ustxtxb_obs_1969_10_10_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

In My Opinion Visiting North Texas Richardson, Dallas and Arlington My stay in North Texas already has begun to yield some interesting information to me, which will form the basis for some reports in future issues of the Observer. I plan to remain into next week and plan trips into Dallas, Fort Worth, Denton, Greenville, and, perhaps, Commerce before returning to Austin. Much is going on up this way, some of it heretofore unreported, at least in much detail. In my visit to Richardson I found my the same. The city fathers recently finished agonizing over whether Ramparts magazine should be permitted on the shelves of the Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckenridge should be offered \(they decided yes, bought three At a talk here last week I found a few John Birch Society members on hand, one of whom, I’m told, took notes on my remarks as well as those in the audience and offered statements during the discussion that we must b e more vigilant in fighting communism. That was when I knew I was back in Richardson. There are some interesting political and economic experiments under way in Dallas and Fort Worth among militant blacks which I am hearing about. There seems a good deal of American Civil Liberties Union activity in the area, and the region’s Unitarians are preparing to build a low-cost public housing project with federal money in Irving, outside Dallas. There is more, of which I’ll be reporting. Please Note Don Gladden, the Fort Worth liberal who served four terms in the Texas House and then was snowed under in the 1968 Democratic primary by Ben Barnes in the race for lieutenant governor, told me the other night of taking out an ad in the Fort Worth paper during the height of the recent special session of the Legislature. It read: “To avoid confusion, Don Gladden is Personal Service Quality Insurance Alice Anderson”Bow” Williams INSURANCE & REAL ESTATE 808A E. 46th, Austin, Texas 465-6577 not is not a member of the Legislature this term.” This reminded me of something I meant to get in the Observer last issue but couldn’t find room for: the remark during Observations Austin It’s’an almost foregone conclusion that a liberal running for any statewide office except governor or US senator will lose. It takes more money than a non-business candidate can muster to overcome the public’s disinterst in contests for jobs like state comptroller or state treasurer. With such candidates stirring around again, some new thinking is called for. Any liberal candidate running for such an office should break all the traditions he can bring himself to. He should, for mild instance, announce very early and have a long campaign. The writer of the daily political round-ups of the wire services must play up the big races, condensing the news from the lesser contests into a paragraph or two at the end. With a longer campaign, starting before the major races start, a liberal taking on an incumbent at a lower, but still statewide level \(such as the public notice he would have no chance of getting during the spring primary. Franklin Spears lost out for attorney general, in’ my opinion, because he listened to timid, middle-class counsel. He could have won had he realized that he was the left-side candidate and boldly behaved accordingly. Instead he campaigned for law and order at a time when that was like asking the blacks and chicanos to rally behind a wet mop in their faces. All Crawford Martin had to do was tell about the big bad labor bogeymen to keep his hammer-lock on the voters Spears thought he could soft-talk into supporting him. I also repeat my view, which no one has ever heard without giving me the horse-laugh, that the only way to win these lesser statewide jobs is with a reform ticket, running in harness \(formally or the two big jobs. Next year, with the people literally disgusted with state and national government with taxes, war, military spending, inflation this method the second called session of Austin’s best disc jockey, Arleigh Duff of KOKE, that the legislators should be sent home, not to return unless accompanied by their parents. G.O. could get a fair test. And why not? How could liberals seeking the lesser statewide jobs possibly do any worse than they have in the past, running alone like the understudies of heroes! Next spring there could be a THROW ticket for Throw the Rascals Out. You know, man, dream a little say, Babe Schwartz for . governor, Joe Bernal for Mauzy for attorney general, Don Kennard for land commissioner, Rex Braun for state treasurer, J. Ed Harris for comptroller, Neil Caldwell for agriculture commissioner . October 10, 1969 15 r mom= THE TEXAS OBSERVER 504 West 24th Street Austin, Texas 78705 Enter a 1-year subscription, at $7.30 \(in street city state [ ] Check enclosed [ ] To be billed I “A respected journal of dissent.”THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, March 2, 1969 12 ” . that outpost of reason in the Southwest …”NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, I “i April 11,1968 “No doubt the best political journal in the state.”THE REPORTER, Nov. 30, 1967 I With “influence felt far beyond dthe state I borders.”TIME, Sept. 27, 1968 n ” . . delights in exposing the peccadilloes of I the Texas establishment …”THE PRO s GRESSIVE, November, 1968 Ilhosimmemossowswommeamommemmespil Use Your Imagination