ustxtxb_obs_1966_10_14_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

Republicans for the state legislature, including ex-Representative Ike Harris against Sen. George Parkhouse. 7 In Houston the president of the labor council, Don McCullar, has urged union people to ignore overtures from Carr. 8 C ARR MINIMIZES the extent of the liberal defections, saying that while Democrats are always split up, they’re more united this year than he’s ever seen them. In private discussions he has reportedly been complaining that he is getting blamed for everything; that he is being picked on unfairly. On his behalf a committee of loyalists has been formed, with liberal ex-Representative Tony Korioth of Sherman, now of Houston, as the chairman \(this committe’s ad appears in gues in an article in this issue of the Observer that liberals staying home or voting for Tower hurt the liberal bloc in the legislature and would leave the 16 constitutional amendments to be voted on Nov. 8 without the benefit of liberals’ opinions. In a column, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Sam Kinch argues that by not voting, liberals will cut down their precinct vote totals in this year’s governor’s race, which totals determine how many delegates precincts have at the presidential year party conventions in 1968. 9 Perhaps Carr will depend, for a large turnout in Negro precincts, on some kind of invocation of President Johnson’s support of him. He reportedly has six men working in East Texas, stressing that he has appointed Negroes to his staff as attorney general. His people believe they have made some headway among urban Negro organizations. Cong. Henry Gonzalez, San Antonio, is Carr’s big cannon among the MexicanAmericans. Gonzalez, who has a mass following throughout San Antonio and South Texas, has not minced words. Arriving at a Corpus Christi rally for Carr, Gonzalez criticized Tower for going to South Vietnam and “interfering” with military operations there; said, of being a liberal and being, for Tower, “you can’t have both”; and said of Tower, “And we all know he’s a no-count skunk.” 1 In San Antonio ‘Gonzalez said Democrats who want to bolt the party “have the God-given right to be undiluted fools.” It was then that Roy Evans of labor wrote Gonzalez saying both Senate candidates stink and adding, “How you could be proud of the candidates and officials running the Texas Democratic Party is beyond my understanding. They are completely opposed to everything you stand for.” Gonzalez retorted that labor, publicly against both candidates, is actually pro-Tower, since a small vote helps Tower. Tower, the congressman said, “is a menace that needs to be removed from public office.” His voting record is “all against” labor’s stands; he has seniority as the ranking minority member of the Senate housing subcommittee, where he 6 The Texas Observer “has managed to gut and cripple several pieces of legislation of importance to our urban areas,” and he is the second-ranking minority member of the banking and currency committee and the joint committee on defense production. Futhermore, Gonzalez told Evans, Texas Republicanism is “the Goldwater-Birch-AlgerForeman-Tower extremist branch.”‘l Another Carr theme, that he is a Democrat and that Democrats stick together, found controverted focus in San Antonio, too, when Bexar County Democratic chairman John Daniels said at a rally that 99,544 persons in the county took the pledge this year in the Democratic primary to wit, that “I am a Democrat and I pledge myself to support the nominees of this primary” -and that if they vote in November, they “must support those nominees.” The Express reported that Daniels said they are not free “to be disloyal” to the party and that once a person has voted in the Democratic primary, he “should have the decency and moral integrity to honor the pledge.” The first rejoinder came from the county’s GOP chairman, Seagal Wheatley, who threatened federal court action unless Daniel desisted from this argument. ” .. . this so-called ‘pledge’ is unenforceable and was passed by a Democrat-controlled legislature as a means of intimidating and misleading the voters in November,” Wheatley said. The attorney general’s office has consistently held it unenforceable and invalid and in two cases the State Supreme Court has said it has no binding effect, Whealey added. The second rejoinder came from Albert Pena, the PASO leader and Bexar County commissioner who is not on the Carr program. Pena’s stance is that as a party official he will vote for the party’s nominees, but that Seagal is right; voters in the Democratic primary are not committed to vote for Democratic nominees in November. A two-party state is “the onlyway the break the dictatorial one-party state monopoly,” Pena said. While he, as a party official, will vote the ticket, he went on, “This is not to say that individuals are so committed, regardless in what primary they voted. They vote, and they should, as their conscience dictates in the general election.” Many people with strong convictions on civil rights will not vote for either man, Pena added. 12 A third rejoinder came, sotto voce, from Bexar County Judge Charles Grace, who let it be known to an Express political writer that he can’t forget that his repeated charges that Republicans were entering the Democratic primary last spring to vote for his opponent, Blair Reeves, and that Reeves reported prominent Republican contributors. Grace also recalled what he said was Daniel’s advice to a retired colonel at a party before the primary to the effect that the colonel “could vote in the Demo primary despite the colonel’s protestation he was a Republican.” 12 IF ONE DOES NOT consider Carr’s own campaign organization, by far his most significant support is coming from the political organization of Gov. John Connally. Will Davis, Connally’s state party chairman, Julian Read, Connally’s public relations specialist, and Howard Rose, Midland lawyer and formerly Connally’s executive assistant, have formally joined Carr’s staff. Before the state Democratic convention Connally told his state leaders assembled, in a closed meeting, to go to work for Carr. At a press conference on Sept. 26 Connally, trying to make the best, for Carr, of Yarborough’s attitude, said he was glad to hear the senator would do as much for Carr as Carr had for him, since Carr had stumped for the entire Democratic ticket in 1964. Nor should liberals blame Carr because the Harris County liberals did not get what they wanted at the state Democratic convention, Connally said; first, the liberals got “all they were entitled to,” \(there being, he said, a hiatus in the law, or else the law would have given them just half the eight seats from Harris County on the State Democratic Executive Committee, instead of all of do with the decision that they could have just four of the seats and was an innocent bystander at the convention. “I suppose my prestige is at stake to some extent in the Carr-Tower race, and the same thing applies to a certain extent to the President,” Connally also said.’ 3 Except for formal support of Carr and backstage reports of presidential pressure, President Johnson’s role so far has been quiet. The Observer is advised that Vice President Hubert Humphrey put the heat on Texas steelworkers at a recent convention in Atlantic City to “back Carr and help the President.” On the other hand, Connally has his own control of Texas politics at stake. “What Connally apparently fears,” wrote the Dallas News’ Richard Morehead in his “Personal Report,” “is that re-election of Tower would strengthen Yarborough’s hand in Texas politics, as well as in Washington . . . More important to Connally is the prospect that liberals may take over the Deinocratic Party in Texas by 1968 or later, as they have nationally, if Carr loses.” 14 Tower was elected to the Senate in a special election in May, 1961, with 50.6% of the vote. Carrying Harris and Dallas counties, he defeated conservative Democrat William A. Blakley by 10,340 votes out of the nearly 900,000 who voted. With the margin that close, in the aftermath liberals who stayed home or voted for Tower were commonly thought to have made a decisive difference. SOURCES Times Herald, 10-6-66. pus Christi Caller, 9-24-66. Antonio Express, 9-26, 9-29, 10-1, and 10-3, 1966. Houston Post, Dallas News, Fort Worth Star66. R.D.