ustxtxb_obs_1968_07_26_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

most in Texas are, first, John. Tower and, second, Ronald Reagan. He assumes that Nixon will be leading the Republican ticket. Eggers said he doesn’t seriously consider Tower a candidate for vice president. “John wouldn’t settle for second,” he said. got Nelson Rockefeller has yet to get the support of any Texas delegates to the national Republican convention. A few prominent Dallas businessmen endorsed him in an advertisement run in some East Coast newspapers. Among the signers were Trammell Crow, Barron Ulmer Kidd, Stanley Marcus, Eugene Nearburg and Ralph B. Rogers. The Eggers Race w Wallace is predicted to get between 10 and 15% of the vote nationally, and about that in Texas, again depending on his competition. Democrats and Republicans in Texas are worried that that bloc of conservative votes will be lost to them in statewide races this fall since Wallace’s American party will have no statewide candidates, just Wallace for president. The fear is that many conservatives will vote for Wallace and ignore the Texas races. This would be critical were there liberal challengers in Texas races, not the case in 1968. Nonetheless, Texas conservatives, be they Republicans or Democrats, do want their respective statewide candidates to prevail. g/ If, as Reagan believes, the Republi cans will lose more votes to Wallace than will the Democrats, the faint hopes the Texas GOP harbors of capturing the governorship or some of the other statewide jobs are fainter still. Texas Republicans failed to come up with a name candidate this year and are generally believed thereby to have passed up a good chance to improve their standing. Paul Eggers, the man finally chosen to head the statewide GOP ticket, is not well known in Texas. Moreover, he and his campaign advisers felt it best to lay low until the Demo gubernatorial primary, which drew all the public attention, was settled. For one thing it would have been difficult to compete for attention with the Democrats’ more interesting ten-man race; secondly, there would be no point in making public statements of much substance until the Democratic winner was known, lest campaign ammunition be given the Democratic foe in the fall. .g/ Eggers is attempting to overcome the severe handicap of being a political unknown by an intensive tour of Texas cities and villages, much in the manner of his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Smith. Smith travelled some 150,000 miles during his primary campaign. De spite the sneers about this old-fashioned type of campaigning Smith obviously im pressed a good number of voters, who probably appreciated seeing a candidate in person rather than as a shadow on the TV tube. Eggers, then, is doing the same, pressing the flesh and trying to get his name known around the state. One week he campaigns on flats of the Panhandle, the next he’s in the piney woods of East Texas, the next in the Valley. He’s hitting the smaller towns now, figuring he won’t be able to visit them very much later in the year when the campaign will pick up in tempo and he’ll have to concentrate on the larger cities, where the most votes are. g/ Eggers is subtly wooing liberal sup port, knowing most liberals won’t vote for the conservative Smith. But Eggers must be careful not to alienate his conservative base of support. He is nonetheless expected to run slightly to the left of Smith, portraying the lieutenant governor as the mossbacked relic of a dying political age, one-party Texas, and depicting himself as the conservative but progressive candidate who represents a young, vigorous and growing Texas Republican party. go/ The primary instrument for winning liberal support for Eggers is the Rebuilding Committee, which liberals have geared up once again. The committee was successful in 1966 in persuading liberals either not to vote for conservative Democrat Waggoner Carr against the incumbent Republican Sen. John Tower, or to vote for Tower. Rebuilding Committee people are adamant this year, as they were in 1966, that no Republican party money is given them. This may be true but does not preclude contributions coming from individual Republicans. The committee has its offices in the same downtown Austin office building that houses the state GOP headquarters. It is likely that there is some coordination between the Republicans and the Rebuilders. Regardless of .the question of Republican money, the commitee doubtless is financed largely by liberals. Liberals for years sought power in Texas on the strategem of party loyalty but have recently generally changed to the view that the only way to power lies in a strong two-party state. So conservative Democratic nominees will be opposed or not voted for in November. Thus the Rebuilding Committee. LBJ and History fr y President Johnson, methodically com piling a record of his years in the White House, has been charged with trying to write his own version of history at taxpayers’ expense. Sen. John J. Williams, a Republican of Deleware, recently revealed in a senate speech that Johnson has directed each federal department and agency to assign two top employees to write a history of the agency during his presidency. Williams said the history project “emphasizes his achievements and foi gets his mistakes.” Joseph A. Califano, Jr., a Johnson aide, replied that the president simply is trying to make information on his administration available to scholars more quickly than otherwise would be possible. Dr. Joe B. Frantz, a University of Texas history professor, has been given the job of compiling a comprehensive history of the president’s life and political career. It is assumed that the information now being put together will be given to Frantz for placement in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library here in Austin. For about six weeks Frantz has been working out of a suite of eleven offices in the Executive Office Building in Washington. The UT historian says he has not been anointed as the “official” Johnson biographer. “I am a consultant in history to the White House,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “I am setting up procedures, plans and techniques and compiling lists of those to be interviewed for an oral history.” Eventually, Frantz said, he might get around to writing a book on Johnson. Poage and Hunger Discussion of Waco Cong. Bob Poage’s attitude towards the hungry \(Obs., widespread. The Atlanta Constitution recently took note of Poage’s views in two editorials. Noting that Poage and the house agriculture committee which he chairs found no “starvation” in America, the Constitution asked, how the congressman and his colleagues determined this to be so. “Why, county health officials told them so. And if there was any malnutrition well, as one Alabama health administrator put it, that ‘is due to problems of education and personal decisions, plus questionable ability to rationalize rather than any inability to buy food or receive public assistance.’ ” This opinion echoed that of Texas Welfare Cmsr. Burton Hackney that ignorance plays a role in any hunger that exists in Texas In a second editorial the Constitution said that Poage “has introduced the word ‘starvation’ into the dialogue about hunger in America. . . . For that contribution to national misunderstanding, Poage deserves about as much thanks as the gnats get in Willacoochee. He spent time and taxpayers’ money on a pile of useless correspondence with county health officers who denied in response to his question that America has become a westerly Calcutta in which haggard souls are dropping dead in the strets. “That revelation in hand, Poage had his committee release a report, that questions the extent of the hunger problem. He said malnutrition which means starvation, according to our dictionary exists but it is the result of ‘local custom’ “Poage obviously knows nothing about malnutrition, but when he gets around to ignorance he’s on safe ground,” the Constitution concluded. Military Heads The Eastern Establishment Press has been telling tales about Texas again, this time besmirching the reputation of Fort Hood and Sam Houston. The Wash ington Post recently quoted a f o r m e r WAC as saying that 75% of the men she July 26, 1968 3