ustxtxb_obs_1965_04_30_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

Rep. Connally went up to the Speaker’s platform and sat by Barnes at this point. “The only time that many states have ever been confronted with scandal is a time when the governor has served for many years,” Green said. After a second four-year term, a governor will have appointed two-thirds of all state boards, and at the end of his third term “he has appointed them all,” Green said, so that “a political dynasty, a political machine, can be set up in Texas if the holder of the office so desires.” Rep. Carl Parker, Port Arthur, the other sponsor of the industrial safety bill with Caldwell, noted that Green had been a legislator ten years and asked him if he had established a Fort Worth dynasty. Green said no one had ever proposed limiting the terms of legislators. Rep. Bob Eckhardt, Houston, said that since the governor and the lobby have much to trade with legislators on “the local issues, the pot boiling issues,” they can give each member a little bit of what he wants, and “Thus the important issues are decided by a process far less than what we should require.” Without a two-party system, Eckhardt said, four-year terms could concentrate so much power in the governor’s office “that it may not be effectively challenged.” He thought the issue of the day “not very different from the battle between the people and the sovereign . . . between Lord Coke and King James. . . . We must maintain an essential independence of the legislative function.” Four-year terms “place all the pressures of the administrative authority . . . all of that force in our own direction” in the first two years of the governor’s term, Eckhardt said. “Then this body becomes increasingly a rubber stamp for the executive. It can’t be helped in a system where there is no continuing oppo sition. There is a tendency for the chief executive and other forces to conspire and join with the lobby to effect a tremendous power on the members here. We are here a short time. The lobby is here continuously, the governor is here continuously, and it is difficult for us to cope with the power that is there. . . . “If there’s too much delay between the time when the governor acts and the people speak, then too much power may accumulate for it to be overthrown,” Eckhardt concluded. Hollowell said Connally’s “principal plank” in 1962 was “that we shall not have one-man government in Texas.” Hollowell read to the House Connally’s statement on a statewide TV broadcast Feb. 15, 1962, as reported in the Dallas News Feb. 16 on Section 1, page 12: “Talking about a governor who serves four [two-year] terms, Connally said: ‘He will completely dominate every board, commission, and authority in this state dominate it in the sense that he will have appointed at least once every single member of that board, and I am unalterably opposed to that in principle, because the last thing that Texas needs is one-man rule.’ ” Said Hollowell: “They’re the words of the man who has now broken faith with the people of Texas. . . . The price for a man to keep his word is never too high. If you break your word on one thing when you break it to ten million people, can you be relied on on anything else?” Parker raised a point of order that Hollowell should “confine his remarks to the merits of the bill and if he wants to make a speech about the governor he can do that some other time.” Hendryx closed for the four-year terms. With campaigns from December of one year through November of the next, he said, “the poor voter doesn’t have a chance.” No sooner is a legislative session over than the governor has to get out and campaign. “Sam Houston suggested a two-year term was wrong,” Hendryx said. “He had had time to visit a very small portion of this state.” “What is wrong with letting the people of Texas decide this issue?” Hendryx asked. “When you and I become afraid of the people’s judgment. . . . We need 100 votes.” The vote was 118 to 26. The 26 who voted no were Alaniz, Lee, and Vale of San Antonio; Cahoon, the lone Republican from Midland; Cherry of Waco; Dungan of McKinney; Eckhardt and Grover of Houston; Green; Hale and Peeler of Corpus; Harris of Galveston; Haynes of Vidor; Hollowell; Isaacks and Muniz of El Paso; Kilpatrick of Beaumont; Lack of Kountze; Lewis of Dallas; Markgraf of Scurry; Montoya of Elsa; Quilliam; Rapp of Raymondville; Roberts of Hillsboro; Weldon and Williamson. Not voting were Carpenter, Coahoma; Doke, Wichita Falls; Harding, San Angelo; McClinton, Oglesby; Slider, Naples. The other members voted aye. All but two of the members from Houston, including the other five who had the Harris County Democrats’ -endorsement \(one of whom is the H.C.D. chairyear term. While they did not wish to be quoted, leaders of the fight against the four-year term for governors spoke angrily of labor having made a deal not to oppose it. There was a suspicion that President Johnson’s power over labor’s desire for repeal of Section 14-B of the Taft-Hartley Act was an important factor; if there was evidence of this, however, it was not brought forward. Act II: Give Us 6 and 4 and We’ll Clean Up 39 To figure the knot the legislature has tied itself intoa knot so Gordian, the mood has changed within one short week from optimism about finishing up May 31 to dire hints and predictions of one or two special sessionsone needs go back and review, loop by loop, some maneuvers on re-districting and longer legislative terms. It having become axiomatic that the Senate “cannot” redistrict on the basis of its present membership of 31 senators because a majority of the senators would not vote to put themselves in political jeopardy, the solution was struck upon, and advanced in public by Sen. Jack Strong of Longview, of expanding the membership. This simple idea runs as follows: Under “one man, one vote,” eight cities get 14 senators and rural areas lose six. Therefore, increase the Senate to 39 members; 4 The Texas Observer then you can give the cities the extra senators and you can save the six rural senators whose districts otherwise would vanish. To facilitate this solution, and also to give the House members More leeway within their 150-district structure, the Senate has passed a “standards” act that would allow them 15% “variance” from arithmetically equal districts, despite a warning from Sen. Franklin Spears, San Antonio, that courts have already said variance of more than 5% is dubious. From the outset it was assumed that the senators and representatives would be good sports about each others’ interests would scratch each others’ backs. At one of his press conferences early in March, Speaker Ben Barnes said he would do all he could to keep the House from messing in “Senate redistricting,” and he would expect reciprocal consideration from Lt. Gov. Preston Smith, the Senate’s presiding offi cer. “We’ve got a sort of gentlemen’s agreement,” Rep. John Allen told the Dalposals involving the Senate and it accepts our proposals involving the House.” The senators, working along on this theory, on March 22 passed, 29-2, a proposal to increase their numbers to 39 and to extend their terms from four to six years. Disastrously in retrospect this terms of most of the present senators for two extra years without an intervening longer legislative terms in the irrelevant context of a re-districting proposal. Only Sens. Bill Patman, Ganado, who opposed six-year terms, and Jack Hightower, Vernon, who wanted to redistrict on a 31senator basis, voted no at that point, but some House members vowed opposition to the six-year terms and to automatic ex