ustxtxb_obs_1968_08_23_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

ered that the conservative candidates received an average of 51.9% of the Democratic vote cast, while the liberals got 48.19/0. It was on this basis that the TDOC requested 50 of Texas’ 104 delegate votes. TH E BRIEF alleges Texas is today a three-party state with Republicans, Democrats loyal to the national party and Democrats who usually reject national Democratic presidential candidates as being “too liberal.” The Texas Democratic party, the brief says, divided in 1952 after all Democratic nominees except one cross-filed, accepting votes on both the Republican and Democratic tickets. That year, Maverick writes, “The entire official apparatus of the Texas Democratic party, led by the governor, and retaining all the power and authority of the Democratic party, actively campaigned for the Republican Party nationally: Texas went for Eisenhower.” The descendants of the Eisenhower Democrats still lean toward Republicanism in November, the TDOC contends. The governor referred to, of course, was Allan Shivers, who is a member of the Connally delegation to Chicago this year. Examining voting records in many Texas cities, the TDOC found that delegates to state and national conventions often are chosen from certain “most favored precincts.” For example, District 22 in Houston selected its solitary delegate to the national convention and 79 delegates to the state convention from Precinct 130, the Tanglewood area. Precinct 130 furnished 5% of the district’s 1966 vote for governor \(on which the delegate strength trict delegates together or both state Democratic conventions that year. Similar instances are cited in district 10 where the three precincts in Tarrant county’s Ridglea-Westover Hills area absorbed all state convention credentials for the district. “It appears that the best way to get recognition in Texas Democratic conventions is to support Republican national candidates in presidential election years,” the brief states. “Texas is a doubtful state because its leaders manipulate the machinery of the state Democratic party to keep it a doubtful state, for purpose of political blackmail, especially in the Democratic national convention.” The Connally brief charges that it is the liberals represented by the TDOC rather than the regular delegates that have supported Republicans. Since 1848, the brief says, the Texas Democratic party has lost to only two Republican presidents, Herbert Hoover in 1928 and Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. “The Democratic party leadership in Texas has consistently and actively supported the Democratic nominees for president and vice-president, except in one instance in 1952. In 1952, the Democratic candidate for president refused to recognize the issues which Texas Democrats felt were vital to the welfare and best interest of the people of Texas, and they put state ahead of party.” “The protestants to the Texas delegation cry tong and loud about ‘party loyalty,’ ” the brief says. “They cite the year 1952. . . . The truth is that a Republican is now serving in the United States Senate from Texas for the first time in its history, only because the leaders of the protestants’ delegation and the dissidents they represent refused in 1960 and again in 1966 to support the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate. They, in fact, publicly and openly supported and urged the support of the Republican candidate . . . They said if they can’t rule the Democratic party, they will ruin it by helping the Republican party elect its candidates.” K.N. Preparations at Fort Chicago Chicago Chicago will almost be a militarily-occupied city next week in an attempt to prevent or quell any disorder that may erupt at the Democratic national convention site or anywhere else in the city. The city’s 11,900 police, who received special training in heavy weapons, gas devices and crowd control last spring, will be working two twelve-hour shifts each day instead of the usual three eighthour shifts. Many of them will be staying in specially-prepared sleeping quarters in Union Hall in the Stock Yard Inn next to the International Amphitheatre. Six helicopters, two from the city’s police and fire departments, four from the US Army, will be patrolling the city. They will be in radio contact with police headquarters and a command post outside the Amphitheatre and will be able to radio directly to police cars for quick dispatch. Six thousand Illinois national guardsmen will be on alert in various armories. In addition, each night 800 guardsmen will be drilling in Boyce Park, less than Mr. DeMuth wrote several articles in 1964 and 1965 for the Observer on ‘integration activities in the South. He now lives in Chicago and has placed articles in the Progressive, Dissent, Christian Century, Frontier, Rogue, Commonwealth, the Nation, the New Republic, and the Village Voice. 4 The Texas Observer two blocks from the Amphitheatre. Army and Air Force reserve units will be on active duty; a fire truck and 200 firemen will be stationed at the Amphitheatre at all times; a six-foot-high chain link fence topped with barbed wire has been built around the convention site area, one side of which is 2,136 feet long; and a one-mile stretch of Halsted Street, Jerry DeMuth which borders the front of the Amphitheatre, will be closed to traffic. A simulated facade of the White House is being built to cover one side of the Amphitheatre and to distract visitors’ gazes from the fence. The dockets of the city’s courts have been cleared so they can handle mass arrests; park district officials have arranged with the county sheriff to provide space for 1,000 prisoners in four rooms under the stands’ in Soldiers Field; and, should it be needed, plans have been made to establish a “tent city” in the yard of county jail to hold as many as 10,000 prisoners. Surveillance has already been set up at O’Hare, Midway and Meigs airports, bus stations and railroad terminals for arrival of leaders of militant groups. Police Supt. James B. Conlisk, Jr., has threatened to arrest anyone who “in any way attempts to disrupt not only the convention but any aspect of city life.” Cook county Sheriff Joseph I. Woods, a Republican whose sister is Richard M. Nixon’s personal secretary, said he will make sure protestors “don’t try to come out in the suburbs of Cook county.” If they do try, he warned, “My men are to in the left hand and a .357 magnum [pistol} in the right.” In the face of this build-up of force, Jay Miller, executive director ‘of the Illinois division of the American Civil Liberties Union, commented, “We’re going to be under marshal law without it actually being declared. I’m very much concerned,” he added. “I expect trouble. It’s going to be a very tight and difficult situation. I’m afraid the city will just run roughshod over people’s rights. April 27 was an attempt to warn people not to demonstrate.” Last April 27, police clashed with a group of 10,000 anti-war marchers, beating them, according to sworn testimonies, on the streets, inside police vans and even inside restaurants, where some had fled. An independent committee, headed by Roosevelt University President Emeritus Edward J. Sparling, which investigated the incident reported, “The police were doing what the mayor and police superintendent had clearly indicated was expected of them.” The committee said it feared the violence may have been a “dress rehearsal” for the convention. Mayor Richard J. Daley and Supt. Conlisk, who