ustxtxb_obs_1965_04_16_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

Don’t guess Act watit, let us tea it. 7i9et iucket, apptaicet P. 0. Box 66103 JAckson 4-2211 Houston 77006 sit-ins in his hometown of Wallis near Houston and was served . . . A Negro lawyer was denied a ticket to the Waco bar banquet because the country club bars Negroes. . . . Masons honored high state officials who are Masons, including Lt. Gov. Smith, Carr, and Secretary. of State Crawford Martin. . . . Hank Brown, state labor chief, was a speaker at a “Democracy-inAction Week” program, usually rightwingish, at Howard Payne College. . . . Gov. Connally named Carlos Cadena, exS.A. city attorney, associate justice of the Fourth Court of Civil Appeals. . . . The The City Elections San Antonio In San Antonio’s city election last week the Establishment’s Good Government League won its sixth straight election. For the first time the ticket included a Negro, Sam Jones, who is a Baptist preacher and a member of the NAACP. Two years ago another Negro minister, Claude Black, certainly more militant and probably more liberal than James, was narrowly defeated by a Good Government League candidate. Black’s 15,429 votes no doubt gave the GGL a good scare. They marked himand the Negro communityas a threat, as the enemy. As late as January of this year that opinion had not changed, for the GGL’s chairman told a newspaper reporter he didn’t need a Negro on his ticket “because they won’t vote for us anyway.” Someone or something, perhaps the newspapers, convinced him otherwise. The results were James’ election over three independent white candidates and Black’s defeat by nearly 6,000 votes. Though the Negro East Side gave Black more votes than James, it nevertheless provided James with the margin he needed to win without a runoff. The GGL no longer considers the Negro community its enemyonly Rev. Black. From its inception this ability to digest the opposition has been the GGL’s strength. The writer, John Rogers, works on the copy desk of a San Antonio daily. 14 The Texas Observer Texas GOP chose the chairman of the board of the National Bank of Commerce in San Antonio, J. M. Bennett, Jr., its state finance chairman to replace Dudley Sharp, Houston. . . . Harley Pershing reports in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that Rep. Bill Hollowell, Grand Saline, thinking of running for governor, “accepts racial integration as a social justice correcting a wrong,” but Pershing’s story contained no direct quotes to this effect. . . . Judge Sarah Hughes of Dallas has been named to the U.S. commission on UNESCO by Secretary of State Rusk. At first the GGL was opposed by a few big businessmen who put up opposition tickets, always unsuccessfully. Later, after the big boys had given up, a few small businessmen tried tickets that were just as impotent against the GGL. Now the only opposition at election time comes from independents \(most of whom have no intention and County Cmsr. Albert Pena. After last week’s election Pena quipped: “With their money they could have elected Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck . . . and who knows, maybe they did.” Like Pena, all the independents blamed the GGL’s superior treasury for their defeats. Though most likely the GGL has all the money it needs, in this election it didn’t have to spend much. Its TV and radio spots and newspaper ads this spring could not be compared in quantity or quality with its past campaign hoopla. More important was the fact that the independents couldn’t raise money for their own campaigns. The businessmen who used to help out GGL opposition have vanishedperhaps back into the womb of the GGL. One candidate who should certainly have been able to obtain financial help if any had been available was Roy Padilla, a small businessman who twice was elected to the council on the GGL ticket. He ran as an independent this time with Pena’s support. Padilla fell out with the GGL when he openly campaigned for Pena for re-election last year in the county commissioner’s race. Ironically but not surprisingly, Padilla was defeated by the man Pena beat in a runoff, print shop owner Felix Trevino. The Good Government Leaguers, who came to power as reformers in 1955, have never lost. The record is 53 to 0. Only in their first term was there an independent voice on the city council, that of Henry B. Gonzalez, whom the GGL did not choose to oppose. Since then the GGL absorbed or killed off opponents one by one until now it exercises absolute control over the machinery of city government, which in San Antonio includes not only the ordinary functions, but also the gas and electric utilities, the water works, the bus system, the expanding urban renewal agency, and the housing authority, which owns and operates 5,000 apartment units. It controls the machinery of the Democratic Party through the party chairman, John Daniels, who was a GGL city councilman and now is the attorney for the housing authority and the proposed city-sponsored HemisFair. Last year, too, the liberal Bexar County legislators accused the GGL of sponsoring an opposition ticket in the Democratic primary. Rep. Glenn Kothmann was opposed by former GGL mayor Edwin Kuykendall. Going a couple of years back, Henry B. Gonzalez’ opponent when he first ran for Congress in a special election was Republican John Goode, the law partner of Bob Sawtelle, whom Pena continually refers to as “Boss” Sawtelle because of his high position in the GGL hierarchy. Sawtelle is legal counsel for the water board, as well as other city agencies. Three years ago the present county tax assessor-collector, Charles Davis, was first elected when he ran in the Democratic primary on a ticket sponsored by the GGL’s Sam Jorrie, who was then a county commissioner and later quit to run for the legislature against Coalition-endorsed Tom Lee. \(Jorrie was It was Davis, this year, who probably was more responsible for the defeat of Black and Padilla than any other factor. In his drive for efficiency, he said, he computerized the poll tax payments for 1965. IBM cards were mailed to all poll tax holders of last year with instructions to return them to the tax collector’s office along with the $1.75 required for a poll tax. What about the people who had moved; the people who didn’t pay their poll tax last year but might this year; the people who can’t read English very well; the people who don’t have checking accounts and won’t send cash by mail? The county registration was the smallest in five years at least, 60,000 off the 1964 total. The worst part, from the independent candidates’ viewpoint, was the registration on the Negro East Side and the Latin West Side. Came election day and sure enough, the GGL, with its Republican mayor, its real estate man, its home builder, its clubwoman, its Latin dentist, its investment banker, its veterinarian, its Latin businessman, and its Negro preacher, kept its power. JOHN ROGERS San Antonio As Usual