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national GOP convention, this source is convinced. V Among riven Houston Republicans, the appearance of harmony is only surface deep. Rightist elements are taking more and more control of the county executive committee, and if the trend continues they will completely dominate it next spring. A large segment of the committee will support George Wallace for president, if he is a candidate, unless someone such as Ronald Reagan is nominated. soo A Republican who would like to see someone as “moderate” as Nixon nominated says that without a large turnout in next spring’s Texas GOP primary, “we’ll be swamped by nuts.” V California’s governor is running full tilt for the presidency, but covertly so far. His national unannounced manager is one Tom Reed of California, whose brother, Larry Reed, has been a leading figure in planning for Reagan’s banquet in Houston, Oct. 26. Although the target attendance for that banquet \(held after we went to press for thousand tickets had been sold two weeks beforehand. The official party organization has been kept in the background, preparatory to a repetition of appeals to conservative Democrats to back the Republicans again in 1964. V What’s Reagan’s strategy and argu ment? If Nixon wins the primaries, Reagan is for Nixon; if not, the California governor moves out in the open, himself. The argument his people advance to quiet natural-enough GOP fears of another Goldwater debacle is that Johnson’s doing so poorly, any Republican can beat him; Goldwater was just four years ahead of his time; the only question for Republicans to decide is what kind of a party they want. This sounds like it might have been thought up by Johnson people, who of course desperately hope Reagan is the 1968 opposition. But a high-up Texas Republican source says, “People are buying it.” The argument that Johnson is going to lose no matter who the GOP puts up is of course strengthened by the Vietnam situation, but moderate Republicans in finding themselves hard-pressed by the riots. “Within the Republican Party,” says the source quoted above, “you can imagine what kind of response anyone who wants to appeal to the Negro voters is getting.” Cong. George Bush of Houston, the most moderate Republican holding high office in the state, was announced among those who would meet Reagan’s private jet from California and escort him downtown. Others announced as included in the airport greeting party were Tower, Sen. Henry Grover, O’Donnell of Dallas, and the mayor of Houston, Louie Welch. John R. Butler, oilman, is chairman of the dinner. It’s $100 a place setting. goo Sam Low, a long-time Lyndon Johnson loyalist, who is now Collector of Customs in Houston, is formulating an idea he has for government subsidy of the wages of unskilled workers to enable industry to hire them at the minimum wage without suffering competitive disadvantages. He would have such wagesubsidized industries produce only for export, thus creating a two-wage system that can be thought of as an analogy to Charles Brannan’s two-price system for farm commodities. Low is writing out the proposal now. He regards it as a workable program for ghetto unemployables. V Fagan Dickson, a leading loyalist Democrat and Austin attorney who has broken with Johnson on Vietnam by publishing two pamphlets against the it. Convinced, after his study of it, that it is an indefensible venture, he has ordered 100 copies of a book against the war and had each Texas congressman sent one of them. He is planning to run newspaper ads suggesting good books and literature on the war for people to read, and he is corresponding with others, in Texas and elsewhere, including some Texas Democrats who are disaffected from the war but have not made their positions public: V Dr. Byron Abernethy, the reinstated professor of government at Texas Tech, the success of whose ten-year perseverance on behalf of academic freedom has probably had a substantial impact on the policies of Texas colleges and universities, is not making any plans to run for governor next year. \(The Observer had heard a report from a potent TexV Tom Cahill, the editor of La Inferno in San Antonio, a radical left weekly, has been sent to the San Antonio State Hospital for a mental examination. The Rev. Sherrill Smith, the Catholic priest who has been active in many causes with Cahill, visited the judge who ordered Cahill to the hospital. Smith sought to discuss the matter with Dist. Judge Archie Brown. The judge said Cahill had been ordered to the hospital in a legal manner and for necessary reasons. V A big-city political test of the city sales tax is in the offing in Houston. Mayor Louie Welch announced for reelection saying that tax is the best solution to cities’ financial problems. Thereupon former Mayor Lewis Cutrer announced for the same job, saying he is “unalterably” opposed to the city sales tax. Meanwhile in Dallas meetings began to be held to get Dallas and surrounding communities into the sales tax parade. V Houston will have an important school board election Nov. 18, \(see tive. Three seats are up, two conservative. president of the board, is opposed by a land developer, Karl Amelang; Mrs. H. W. Cullen, another conservative incumbent, has four opponents, including George Oser, who has liberal backing. Oser is a Ph.D. in physics and chemistry and works at Shell. The liberal incumbent, Mrs. Charles White, who will also be voted on, has been the target of tactics that have caused a crackling controversy. Teachers charge they have been campaigned with, against Mrs. White, in the schools, and solicited for funds. Houston D. A. Carol S. Vance says that if a promise or threat is involved in such representations to teachers, a crime under state law is committed, and recourse can be had by a visit to a grand jury. The Houston Post reports “a fear campaign against Mrs. White in which teachers are being told that if she wins, many white teachers will lose their jobs to Negroes, teachers’ sick pay will be taken from them and spent on bussing Negro .children to white schools, and Houston’s white school superintendent will be replaced by a Negro. The Post reports that McCullough, Mrs. White’s opponent, Dr. school administrators” have attended meetings at which the charges of what will happen if Mrs. White is re-elected have been “aired.” Mrs. White deals with the charges as contemptible. There are two teachers’ organizations here, the conservative, smaller Congress of Teachers and the larger group, the Houston Teachers’ Assn.; the charges, according to the Observer’s reports, have been getting “some currency in both groups. The literature of the “Committee for Sound American Education,” supporting the three conservatives, refers to Mrs. White as “The Negro liberal woman.” V Senator Yarborough was flying along in a plane, working on a speech he was to deliver at Baytown’s Lee College advocating tuition-free college education for every qualified American. \(He has proposed an amendment to effect this, he said in the speech. “I don’t know how long it will take,” he said, “but I’m young and out of the gray the plane was struck by a lightning bolt. Later, safely aground, the Senator said he didn’t see it, but it gave them quite a jolt. October 27, 1967 MEETINGS THE THURSDAY CLUB of Dallas meets each the Downtown YMCA, 605 No. Ervay St., Dallas. Good discussion. You’re welcome. Informal, no dues. The TRAVIS COUNTY LIBERAL DEMOCRATS meet at the Spanish Village, 802 Red River, at 8 p.m. on the first Thursday. You’re invited. CENTRAL TEXAS ACLU luncheon meeting. 2nd Friday of every month. El Chico, Hancock Cen ter, Austin. From noon. Informal. All welcome. ITEMS for this feature cost, for the first entry, 7c a word, and for each subsequent entry, 5c a word. We must receive them one week before the date of the issue in which they are to be published.