ustxtxb_obs_1964_11_13_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

ington, began pressing to get Johnson back into the state in time to endorse Yarborough some more, Connally was reported to be arguing that Johnson should not do this. The night after the election Connally was explaining privately that he had not done anything specific for Yarborough because he had regarded it as his, the governor’s, role to help keep businessmen in line for Johnson, and that by keeping Yarborough at arms’-length, he had helped the President. On the other hand, it is logical that Connally would be worried about Bush’s attractiveness as a candidate. Obviously, Bush is now a threat to the Connally groupor to Connally himself if he chooses to run for re-election. Bush says he intends to stay in politics, and since he could not run for the Senate in 1966 with John Tower seeking re-election, he most plausibly will run for governor. Bush did in fact get more votes than any other Republican candidate for state or U.S. office in Texas history, including Tower, and Bush ran 170,000 ahead of Goldwater in Texas. A possibility that was not open to Bush as a candidate against Yarboroughthe same kind of liberal defections and abstentions that helped elect Tower in 1961 over While most of the major dailies in Texas endorsed President Johnson, most of them also endorsed Bush. As the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal pointed out \(in an editorial saying Yarborough had “solid support from tightly controlled minorities” but was “quarantined” by Democrats of statewide popularity with the “sole exception” of the culation of more than 30,000 endorsed Yarborough. This was the El Paso-Herald Post \(whose editor the Avalanche-Journal condemned because he “recently was sent in from San Francisco where his paper also Most of these Bush endorsements were no surprise, but those of the Dallas TimesHerald and the Houston Chronicle were for those two papers had appeared to be following a somewhat progressive course in the last year or so. The T-H simply said Bush was an excellent man ; the Chronicle, however, in an editorial which did not specify issues on which the editors differed with Yarborough, said he was “the most ‘liberal’ man ever to represent Texas in Washington.” Calling the question “perhaps the hardest decision” Nov. 3, the Chronicle said Texas would be “better served in the long run” by Bush. Sunday before the election the Chronicle ran a spread across two-thirds of its editorial page, showing how to vote for Johnson and Bush. The Houston Post maintained edi 6 The Texas Observer the conservative Democrat, Bill Blakleymay be in the Houston oilman’s mind for 1966, already. A little-noticed post-election remark by Bush found its way to the end of a long AP story Nov. 5: “I’m sure conservatism is the thing that got beat in Texas. Certainly the party should be big enough to include people of different philosophies.” Whether Bush, after being “enthusiastic” for Goldwater for president, could re-cast his image in time to pull a John Tower on Connally or Waggoner Carr in the 1966 governor’s racethat’s a question he may be thinking on already. Upon Yarborough’s election Connally made a friendly statement, with a couple of afterthoughts that looked like barbs reconsidered and metamorphosed, to the Dallas Times-Herald. “He [Yarborough] won a fine victory in a tough race,” Connally was quoted. “I know that in his service he will do his utmost, as we all will, to represent all .the people of the state. . .. I am sure Sen. Yarborough, like all of us, will want to reflect an attitude of cooperation and project an image of a people here in Texas who not only want to keep pace with the nation, but be in the vanguard of progress and stability in a troubled world.” torial silence on the Senate race; so did all three San Antonio dailies. Also for Bush were the Dallas News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth Press, El Paso Times, and the dailies in Lubbock, Longview, Sulphur Springs, Cuero, Lufkin, Harlingen, Brownsville, McAllen, Gainesville, Bay City, Kilgore, Beaumont, Tyler, and Denton. Also for Yarborough: the dailies in Waxachachie, Dumas, Brownwood, Del Rio, Wichita Falls, Temple, Corsicana, and Jacksonville. Yarborough’s TV announcements made effective use of endorsements of him by the late President Kennedy and by President Johnson. In his newspaper ads, too, Yarborough stressed these endorsements \(“Here’s what two great Presidents said Yarborough newspaper ads sought to identify Bush with extremism, the Birch Society, and opposition to the nuclear test ban treaty.In “Women for Yarborough” ads, Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson’s name led off long lists. In a state with a spotty history of academic freedom, the ad listing the names of “1,014 university professors in Texas” endorsing Johnson, Humphrey, Yarborspecial interest. The names of 26 colleges were given in a separate block of type; apparently these were the schools at which the 1,014 professors teach. Boldest, from the point of view of risking the ire of their governing boards, were the 12 professors who were identified with their college connections as member of the steering committee of the group, along with Jack Scroggs and the late J. Frank Dobie. These were Frank E. Vandiver and Louis P. Galambos, Rice; William Pool, Southwest Texas State; Alfred R. Neumann, University of Houston ; Rupert N. Richardson, Hardin-Simmons; Hudson Long, Baylor; Ralph A. Wooster, Lamar State College of Technology; William Arrowsinith, University of Texas; J. Reuben Wheeler, Texas Southern University; George Wolfskill, Arlington State; George Bond, Southern Methodist; Ben H. Proctor, Texas Christian; Scroggs, listed as past president, Texas Assn. of College Teachers; and Dobie. YARBOROUGH had his last word on the Estes $50,000 story in Dallas Oct. 27and he unloaded, so effectively the recorded speech was later played on statewide TV. He quoted Goldwater as having said in Dallas that Yarborough was “not subject to criticism” because he accepted political contributions from Estes before Estes got into trouble. Arguing boldly, Sen. Yarborough said that in the Republican primary last spring, Bush attacked his opponent then, Jack Cox, for Cox’s having taken a contribution from Estes, whereupon Cox counterattacked that this was a very unfair argument. Quoting Cox, . Yarborough said Bushwas Cox’s Harris County campaign manager in 1962 and ” ‘he knew that Billie Sol Estes made a political contribution to me.’ ” Then Yarborough quoted “a Republican newspaper” saying that “only a devious demagogue” would fault Cox because of this contribution. Estes was one of the five outstanding young men selected by the Texas Jaycees, and one day before Estes was arrested, the Dallas News carried a story about him entitled, “Billie Sol in Pecos: Estes Building An Empire Worthy of Any Texan,” Yarborough’ recited. Estes had given him contributions totaling just $7,200not $5,000 or $9,000 or any other sum as per “the big lie being fostered against me by this extremist running against me,” Yarborough said. Yarborough said he had taken the $50,000 charge to the FBI”Now you’re not going to those fellas if you’ve committed a crime,” he threw inand the Justice Department had concluded the story was “without any foundation in fact,” the senator stressed. “My opponent won’t say I got $50,000. We’d lift some of that Kuwait oil from him if he did. I’ll file suit on him within 24 hours if heHe won’t say it. This mentioning of different sums is a big smear,” Yarborough said, setting off bursts of emotional applause among his supporters. \(The Kuwait oil referred to would be that drilled by Bush’s international drilling Yarborough did not mention the matter again election eve; Bush did. Bush remarked that James Fonville, one of Estes’ two “witnesses,” had called on the governor “to Yarborough’s Victory