ustxtxb_obs_1968_07_12_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

filed in El Paso by attorney Woodrow Bean rather than in San Antonio by Maverick, it now develops. A similar suit has recently been filed in Missouri which, if taken to the US Supreme Court, could ban the unit rule’s use by a political party, but not this year. The Republicans v The Houston Republicans had a chairman they thought gave them the moderate image in Dudley Sharp, Eisenhower’s Secretary of the Air Force. When, however, their executive committee rebuffed Sharp again and again on some new authority he wanted, he resigned on the spot. The committee is almost evenly divided between Nixon and Reagan supporters. The first reaction to Sharp’s walk-out was that the committee had fallen into the hands of the right-wingers, meaning the Reagan people, but this construction was a little confusing. Sharp and national committeeman Albert Fay of Houston, no moderate, backed Mrs. W. N. Palm to succeed Sharp, and Mrs. Palm, supported by the right-wingers, beat the moderate conservatives’ William Cassin, 116-45. V Cong. Bob Price, Pampa, has an nounced for Reagan. The California governor will speak in Amarillo July 19 at a fund-raising dinner for the GOP in Price’s district. Top Texas party functionaries and with Sen. Tower, are expected to attend. J. R. Butler, a Houston oilman, is Reagan’s Texas chairman. V John G. Hurd, Laredo businessman, is head of the Nixon for President committee in Texas. V Columnists Evans and Novak said evangelist Billy Graham suggested Cong. George Bush, Houston, to Nixon for vice-president, and Bush modestly admitted there was “a little truth” in the report of an effort by some of his House colleagues on his behalf. Graham, how ever, said he’d never met Bush and had not proposed him to Nixon. This may be just as well for Bush, since Graham is also now predicting the end of the world. Barnes v. Mutscher v Speaker Ben Barnes, the next lieu tenant governor, and Speaker-elect Gus Mutscher are expected to have some differences during the next session. The split became apparent when Barnes said he plans to name house committees for the next session. Although Mutscher was one of Barnes’ key lieutenants in the house, he appears to have plans of his own. Barnes has said that he hopes both houses will work under the same rules, but Mutscher is expected to throw out the reforms Barnes instituted and return to the rules the house operated under when Byron Tunnell was speaker. V Sen. Ralph Hall of Rockwall has an nounced plans to run for lieutenantgovernor “the day Ben Barnes announces for something else.” 12 The Texas Observer ‘V The senate is finally going to have an amplification system rigged to each member’s desk. Traditionalists who have been fighting the installation of a public address system for years were beaten 18 to 10 on a resolution directing the contingent expense committee to install the system before the legislature convenes next January. V The legislature passed a resolution asking congress not to approve the strict gun registration laws that President Johnson is urging. Sen. Wayne Connally, the governor’s brother, sponsored the resolution. Rep. Curtis Graves of Houston spoke against Connally’s proposal. “Whenever a politician is shot down in the street, it hurts you and it hurts me. I don’t think we should condenin the president’s feeling on gun control,” Graves said. The Houston legislator introduced a bill requiring Texas handgun owners to register and pay a $5 permit per gun. It never came up for consideration. V Rep. Frank Lombardino of San An tonio succeeded in getting the legislature to pass a bill making it a crime to carry a deadly weapon into a tavern or private club. Other than the tax and appropriations packages, it was the only major bill passed during the special session. V The house ordered a committee study of financial and business relationships between liquor license holders and their suppliers of services. The committee probably will concentrate on ownership of taverns by vending machine operators. The Dallas Times-Herald revealed recently that vending machine firms own or control 400 of the 500 taverns and clubs in Fort Worth and an equally impressive number in Dallas. V The senate passed, 18-12, a resolu tion by Joe Bernal of San Antonio calling for a statistical survey of state government employment practices on an ethnic basis. He said the study is needed to implement a law passed last year prohibiting racial discrimination in hiring by state agencies. Higher Tuition v Out-of-state college students escaped a tuition increase this session, mainly because the senate ran out of time before it got around to voting on the bill passed by the house. There probably will be a strong push next year to raise tuition for both resident and non-resident students. V The senate nominations committee failed to bring two of Gov. John Connally’s appointments before the senate for confirmation. They were Judge J. C. Looney of Edinburg, recommended by Connally for a spot on the public safety commission, and the Rev. S. W. Wright of Dallas, recommended for the Trinity River authority board. According to the tradition of senatorial courtesy, a senator can veto the appointment of one of his constituents. Newspaper reports gave two reasons why Sen. Jim Bates of Edinburg might have op Hidalgo politician supported Eugene Locke for governor after allegedly prommight have been attempting to put pressure on Connally because the governor, with the approval of the Public Safety Commission, provided less funds for Hurricane Beulah clean-up work than Bates had thought necessary. Speculation was that Sen. Oscar Mauzy vetoed the Rev. Wright because the two have long-standing political differences. Wright, a Negro, is president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance in Dallas. V Although the session was anything but a victory for Governor Connally, the only defeat that seemed to bother him was that of the mini-bottle bill. Connally was in office at the Capitol only about six days during the session, but he hustled votes for his favorite bill by telephone. V The state insurance board’s staff has recommended another auto insurance rate increase, averaging 2.8% statewide. The cited justification: higher auto repair costs. V The quasi-official constitutional revi sion commission has been voting fervently on various questions-8 to 7 in favor of four-year governors’ terms, for instance; 10 to 5 in favor of electing governors in non-presidential-election years; an inconclusive tangle on whether judges should be elected. All this is of course preliminary to the preliminaries of real constitutional revision. Integration Again V Integrationsupposedly a dead issue isn’t. The Justice Department has been notifying Texas school districts to get with it and really integrate, and responses are being drawn up in Marshall, Tyler, and Houston, for instance. The conservative Houston school board promises to place at least two teachers of the non-dominant race in all schools of one or the other racial predominance. In Dallas, a Negro diplomat from a small African nation was refused a beer in a tavern during the National Educational Assn. convention, and the civic mortificationand-apology ritual was played out in full. Dr. George I. Sanchez, Mexican-American leader in Texas, has protested to Sen. Yarborough “the practice of segregating children of migratory workers \(all MexiMcAllen and other border communities.” V Peggy Simpson, AP reporter in Wash ington assigned to the Texans, came up with the interesting fact that only eleven of the 25 Texans in the delegation live in the District of Columbia, and of these eleven, only one, Bob Eckhardt, sends his children to the public schools V The US Supreme Court’s holding that an 1866 law prohibits racial discrimination in all sales and rentals of propertp, including those excluded under the 1968 US civil rights act, obviously bears pending fair housing ordinances in Austin