives who vote for him in the Democratic race for the Senate will have a second shot at defeating Senator Yarborough if he is winner of the primary contest. Those who vote in one or both of the Democratic primaries are free to vote as they choose in the general election in November.” sof Cong. Joe Kilgore, McAllen, received good press play on his endorsement of Gordon McLendon. In addition, however, Cong. Jack Brooks, Beaumont ; Wright Patman, Texarkana, and Clark W. Thompson, Galveston, endorsed Sen. Yarborough. Thompson said about Yarborough: “I have never heard an intelligent man question his integrity.” V UPI distributed stories reciting the substance of the Observer’s lead article, “Howard Dodgen’s Story,” last issue, and quoting Gov. Connally as saying that Dodgen’s central chargethat his dismissal was caused by his refusal to drop a 1955 hunting law complaint against A. W. Moursund, the new parks and wildlife commissionerwas “so utterly ridiculous that it does not deserve an answer.” UPI tried and failed to get comment from Cmsrs. Moursund and Will Odom of Austin. \(The stories credited the Observer, but the Austin American cut the one it ran short before Academic Freedom por Notes on academic freedom: Dr. R. C. Goodwin, president of Texas Tech College, ordered the cancellation of a speech on campus in Lubbock by Peter Valdez, national secretary of the Young Socialist Alliance. The student newspaper quoted Dr. Goodwin as saying, “I regard it not necessary for him to be on our campus.” . . . The Observer has also learned that without announcement, Rev. Martin Luther King was disinvited to speak at Southern Methodist University. Judging from the letters column of the student newspaper at SMU, a previous invitation was withdrawn on stated grounds that “certain Negro leaders” felt it best not to have him at this time. V The Dallas News, in a column by Jim Wright, disagreed with perpetrators of anonymous telephone calls harassing sponsors of a fund-raising , campaign planned by the Dallas Association for Mental Health, which culminated in a benefit May 8. Wright defended the benefit to raise money for psychiatric research in the problems of disturbed children. . . . The News recently ran a cartoon showing a fat, peaheaded slob named “Demonstrators” who was “Sowing the Wind” from a seed-sack labeled, “Disrespect for the law.” . . . Dallas’ federal district judge, Sarah Hughes, does not retreat from her position that extremism and absolutism are rife in her city; in a speech before the Dallas Federal Bar Assn., she also said disrespect for the rule of law has been evidenced by the governors of Alabama and Mississippi, and “Our own governor, in calling a ruling of the U.S. Circuit Court ‘a political decisidn,’ also contributed to this.’ ” V John Stanford, the San Antonian or dered by the U.S. to register as a communist, has mailed out an appeal for funds which identifies the agency he asks the funds be sent to, the “Gus Hall-Benjamin J. Davis Defense Cmte.,” as “the committee carrying on the legal defense of the Communist Party, U.S.A.; Gus Hall and Benjamin J. Davis; [and] 37 membership cases. . . .” Stanford is the only such case listed in Texas. V Large advertisements in Texas news papers have been boosting various conservative causes: contributions to the Wallace for President campaign and the Constitution Party of Texas, and letters to congressmen against the pending civil rights bill and medicare. The medicare ads are signed by “Your doctors.” . . . According to an ad in the Dallas News, a man named DeWayne Dallas is running for U.S. senator from Texas on an ultra-right and segregationist platform as an “independent candidate.” Civil Rights Sens. Yarborough and John Tower of Texas voted the same way on the first test vote on the civil rights bill. Both of them supported the “jury trial amend ment,” which was narrowly defeated, 46 45. This amendment would have provided that citizens shall have jury trials if they are charged under the civil rights bill with contempt of federal court outside the pres ence of the judge: George Bush, the GOP Senate candidate, has said in his ads that he is especially concerned about the jury trial issue, a concern Yarborough’s vote neutralized politically. Civil rights advo cates’ concern on this issue is that South May 15, 1964 9