ustxtxb_obs_1968_07_12_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

Page 4

by

porting Johnson’s bill to ban mail order sales of rifles and shotguns. Yarborough said on July 5 that his office had received “30,000 letters and telegrams about new laws to reduce gun violence.” The Anti-Crime Bill v Yarborough senate-side and Gonzalez in the house vehemently opposed the wire-tapping and electronic surveillance provisions of the anti-crime bill. Tower approved these provisions, regarding them as necessary. Gonzalez, leading a small house group that asked Johnson to veto the bill, said it “clinches what some might call a constitutional dictatorship.” Yarborough warned that it authorizes thousands of local officials to wire-tap and engage in electronic surveillance and that its enactment destroys personal pri vacy and means 1984 has arrived in 1968. Yarborough supports an end to the existing prohibition against young men having legal counsel in dealing with their draft boards. An order by the director of Selective Service specifies that no registrant may be represented before his local board by a lawyer. Yarborough argues that being drafted may be a sentence of death and at the least amounts to a loss of opportunity in civilian life, and that a man’s rightsincluding rights of counselshould be fully protected under these circumstances. Yarborough also supports the 18-yearold vote, including among his arguments ;’le point that the younger people are in le forefront of movements for social re.orm. He is now participating in senate hearings on a national job safety law and is cosponsoring a bill to create a national agriculture relations board that evidently would give farmers some power to set prices for their products by marketing agreements. V Cong. Earl Cabell, Dallas, says base ball has become “the monopolistic province of a few profit-hungry, selfish men.” Miffed that Dallas-Fort Worth has no major league team and that the National League recently added two cities, other. than his area, to their home-team cities, Cabell says that the National League’s decision helps no one but Roy Hofheinz of Houston, “who makes little effort to cover his fear that a club in Dallas would cut into his badly needed Astrodome revenue.” V Cong. Wright Patman argues, in his July 4 newsletter: “We are paying $8 billion this year in excessive interest charges on the national debt alone. Today Russia continues to charge purchasers of Russian goods only two and one-half percent interest. Our people pay twice or three times that much. The reason is the high-handed action of the Federal Reserve System. . . .” Humphrey-Connally? v Austin insiders have become con vinced that John Connally would like to be a candidate for vice-president with Hubert Humphrey. His chance that Hum phrey might pick him depends, grossly, on whether Humphrey decides he is weakest with the South or the liberals. But Connally is also a tricky prospect for Humphrey because Connally, like Humphrey himself, is so closely identified with Johnson. Connally has said a good deal on the subject, mostly to the effect that a man doesn’t run for vice-president. g o of Cong. Gonzalez is the chairman of the “Arriba Humphrey” drivea parallel, but with a difference, with the “Viva Kennedy” drive of 1960. Chris Aldrete, an Austin attorney who has been working lately with the Democratic National Committee, is to be the executive director. Humphrey will visit Corpus Christi Aug. 10, according to his tentative itinerary. In Houston the county Democratic chairlabor leaders and some minority leaders together into a 22-person committee for Humphrey. 1/ Hank Brown, president of the Texas AFL-CIO and a Humphrey man, says George Wallace could keep Humphrey from winning in Texas. Brown figures Wallace has about 15% of the Texas vote. .Wallace’s American party had the largest body-count, so to speak, at its precinct conventions in Harris . county. The Houston Post has tabulated-19,319, compared to the Republicans’ 4,585 and the Democrats’ 15,896. \(Cong. Joe Pool, Democrat, of Dallas, was quoted before Robert Kennedy was killed that given a choice between Kennedy and Rockefeller, Pool would probably go for Wallace; but lest Dallas Democrats wonder at this, Pool said that if Reagan was nominated, “it would be difficult for me to oppose A Fourth Party g o of With the national nominees now ap pearing to be, most likely, Humphrey and Nixon, with Wallace running as a third party candidate, US liberals who do not want Humphrey are considering a fourth party or a national write-in candidacy. Eight Texans from the McCarthy movement participated, June 29-30, in the Chicago Conference for an Open Convention called by Allard Lowenstein, who organized the Concerned Democrats movement which persuaded McCarthy to run against Johnson for the nomination. The Texans were Don Allford, state McCarthy chairman; Fagan Dickson, Austin attorney who announced for Congress on a “Bring Lyndon Home” platform; Alan Reed, who ran, unsuccessfully, for national Young Democrats’ president in 1967 as a peace candidate; and five students, Doug Irving, Richard Kendall, and Bob LaQuey of Rice, Chris Harte, son of the publisher Houston Harte, and Tom Curtis, a Texas student at Antioch. The Chicago conference, attended by 1,116 persons from 35 states, resolved that its participants “cannot be satisfied by the nomination, of Humphrey or any other candidate representing the existing policies” of the Johnson administration. A strong minority of the Chicago conference favored a fourth party movement, for which an office was established. Multifarious state requirements for such parties’ getting on the November ballot have been researched and found to be, taken all together, a very serious obstacle. The Texas deadline for the filing of such a fourth party has passd. McCarthy, should he not get the Democratic nomination, appears interested in leading a fourth party movement. He has said he could not support Humphrey as the Demo nominee. The main obstacle to getting on the ballot in enough states to have a mathematical chance of election is time; Allford says that the possibility still exists in 39 states having 401 electoral votes. It would be “a tremendous task,” Allford believes, to get McCarthy into the race with a fourth party. Judging from various reports, the Kennedy and McCarthy partisans are in a mean frame of mind and are not inclined to be pacified with the war continuing as it is. I/ Some of those supporting McCarthy in Texas are hopeful that that campaign may yield the nucleus of a new, more vigorous liberal movement in the state. Texas Activity V Activity in Texas among liberals con tinues in behalf of the candidacy of Senator McCarthy. Some 75 persons attended a meeting in Austin last weekend and made plans to send a competing delegation to the national Democratic convention in Chicago. The thrust of the McCarthyites’ challenge will be to attack the unit rule which bound the official Texas delegation to Governor Connally, who will be the broker of the state’s 104 convention votes. San Antonio attorney Maury Maverick, Jr., is being asked to present the dissident Texans’ case at Chicago before the rules committee. Texas is evidently much on the minds of national McCarthy campaign leaders. The reasoning runs thus: If it can be demonstrated in widely-televised committee hearings those of the convention’s credentials or rules committees, for examplethat this state’s Democratic party is “boss-run,” that would reflect badly on President Johnson and, thus, on Hubert Humphrey. An article in the New Republic holds that the Texas delegation will be the big target of McCarthyites before the rules committee, which will determine whether the unit rule will be honored at Chicago \(Republicans will mull banning the unit rule in their conof the boss issue, showing him [Johnson] in the dominating position of making the decisions,” McCarthy’s convention manager, Steve Mitchell, says. “We’re going to declare war on Texas,” Mitchell’s aide, Marty Gleason, said recently, according to Allford. A law suit to challenge the legality of the unit rule in Texas may be July 12, 1968 11