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ings briefly. Yarborough, in Texas speeches, has linked Carr, Connally, and Tower; Jon Ford in the Express quotes Carr as saying he hopes to prevent any further “deterioration of relations” so that, if elected, he can still “work with Sen. Yarborough” while occasionally “differing in good faith.” V For Tower, the Republican state fi nance chairman, John M. Bennett, Jr., branded Carr’s statements on the Tower money situation as “ridiculous.” Specifically, Bennett denied the State Republican Executive Committee “has turned over to the senator more than $600,000.” \(Ford’s original report naming this sum said only that the GOP had budgeted that “huge campaign war chest was already so formidable early this year that it discouraged major opposition in the Democratic primary.” V Tower told Republicans meeting in Austin that his race must “convey the idea that I am a member of the party of all the people.” \(At this meeting a former Duval County JP said he and more than 100 of his friends there are leaving the Democrats to become Republicans, being Tower told the Texas Young Republicans that he will oppose federal standards for unemployment compensation and a raise in the federal minimum wage standards this year. In a press release, Tower condemned inflation, said it is caused by a federally-planned economy, and advocated that the government “live within its income.” V An aide to Carr reports that those radio tapes Carr made urging voter registration were not paid for by the state, as the Observer said, but by Carr’s campaign fund, through an advertising agency. The Observer deplores this error. Other Democratic Races fro The machinists’ international, through a spokesman, announced endorsements for Texas Democratic congressional candidates Bill Kilgarlin and Robert S. Eckhardt, Houston, and Abraham Kazen, Laredo. V In the Democratic fight for the right to oppose George Bush of the GOP for Congress from the left side of Harris County, Frank Briscoe, the ex-prosecutor, is opposing repeal of 14-B and several federal welfare programs; John Wildenthal, the moderate or liberal in the race, is also against 14-B’s repeal. V In a Dallas News feature on the South Texas congresional race, Kazen said he opposes “undue interference” by the U.S. but believes it should furnish services that local and state governments can’t. Kazen has the labor endorsement. Roy Sherwood, San Antonio, originally thought liberal in some quarters, said he leans con servative, was for LBJ “but I don’t like his going liberal.” Roy Martin of Cotulla, the third candidate in the primary, said he likes the federal education programs and Johnson’s Great Society programs in 12 The Texas Observer The State Board of Insurance has no power, said a court of civil apeals, to do what it did, namely, require the buyers of Texas insurance to pay at least 6% interest when they buy policies on installment payment plans. In Dallas, the chairman of that board, William Hunter McLean, said that the board is “the voice of the people in opposition to and in negotiating with the voices of industry.” principle, but not spending beyond the available means. V The contest between Sen. Martin Dies, Jr., Lufkin, and Cong. John Dowdy, Athens between a moderate and a very conservative conservative, respectively is no longer polite. Dowdy has gone for Dies’ jugular and Dies is making with the counter-attack. Dowdy charges that Dies is supported by “out-of-state money out out-of-state labor bosses,” which Dies denies. Dies accuses Dowdy of sending out political mailings uith U.S. employees and postage. Dowdy charges Dies helped write the new criminal code, which was “designed to protect the criminal.” Dies says that’s “irresponsible.” In fact, says Dies, it’s mudslinging, in an ad headlined: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy V Rep. Charles Whitfield accuses his op ponent in the ghetto-including senatorial district on the west side of Harris County, Negro Barbara Jordan, of a conflict of interest. He says she’s working while running and getting $10,000 a year for administering war on poverty programs. She says she is employed by the Crescent Foundation, a private non-profit corporation under contract with the Department of Labor, and that there’s no conflict. She said, “This was checked here and in Washington, and I was assured there was no conflict or anything wrong as long as I put in a full day’s work as I have been doing.” V San Antonio pundits agree that the new registration there should help Rep. Johnny Alaniz in his hard fight for county commissioner with incumbent-conservative 011ie Wurzbach. \(Cty. Judge Charles Grace, while challenged, is not be confident he’ll have a car in every one of the heavily-registered blocks on election day. The Bexar County Democratic Coalition’s drive to sign up free voters was extremely successful. V The State Bar poll between Judge John Onion and incumbent Judge W. T. McDonald of the Court of Criminal Appeals favored Onion, 4,468 to 2,920. Onion was gratified; McDonald said only 47% of the lawyers voted and the poll is meaningless. The Party Control Fight The fact is emerging now that Con nally and Yarborough forces will be locked in what may be a serious struggle for party control in the early summer. The liberals continue to control the Dallas party machinery. The party chairman fight there is acrimonious; the Connally man, Joe Rich, blames his opponent, Mike McKool, for leading a Yarborough appreciation dinner as well as a walk-out of the loyalists at a county convention, and McKool blasts Rich for refusing to answer whether he’s backed Republican Bruce Alger and other GOP nominees “in violation of his written sworn oath.” As reported in Dallas, Connally slipped into town and told 150 businessmen at a closed meeting it’s do-or-die for his candidates, and they ponied up more than $100,000. The S.D.E.C. has specified rules that newly-drawn precinct boundaries must be taken into account in figuring precinct delegate strength at conventions. This opens up a new basis for disagreement, and disagreement leads to rump conventions; rump conventions to decisions about which large delegations should be seated; and such decisions to control of state conventions in acordance with the wishes of those who appoint the convention’s credentials committee. V Dallas Times Herald political writer novelist Jim Lehrer shocked Dallas politicos with a report that McKool, the loyalist, wrote Connally a letter in which McKool “assured the governor that as county chairman he would support the governor’s position if any conflict ever developed between Gov. Connally and Sen. Ralph Yarborough,” and that Connally then had a long meeting with McKool and is now “uncommitted” as between McKool and Rich. In Washington V/ Sen. John J. Williams, R.-Del., has call ed for the firing of Houston Federal Housing Administration regional director Neal Pickett. Williams alleges Pickett deliberately concealed the fact that the Clarewood House project in Sharpstown, built with a $4.7 million, government-guaranteed 40-year mortgage, did not have the backing of the First Methodist Church. Church backing makes such projects available for higher mortgages and higher guarantees of the mortgages. Pickett is Sen. Yarborough’s brother-in-law. V Sen Yarborough is vowing that every penny of the funds for the direct federal college student loan program be restored. “This attempt to end the National Defense Education Act loan program is a dagger in the back of higher education in this country,” Yarborough said of the Johnson Administration’s proposed cutback . . . In a speech in San Antonio, Yarborough said medicare “is the beginning, but not the end, of proper medical services for the American people.” . . . Yarborough has proposed a bill for the VA to provide it with medical research information from medical institutions . .. Yarborough officiated in the presentation of a gold medal to the late Sam Rayburn’s family in Bonham, calling Rayburn the greatest legislator in U.S. history and “the tallest Texan of them all.” V Emanating from off the record remarks Connally made at a press con