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The Texas Observer OCT. 30, 1964 A Journal of Free Voices A Window to The South 25c THE HISTORIC TEXAS SENATE RACE An Observer Report The Belden Poll, which showed Senator Ralph Yarborough leading Republican George Bush 60-32% in September, said the Sunday ten days before the voting that Yarborough was still ahead, but 53-38%. If this poll is correct, it confirms the impression one encounters traveling with the two candidatesthat Bush has been closing fast in the home stretch and either man can win. On the same day the Houston Chronicle poll said Yarborough leads only 50.2-49.8%. Yarborough and Bush are both confident and affable as the campaign approaches its close. Asked at a press conference to predict the outcome, Yarborough said quietly, “Oh, I’ll win.” A deliberate alarmism radiated outward from the senator’s state headquarters in Austin after the Houston Chronicle poll Oct. 11 said Yarborough was barely ahead, 51.5-48.5%, and Yarborough is stressing that while he is confident that a majority of Texans are for him, the outcome itself depends on whether the Democrats vote. Bush is confidently asserting he will win. He is referring frequently to “the Democrats’ official poll,” a poll he says he has been, told about but has not seen, taken by the State Democratic Executive Committee, showing Bush leading, 43-42%. \(He says the first S.D.E.C. poll showed Yarborough ahead 47-32, and the second one, Yarborough leading 47 to 37, before the most In addition, Bush confirms to the Observer, a New York firm ran a poll in Texas and showed Yarborough leading 44-41% a few weeks back. The identity of the United States senator from Texas who will be elected Tuesday, November the third, for the next six years thus may depend on national events, on the television discussions, or even on the comparative success of the get-out-our-vote campaigns in political headquarters all around the state the last 48 hours. Goldwater’s Policies, Kennedy’s Style Fort Worth, Austin George Bush is handsome, personable, conservative, and persuasive. He combines Barry Goldwater’s very conservative politics with a witty, conversational style that is reminiscent, in some ways, of Jack Kennedy’s. His campaign to become this state’s second Republican senator gets a lot of energy and sparkle from the young Republican matrons who are enthusiastic about him personally and have plenty of money for baby sitters and nothing much they have to do with their time. He would have been a more plausible looking guest on Kennedy’s yacht than Pierre Salinger by a long shot, and he is the sort of fellow the ladies turn their heads to see at the country club charity ball. Underneath these appearances, his campaign is powered by the Republicans’ growing Texas organization and by large sums of money and the aggregations of power these sums come from. He has been able to attract extra people to rallies with free barbecue, free drinks, and musical entertainers. His year-long campaigning, with stress on -organizational preparations, is now paying off, as for example one night last week in Fort Worth when a free home made pie-and-soft-drinks rally was attended by perhaps 1,500 persons. His well-off backers are apparently well pleased with him. Retorting, in the lightly contemptuous style he sometimes adopts toward Senator Yarborough, to a statement attributed in the morning paper to Yarborough that Bush had spent $300,000 on the multi-colored billboards one sees all over the state, the 40-year-old Houston oilman told the Observer that this wasn’t true, the correct sum was either $66,000 or $62,000. Whereas Senator Yarborough commented last week, when a luncheon for him was swung around to raising campaign money for him, that “All Democratic meetings, like most church meetings, have become money-raising meetings,” there was no organized effort to raise money from the large crowd of partisans at Bush’s county-wide rally in Fort Worth. As a speaker Bush laces a reasoning, seldom cajoling “soft sell” with bursts of flak against Yarborough. He has sought to generate against Yarborough a hostility not much more complicated than plain dislike. He has decided, these last weeks, on a campaign to drive in the charge that Yar borough is ineffective, intemperate, and undignified. While Bush skips lightly over his “sixpoint industrial program,” it is difficult to separate out the six elements when he goes over it ; basically he is saying he will work to get new industries into Texas, that this means new jobs, and that new jobs are the answer to poverty, not “left-wing federal spending programs.”* The real body of his policies abides in his condemnation of “the Reuther-dominated, left-wing philosophy” and policy that “gives assistance to our enemies instead of expanding freedom.” He wants the United States to help Cubans-in-exile finance and arm an invasion of Cuba and *Subsequently, we have noted a press release with communities and chambers of commerce cooperate with elected state officials” in their port the program of the Texas Industrial ComTexas communities with corporations, inviting their interest in expanding their operations in markets for products presently manufactured in Texas.”