ustxtxb_obs_1964_06_26_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

ple and Mrs. H. H. Weinert of Seguin as national committeeman and committeewoman, respectively, were greatly appreciated, and that they would be succeeded by Erwin and Mrs. Eugene Locke of Dallas, wife of the governor’s first state Democratic chairman. In advance of the convention, after Connally had made his plans apparent, Mrs. Weinert said she had not intended to be a candidate for re-election, and Skelton said press of business prevented him from serving again. Skelton was thought to be nonplussed and disappointed. The resolutions commemorated the late President; called on all Texas Democrats to support all Democratic nominees “from the courthouse to the White House”; and, in an interesting compromise with the lib erals’ pressure for support of Johnson’s programs, “resolved that all Texans should give enthusiastic support to President Lyndon Baines Johnson in his effort to build the ‘Great Society’ in which every American, regardless of race, creed, color, sex, economic station, or social standing will enjoy a bright future of personal opportunity and fulfillment.” R.D. As to Who Won and Lost – HOW CAN ANYBODY TELL? Houston Are the convention series of political parties a part of legal democracy, with the participants entitled to the guarantees of democracy that if they win, they win, or are these conventions part of the system under which the winner gets the spoils? This is an unsettled question that underlay the rancorous disputes over the competing delegations to the state Democratic convention here last week from the three largest cities in the state. Closer to the surface in the disputes over Harris, Bexar, and Dallas delegations was the confusion that surrounded the issue of which side had the majority in each county. One must have stomach for political detail to master this confusion; otherwise, all a spectator can have in hand is contradictory claims and reciprocal insults. Yet it is only by grasping the outlines of the major disputes that one can see the nature of the convention maneuvering that in fact determines what interests and points of view control the Texas Democratic Party machinery these days. In all three counties, both sidesthe liberal, or national Democrats, vs. the conservative, or Texas Democratsclaimed they had or could have had the majority of the votes if the votes were counted the way they thought they should be. In Dallas, the liberals blamed their walk-out from the regular convention on autocratic management by the conservatives in charge. In San Antonio, the conserVatives who walked out on the regular convention expressed the same grievance against the liberals in charge. In Houston, the conservatives admitted they walked out because they didn’t like the resolutions that were being passed, but they pivoted their claim of victory back around to the question of who had the votes by contending they thought they could have won a test vote, but had made a deal not to try in exchange for a promise that resolutions they didn’t like would not be passed. The deal was broken so they walked outthat left them free to claim they could have won: so they argued. You see? Who’s right and who’s wrong? In the context of a tradition in which the governor’s wishes are given powerful favoritism at the state convention, a decision on whom to seat may turn on whom the authorities choose to believe on issues of fact involving irreconcilable contradictions and mutually exclusive claims. A new idea for reforming the system was advancedat the huge liberals’ caucus Monday night, at the credentials committee hearing earlier that day, and bef6re the conventionby the liberals’ spokesman, Chris Dixie, the Houston lawyer. “The problem we have is the system,” Dixie told the credentials committee of five members who had been appointed by the State Democratic Executive Committee and who were unanimously conservative and pro-Connally. The governor must head the party in the state, so a chain passes from him down through the executive committee to the credentials sub-committee, Dixie told his liberal delegation’s five judges. One judgment will profit the governor, another will cause him political loss, he said. “There is no difference in this system and one in which a judge would profit from a decision,” except that the judge would diAqualify himself, Dixie said. “I think that what is needed is a new law to give Democrats the right to .go to court and get a review of the improper denial of voting rights,” Dixie declared. The Congress has already extended this right to corporations in the matter ‘of minority stockholders’ rights and to labor unions in the provisions of the La.ndrum-Griffin law having to do with rank-and-filers’ rights to have their say and have their votes counted right, he said. The law should now turn to citizens’ rights in political conventions, he argued. “I predict there is going to be such a laW. The history of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party of Texas in recent years will be laid into the Congressional Record,” and the law will require that party conventions “count those votes that are victorious, without regard to where the chips will fall,” he said. It was a fresh thought, but meanwhile there was the question, Would the Connally people seat the Harris liberals, as expected, and refuse to seat the Dallas liberals, as expected, and seat the conservative bolters from San Antonio, as expected, in the face of liberal threats of walk-outs and a bolt to. Atlantic City if they did not seat the San Antonio liberals? I N SAN ANTONIO, both I the daily newspapers reported that the liberals had a clear majority of the county convention and that John Peace, the Connally leader’ who led the bolt, was on the losing side. The San Antonio Light said a roll call after the bolt showed 1,595 votes remaining in the convention where 1,192 was a majority. All sources agree that votes that were disputed because of precinct controversies over who had majorities totaled between 137 and 152. Nevertheless, Peace advanced an argument before the committee that, given its premises and assertions of fact, was logically air-tight to the conclusion that the Peace side had a majority. The liberals asserted that they had won actually by almost a two-to-one majority, but in the end the Connally forces seated Peace and his bolters instead. It may be relevant that one of the leaders of the San Antonio delegation was Cty. Cmsr. Albert Pena,, state chairman of the Political Assn. of Spanish-speaking Organas a political boss last fall during the oratory about repealing the Texas poll tax. The Observer has been told, but has not confirmed, that word was sent to the San Antonio liberals that if they would shunt Pena aside as a leader, the Connally people would negotiate with them, but that they would have none of it. The liberals’ spokesman was Maury Maverick, Jr., the state committeeman from Bexar. Although superficially it would appear to be irrelevant, Maverick told the committee that if the liberals were seated, they would fight for convention endorsements of medicare, the civil rights bill, and the war on poverty, and as everyone very well knew, this was not irrelevant at all, for it was an arena in which the conservative Connally did not want to be confronted during the convention. Why did the Bexar liberals walk into the fray leading with a glass chin? One answer appears to be that their convention instructed them to make the fight. At a more practical level, apparently they sensed in advance that they would not be seated. Jimmy Knight, the county clerk whom the June 26, 1964, 7