ustxtxb_obs_1965_11_12_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

J. t i Political Intellige Quilliam & Hollowell d0 A minor draft has started for Rep. Reed Quilliam, Lubbock, for governor. Quilliam, a moderate Democrat, has high standing among his legislative colleagues. He opposed the governor’s four-year term proposal; he has risen on occasion in defense of civil liberties; and he is generally conservative on economic issues. He is said to be interested in the race, depending on whether it can be financed. Rep. Bill Hollowell, Grand Saline, whose prospective candidacy against Connally caused many a stir during the 1965 legislative session, is also a possible candidate. V Sen. Galloway Calhoun, Tyler, has an nounced for attorney general. He would have faced a very hard race had he chose to try to defeat Sen. Jack Strong, Longview, for the one Senate seat the two senators’ districts must share hereafter. Secretary of State Crawford Martin, a Connally man, and Sen. Franklin Spears, San Antonio, a liberal, have also announced for attorney general, making a runoff likely. Should Quilliam and Hollowell announce against Connally, a runoff also might be expected for the gubernatorial nomination. Said one top liberal-labor strategist, “They’re going to force Spears into a runoff, so we’ll force Connally into a runoff, too,” thus protecting Spears from a fall-off in liberal votes in such a runoff. Obviously the defeat of Connally’s proposal for the four-year term encourages such iffy candidacies as those of Quilliam and Hollowell. V William Gardner, Houston Post politi cal editor, wrote that President Johnson has not yet given any indication of support for Cong. Jim Wright for the U.S. Senate, that Connally would rather see Atty. Gen. Waggoner Carr than Wright in the Senate, and that state labor will put all their chips on Wright if he runs, although they are also friendly to Spears. Gardner guessed Wright won’t run. V However, Wright has gone a long way down the road of running. Speculation that he won’t run generates activity among those who want him to. Johnson could stop him from it, but considering Johnson’s warm wire to the Wright dinner Oct. 23, he isn’t likely to. V Sen. John Tower, facing his year of truth, called the last session a “doanything” Congress that produced large quantities of legislation of dubious quality, advocated that a new manned bomber be built, urged Secretary of Defense McNamara to authorize a “Christmas Airlift” of packages to servicemen in Vietnam, introduced a bill to cut oil imports 17%. Tyler Junior College Young Republicans gave a dance to raise campaign money for him. V Sen. Ralph Yarborough endorsed the just announced Federal Communications Cmsn. investigation of AT&T rates and profits. He praised the Congress as either the most productive, or equal to the most productive, in U.S. history. The U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity has approved a new neighborhood youth corps training program put forward by the Texas Farmers’ Union, putting the question to Gov. Connally whether he will veto it again and if so, then to Sergent Shriver a new question, posed because of legislation instigated by Yarborough, whether Shriver will override Connally’s veto. V AP quoted Connally from McAllen say ing members of the Birch Society have “drifted somewhat into the background, which I think is fine. I wish they would stay there. . . . Actually and seriously, it’s an organization, I suppose, where people band together to try to express their feelings. I think it’s a pretty poor way to do it, however.” V Four hundred-eighty five paid $5 a plate to hear Sen. Fred Harris, D.Okla., address Democratic women in San Antonio. He gave a Great Society speech. Cong. Earle Cabell was given a birthday dinner by 3,000 Dallas Democrats. Lawrence F. O’Brien, to be the new postmaster general, was the main speaker. Sen. Yarborough attended both these affairs. Atty. Gen. Carr joined in the Cabell dinner. Birchers Quadruple? The Dallas Times-Herald’s Jim Lehrer, in a full-page layout on the Dallas Birchers, said there’ are roughly 55 Birch chapters and from 1,200 to 1,500 members in Dallas, about four times more than in 1961. Rex T. Westerfield, 37, formerly owner of a printing firm and an insurance agency, has become the Birchers’ head PR man for the Southwest. V The Texas State Teachers’ Assn., in convention in Corpus Christi, with a kind of “the hell with it” air announced pay hike of $534 to make the Texas averprovision tying the Texas average to the national average without additional legislation.. V The Texas State AFL-CIO, having lost its legislative director, Sherman Miles, who becomes COPE director for five states, and its PR director, Lyman Jones, who’s gone to California, does not plan to replace either of them until next fall, thus economizing. “In other words,” says Roy Evans, the secretary-treasurer, “this means Hank and Roy have got to go to work. No more of these 40-hour weeks, but 80-hour weeks.” . . . Jack Martin of San Antohio is, opening a state ironworkers’ office upstairs from the state labor office. V Insurance Cmsr. J. N. Nutt resigned to give his personal interests more time. . . . Dr. C. J. Ruilmann quit as acting commissioner of mental health and mental retardation ; the permanent job has been taken by Dr. S. H. Frazier of Houston. V Rep. Charles Whitfield, Houston, has announced for the Senate, committing himself to a collision course with Barbara Jordan, Negro candidate for the same Senate seat who will be supported by the organized liberals and labor in Houston. Rep. Chet Brooks, Houston, has announced for another Senate seat. V Barefoot Sanders, assistant deputy at torney general, who once ran hard for Congress from Dallas County and lost, has been looking over his prospects as a candi-____ date for Congress from the county’s new western district. V George Bush, the Houston Republican, has been named head of a subcommittee of the GOP’s task force on job opportunities. Bush’s panel is to work on what business and labor can do together to cure hardcore unemployment. Bush is a possible congressional candidate from west Houston. V John McClelland, Houston insur ance man, announced for the state House on a platform of ending the state regulation of auto insurance rates. V Sen. Walter Richter, Gonzales, will not run again, and is becoming the governor’s director of the state war on poverty, replacing Terrell Blodgett. . . . Rep. Joe Bernal has announced for a Senate seat in San Antonio. David Carter, son-in-law of H. B. Zachry, the construction magnate, is said to be running for the Senate from San Antonio, too. V In San Antonio, Berry Goldwater went all-out for Sen. Tower last week. The press did not cover the $250 dinner, since to go they’d have been required to buy tickets. . . . The NAACP laid plans for a voter registration drive and 250,000 to 300,000 Negroes voting next year in _Texas. . . The Texas Farmers’ Union heard president Jay Naman report its membership up 25% and was addressed by Sen. Yarborough … The Texas Manufacturers’ Assn. heard labor’s president, Hank Brown, deliver a hard-line liberal speech at the T.M.A. convention. . . . Brown says Jerry Holleman, former Texas AFL-CIO president, has been expelled from his electricians’ local and is “as tough as anyone labor is now butting heads with in Texas.” Holleman is now a management consultant on labor. V Cong.-at-large Joe Pool says the KKK is “probably worse than communism” and “akin to Nazism and pro-Hitlerism” and calls for HUAC investigations of the “Vietniks” or “Peaceniks.” . . . Four Tex ans voted against the $4.7 billion supple mental appropriation bill for antipoverty, urban renewal, and other programs: Burle son, Dowdy, Fisher, Rogers. . . . Cong. Gonzalez, San Antonio, is angry at the failure of San Antonio anti-poverty of ficials to respond to his request for in formation on special projects for migra November 12, 1965 15