ustxtxb_obs_1968_10_18_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

V Republicans have been canvassing in Harris county precincts where Sen. John Tower won 40% or more of the vote in 1966. Closely guarded canvasses of the 11th senatorial district’s Anglo precincts show some 50% of the voters saying they’re undecided; this greatly concerns Republicans, who consider such “undecideds” as actually being Wallace votes. V Wallace and Nixon each have about ten neighborhood headquarters in Harris county. Humphrey had one last week but four more were opened this Week. V Republicans opened some headquar ters in parts of the county, the southeast, that they’ve never before served, in labor areas such as Baytown and Pasadena, for example. These headquarters are paying their own way. Adding to the jumble, an American party headquarters so much favorable response that party leaders were looking for sites for new headquarters. V The inexperience of the Nixon cam paign leaders in Houston \(Obs., Oct. was dramatized recently when a top Nixon worker phoned the Harris county GOP headquarters and meekly asked if officials there had any sort of manual on how to run a political campaign, and could they spare a copy. V Harris county apparently is the only Texas county going through the presidential campaign without the guidance of a county Democratic chairman. Former candidate for a judgeship. Since then, the conservative Demos have ignored demands by liberals that the county executive committee, which liberals now control, be convened to elect a new chairman. Conservatives expect to control the county organization next year because of a recent redistricting of the county by the commissioners court, a body controlled by conservative Democrats. Tile commissioners carved up more than a dozen precincts with more than 3,000 registered voters and jiggled some other precincts around. As a result, the number of precincts will increase from 305 to 327 in February. Conservatives are hoping to stall the election of a new county chairman until then. Thanks to the commissioners the new precincts will be heavily conservative and should throw the balance on the county committee to the conservatives then. Descending Star The impending decline in Texas’ influ ence in the nation’s capital is behind many of the headlines in the state’s news papers these days as a number of Texans are hopeful of getting it while the get ting yet remains good. Word of President Johnson’s appointing a number of Texans to federal jobs, and the request of im prisoned Texan Billie Sol Estes that LBJ commute Estes’ 15-year sentence for mail fraud and conspiracy are indicators of the growing awareness that the Lone Star is to decline soon in the federal constellation. Three Texans now serve in the cabinet Postmaster Gen. Marvin Watson, Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark and Secy. of Commerce C. R. Smith. The Dallas News’ Robert Baskin, in a story dealing with the DC Texans’ plans for the post-Johnson years, reports that Watson will return to the Texas business world, Clark may join a Washington law firm and Smith will retire. Former Gov. Price Daniel, Johnson’s director of emergency planning, will practice law in Austin, where former LBJ aides Walter Jenkins and Jake Jacobsen now reside as, respectively, a cbnsultant \(one client is the Camp Gary Job Corps center, San Marpress secretary George Christian, a White assistant press secretary Torn Johnson also will move to Austin next year. Christian is expected to do public relations work, write and lecture; Temple will practice law; and Tom Johnson probably will head up Johnson’s staff when LBJ returns to Texas. Barefoot Sanders, a legislative aide to the president, is a man Johnson hoped to install in a federal judgeship but evidently Republican opposition will halt this. Baskin writes that Texas’ influence in Washington will be at a lowest in more than 50 years, dating back to when Col. Edward House of Austin was President Wilson’s key adviser. Since those days the state has always had one or more persons of unusual power in the capital, serving as speaker of the house, senate majority leader, vice president or president. The state, next year, will have greatly reduced influence, boasting only a few committee . chairmen in congress, presuming the Democrat’s will still control congress. “It is evident the state’s interests will best be represented by Sen. John G. Tower, who has worked hard for Nixon and commands his respect,” Baskin writes. Whoever wins the election this fall the Texans will be out, though Cong. Jim Wright of Fort Worth and Cong. Jack Brooks of Beaumont would be expected to gain importance in the event Humphrey wins. HHH has said Wright would have an important role in a Humphrey administration. V The latest appointment of a Texan to a federal job was Johnson’s naming of Dallas developer Raymond Nasher as one of ten delegates to the United Nations. V Watson will be honored at Dainger field next week at an appreciation day program. President and Mrs. Johnson will attend, as will Billy Graham and Texas Speaker Ben Barnes. Evidently Watson has in mind a political race in 1970; that year the most important state race will be for the senate seat of Ralph Yarborough. Apparently, Daingerfield will be happy to get Marvin back. According to a news story in the Huntsville Item, “Never before has a citizenry been more reluctant to bid farewell to a family which had become so integral a part of its very life than was the case in Daingerfield when Marvin Watson and his charming wife Marion and their three children took their leave and enplaned for the nation’s capital.” V The weekly Victoria Mirror com plained recently that, although local citizens “were led to believe that Lyndon Johnson as president would do many great things for his friends here,” the Victoria area has not been so blessed. The Mirror said that many of Johnson’s local friends had boasted that LBJ as president would bestow many boons on the Victoria economy, in the form, mostly, of government installations. Perhaps the waning days of the Johnson administration will bring word of some federal largesse, the Mirror hoped. DC Lobbyists Each three months lobbyists in the nation’s capital are required to register their names, whom they represent and their expenses for each quarter of the calendar. Texans and Texas-based interests are well-represented. A number of former congressmen were \(and probdelegation, according to reports filed, for the first quarter of 1968 and published recently in the Congressional Record. Among the former lawmakers from Texas listed in the Washington lobby were Walter E. Rogers \(his clients not who represents the American Trucking Assn. and the American College of Radiology of American PetroNayears ago Congressional Quarterly, a publication whose staff does research on governmental functions for newspapers, among other clients, found that four other Texas congressmen were then in the Washington lobbyFritz C. Lanham, John E. Lyle, Jr., Tom Pickett and Kenneth M. Regan. These four were not listed in the Record this time, however. Other Texans, not former congressmen, at work in Washington as lobbyists in early 1968 represented oil interests mostly. Humble had four men registered: W. J. Crawford, Charles C. Keeble, John D. Knodell and Donald E. Smiley. Other Texas oil firms represented include Superior Oil of Houston and Los Angeles Co., Inc., Oil Division, of Houston \(represented by the firm of Wilkinson, Cragun of Houston \(W. E. Wilson of Shreveport Dale Miller of Dallas represented the Dallas chamber of commerce, the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Assn. of Houston and Texas Gulf Sulphur of Newgulf, Tex. October 18, 1968 5