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support the President’s program and not support our late President Kennedy’s programthen we are chicken.” She closed with a demand the San Antonio liberals be seated, and the caucus came alive with wild, standing applause. Then, during more speeches, the subdued and puzzled tone with which the caucus had opened reasserted itself. It was broken again by Dan Sullivan of Andrews, the recently unsuccessful candidate for congressman-at-large, who declaimed: “The sum and substance of what we think is about to happen is that a legally elected delegation of Democrats from Bexar County are going to be deprived of something that they won fair and square. What good does it do to fight a convention battle and win only to have someone deprive you of your victory? If somebody steals it from me I’m not gonna take it lyin’ down and we shouldn’t, either!” Dr. David Mathis of Canyon, a professor, convulsed the caucus with a dry wit new to state politics. Mike McKool of the Dallas loyalist delegation said the issue was would they stick by their friends in Bexar. One of the leaders of the Bexar delegation, Pena, asked if Texas. . Democrats were going to be for Johnson and reject his program. The liberals had won San Antonio; would they be denied? He asked labor, liberals, and the minorities to stick together on the question, but said, “If we’re not seated and we have to fight it alone, we’ll do this, because this was the legacy that Maury Maverick, Sr., left us,” having himself “started the liberal movement” in Texas by leading a convention bolt in the rain in San Antonio in 1952. “Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong,” Texas AFL-CIO president Brown began. “God knows we don’t want to rump. Labor delegates are much divided whether to rump. . . . If we work tomorrow and tonight in the framework of our ideals, we’ll convert most of the labor delegates.” Whether they won or lost, Brown said, “What value is it to get on the delegation? How important is our vanity as a delegate or a member of the SDEC unless we can use this position to aid the aged . . . the underprivileged . . . minorities . . . the uporganized ?” The liberals could rump, he said, but he did not recommend it except as a last resort. “We don’t want to embarass the President of the United States. We can’t say we’re for him and do harm to him,” he said. There was also Sen. Yarborough’s welfare to consider, Brown said. “But we’re here to let the world know we’re not a bunch of suckers and patsies that can be run over.” Francis Williams, Negro leader from Houston, said unity should not be imposed while legal delegations were axed and suggested the motto: “We want justice. We want fair play.” On that note the ebbing and flowing–not to say irresolutecaucus adjourned. IN AN UPSTAIRS hotel room, Texas labor’s COPE administrative committee had begun meeting already on whether to bolt over Bexar. A majority were opposed. The steelworkers from Houston and some of the building tradesmen did not think such a fight should be made. The Observer understands the division of opinion was 13 members of the committee against a bolt, seven for. Through the night, the small steering committee of the liberal caucus also talked and debated : should they bolt if Bexar liberals were not seated. In the end the decisive argument with them was Pena’s. He said he was not asking that Harris leave the convention for San Antonio liberals, but rather for the survival of the Democratic Coalition in Texas. He said it was important that the huge group who had gathered in caucus after Yarborough’s speech not be let down, that this was the controlling consideration. It was decided that a compromise should be sought, and at 7 a.m., it was presented to the Connally forces: a half-and-half split of all the contested delegations, including the three big ones. Will Davis, Connally’s credentials chairman, had asked Dixie after the Harris County hearing earlier in the day to give the 50-50 split serious consideration. It would have killed any hope the liberals and loyalists had of winning the convention, since that prospect depended on their having two large big-city delegations on the floor, united and working the delegates. But it was thought to be a compromise that would avoid almost all the acrimony over who should be seated. At 8:30 the state Democratic committee met; Frank Erwin, Connally’s state Democratic chairman, explained there would be no review of the arguments the subcommittee had heard; Will Davis, the Chairman of Connally’s panel, said the Bexar and Dallas conservatives and the Harris liberals should be seated, the committee accepted the report 49-9. A dramatic confrontation took place. Maury Maverick, Jr. of San Antonio pointed a trembling finger at Erwin and said: “You have stuck the knife in the heart of the Bexar County delegation. You are a bully. This was not even close, what happened in Bexar County. This is a gardenvariety pig-trash steal.” Davis rejoined for the committee that everyone had been heard fully and that the subcommittee on credentials had not been given any instructions about whom to seat. In Bexar County, he said, the subcommittee had found that “in a very close contest, the people with the gavel did what they should not have.” Thirty minutes before the convention opened, Rep. Bob Eckhardt of the Houston liberals renewed with the governor’s brother, Merrill Connally, the proposal to split the contested delegations. In the interim, he thought it was understood, the liberals were to be let seek to amend the credentials report on the Bexar County issue with a record vote. Erwin and Dixie then conferred as the delegates settled themselves in the coliseum here. Erwin called the press together and gave this account of what passed between the two men : “Mr. Dixie has just told me the Harris County delegation is going to leave. He won’t tell me when. I don’t care . . .” The issue was Bexar, about which “our subcommittee concluded the delegates headed by John Peace had a majority of the duly elected delegates . . . and that the credentials committee of the Bexar County executive committee threw out enough legal delegates to give the other side control.” The Harris delegation was seated at the far back of the convention hall, where the balcony rises off the main floor. The mood back there was depressed. Latane Lambert of Dallas, a leader in liberal-labor policy circles, remarked: “They’re not in the least interested in doing business with us.” ERWIN BEGAN the prearranged after-you-Alphonse ritual with Dixie before the convention by saying the convention management had let everyone be heard and was running the convention fairly and honestly. He emphasized that the state Democratic committee that had, that morning, voted 49-9 to accept the report seating the Peace delegation was composed entirely of nominees from district caucuses at the 1962 Democratic convention. He said bluntly that if any of the “so-called liberal delegations” left the convention voluntarily, “we will replace them with people who wish to be in this convention.” The reports of ..the SDEC was read, including the significant fact that Moursund, the President’s close friend, would be temporary chairman. Erwin recognized Dixie as “the chairman of the so-called liberal delegation” from Houston. Dixie argued that the roll call should be delayed until the convention’s own credentials committee had heard the arguments in the Bexar dispute and acted on them, but Erwin replied that “I am more concerned with the practical situation than I am with theory” and that the convention commit-tee would be mostly “friends and supporters of Gov. Connally.” On a voice vote on Dixie’s appeal from Erwin’s position, Erwin ruled he had been upheld, and when there was some booing, Dixie admonished the booers, “When things are fair, let’s recognize that they are fair.” Dixie then moved to amend the temporary roll to seat the Bexar liberals. Erwin ruled the roll could not be amended and would have to be accepted or rejected. Dixie called this ruling “absurd” and appealed: again Erwin ruled the voice vote upheld him. Both voice votes sounded close. “Nothing developing under Lyndon Johnson excites anything in us except abject admiration for his policies and his courage. It would be better if this issue was not here. We cannot overlook it in our consciences,” Dixie said. Davis said his group had concluded that the Peace rump convention had a legal majority, but that the liberals’ party machinery had denied them the right to act on it. Then the long roll call began. IT WAS CLEAR from the first that with Bexar conservatives voting to June 26, 7964 5