ustxtxb_obs_1964_10_30_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

PHOTOGRAPH BY RUSSELL LEE President Johnson, Senator Yarborough, and Hank Brown, President, Texas AFL-CIO Yarborough told Spain he thought was one of the five great Texas governors. “He got the first free public schools organized in Texas. He built the present capitol,” Yarborough told the somewhat surprised professor. “He was hanged in effigy in Houston for his part in establishing the school at Prairie View,” \(that is, Yarborough stressed, in the TV conversation, his party loyalty and his view that splitting a ballot to vote for a Republican after having voted in the Democratic primary and pledging to support its nominees is “intellectual dishonesty” that involves breaking a “solemn pledge.” “I don’t bolt a ticket. I’m not a bolter. I’ve read the ticket. I know who’s running,” Yarborough said. “There’s a moral issue, whether when a man signs that pledge he means it or takes it deceitfully.” Further, he said, there is a need for a good two-party system, of which the primary pledge is a part. Asked if he has the support of Gov. Connally, Yarborough said Connally would _ have to be asked about that, but “He’s made many speeches that he is voting the straight Democratic ticket” this year. As for E. B. Germany, the Dallas industrialist heading East Texas Democrats for Bush, Yarborough said Germany had been fined $39,000 “for drilling deviated oil wells.” Would Yarborough oppose a Republican primary participant voting for him Nov. 3? Some have done it, and “it’s his option,” but party loyalty is the senator’s code, he said. Asked about the “wrestling match” with Sen. Strom Thurmond, Yarborough said it wasn’t that, but that in any event “Senator Thurmond has quit the Democratic Party and joined the Republican Party, so we’ll never have the problem of getting him to form a Democratic quorum again. I tried to urge him to come on in [to form the quorum]. He had a rather violent response.” Asked about Bush’s hostility toward federal aid, Yarborough said the issue of federal control is a false one, because all the federal government does is audit the spending of the money to be sure it is spent for the purposes it is appropriated to advance. “Would [Bush] repeal vocational education? Would he repeal school lunch money? Would he repeal my National Defense Education Act under which 621 Texas high schools have obtained scientific equipment? Would he repeal the medical education act, which provided $11 million for the medical school in San Antonio?” Yarborough asked. “My name,” he added, “is on every education bill passed in the last six years” by the Congress. What about Bush’s opposition to excessive federal spending? “For the last two years,” the senator said, “52 cents of every dollar has gone for the defense program.” Spending for welfare and education”only about a fourth of the budget” after $73 billion of the $102 billion budget is allocated for past, present, and future warsis not excessive, he said. Does it not follow from the heavy defense spending, he was 8 The Texas Observer asked, that spending on other programs ought be cut down? “Absolutely not. If you don’t educate the people, you can put a wall of missiles around this country and you’d still fall,” Yarborough snapped, citing then Russia’s graduation of nearly twice as many scientists and engineers in recent years as in the entire West. He said that after seven years in the Senate he is chairman of three sub-committees and has racked up solid attainments in education, conservation, and veterans’ affairs legislation. He recited education bills he has passed or co-authored, his Padre Island and Fort Davis park bills that have passed, his support of wilderness and reclamation legislation, and his role, as chairman of the veterans’ affairs subcommittee, in shepherding through the Senate 42 bills affecting veterans. He likes to hold out a letter he has received from the president of the American Legion, commending him on this latter work. He ran on a platform of cutting taxes, and this has been done; he advocated to voters in 1958 cutting fat out of foreign aid, and this has been done, but vigilance against foreign aid waste has to continue; he favors economy in government, and as chairman of the civil service subcommittee participates in the constant contest with inefficiency and waste, he said. FOR LUNCH Yarborough had to make a decision. Bennett, a county commissioner for 14 years who has now retired from the courthouse, had arranged a luncheon for him with about 40 key San Antonio politicians; Bill Sinkin wanted him to attend a chamber of commerce luncheon. Yarborough chose the meeting Bennett had arranged, opening his speech to them by reading, pro forma, the statement he had written for press release earlier on the plane. The Republicans have the most modern IBM machines to turn out voters, organize sign-placard campaigns, and do other political work in Texas now, Yarborough said. Kennedy barely won Texas in 1960, Nixon receiving more Texas votes than Eisenhower did in 1952 or 1956, Yarborough recalled: Republicans will have 90% of their members voting, and the election depends on how many Democrats vote. In 1960, he recalled, only 43% of Texans did vote, and if this recurs, “the Democratic ticket could be in jeopardy.” Texas has only one Democratic senator now and should keep him, what with a Democratic administration, a 2-1 Democratic Senate, and the House nearly 2-1 Democratic, Yarborough said. His opponent, Yarborough said, is 100% for Goldwater, and actually “to the right of Goldwater.” In evidence orr this contention, Yarborough holds up the Houston Post of Oct. 11, which quoted Bush saying he takes “no position” on the John Birch Society but welcomes the support of its members. [ “I wouldn’t want my children to join the teen age Birch group. I’d rather see them join the Young Republicans. The society is not an important element in Texas politics. If it were, Jack Cox would have beaten me in the primary. And it’s of no great influence in Harris County. . . . But I want their support,” Bush was quoted here.] Weeks ago, Yarborough said, Goldwater and Miller repudiated the support of the Birch Society. “Twice he [Bush] appeals for the support of the John Birch Society,” Yarborough said. “This shows he’s more in league with extremism than Goldwater and Miller.” In this connection, Yarborough is riding Bush for saying in speeches and his literature that the nuclear test ban treaty “won’t work.” “There are enough cobalt and other type bombs manufactured and in our stockpiles to kill all the Russians 500 times over,” the senator said. “Two thirds of the ;