ustxtxb_obs_1970_03_20_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

Ramsey. But the political odds are long indeed against both Brown and Lawson, and COPE felt no percentage would accrue to its growing prestige and late-born reputation for political savvy by embracing those two races. This same pragmatism first became most evident in 1968, when COPE turned its back on a tested friend, Rep. Don Gladden of Fort Worth, when Gladden was challenging the ascendant Ben Barnes for lieutenant governor \(Obs., March 1 and 15, Word of some endorsements by organized labor in non-statewide races is filtering back to Austin now. The Tarrant County local labor council endorsed Sen. Don Kennard over his two challengers, Rep. Joe Shannon and Doyle Willis, all of Fort Worth. They also boosted Walter Steimel, Fort Worth attorney, over Sen. Tom Creighton, Mineral Wells. Sen. D. Roy Harrington, Port Arthur, has been given the endorsement of his area labor council over his challenger, Beaumont Mayor James D. McNicholas. The GOP Gentlemen Republicans continue to pursue their gentlemenly ways in Texas. Seeking to avoid fractionating their relatively less numerous ranks. They prevailed upon two contenders for the nomination to oppose Dallas Cong. Earle Cabell to withdraw from the race in favor of the late-entering Frank Crowley, a popular former county commissioner and once the top aide to Bruce Alger, when Alger was the Dallas Republican congressman. Dick Tozer and Ray Erickson withdrew, both issuing statements laudatory of Crowley, who will meet the winner of the Democratic primary in which Cabell, a conservative, faces Sen. Mike McKool, a liberal. An irregularity in the handling of paychecks in the office of Dallas Republican Cong. Jim Collins was turned up last week by Washington columnist Jack Anderson, the successor to the late Drew Pearson. Anderson reported that two student workers in Collins’ office, on receiving their paychecks, would cash them, give the money to Collins’ office manager, who in turn would pay the girls for whatever time they had worked that the girls’ checks was, according to Collins, paid to a worker in his Dallas office. Collins at first denied to Anderson that there was any such goings on in his office. On checking into the situation, however, he found it was true. Probably this is not an unusual situation in Washington. Such juggling of office paychecks is done in Austin by state legislators. Over a five-month period $498.71 was kept from the two girls’ 6 The Texas Observer Capitol correspondent Ernie Stromberger, writing in the El Paso Times, recounts the liberals’ decline in recent years in races for statewide offices, the low point coming this year when the liberals have no candidates running for any major post in Austin. An exception to that might be Judge David Brown’s challenge of Atty. Gen. Crawford Martin. Brown has been active in recent years in Senator Yarborough’s campaigns. Stromberger finds the liberals in disarray partly because of the splintering effect the war and racial issues have had in driving a wedge between labor and much of the rest of the liberal camp and between liberals and liberals. Further, he adds, “the liberals are a victim of their own success as far as recruiting statewide candidates is concerned. The issues liberals have been dramatizing for years pollution control, consumer protection, high auto insurance rates, minimum wage law have been embraced by the conservative establishment. . . . [ S] o many of the basic premises used for the last 15 or 20 years are gone it would appear that liberals will have to content themselves with concentrating on local races and remaining satisfied with attempting to nudge moderate and conservative candidates for statewide office to the left instead of drafting their own statewide candidates.” More and more, it seems, people who feel some alienation from the way things are in Texas, both left and right, are turning to publishing their own newspapers. There are well-established radical left underground papers at Houston, Dallas, and Austin now, and another starting up at College Station. Papers of liberal dissent are published at least sporadically at Denton, San Marcos, Nacogdoches, Lubbock, and Arlington, among other locales. Another newspaper venture has sprung up in East Austin, which is largely black and brown. The Echo begins on a biweekly basis. Editor Robert McKenzie says he hopes the paper will cover more than just the affairs of Austin’s two major racial minority groups. The first issue has a story of Mexican-Americans in nearby Taylor organizing to protest alleged discrimination against two chicanos in that school system. In future editions the Echo expects to examine the situation at the Gatesville reform schools and publish a chicano’s view of the Vietnam war. Who Invited US?, the documentary on American interventionism that two Texas educational television stations declined to show \(Ohs., turned out to be a controversial film beyond the Texas frontier. Broadcasting of governmental pressure to keep the hard-hitting NET program off the air. It also quotes Samuel P. Hays, president of the Foreign Policy Association, as telling the program’s producers by letter, “You are misleading the ETV stations and the public by distributing it.” Hays added that it is “without doubt the most inaccurate, distorted, one-sided presentation of foreign affairs I have ever seen.” The Nation editorial, “Hats Off to NET,” the liberal magazine calls Who Invited US? “a beacon of artistic integrity and truth that makes us sadly aware of the enormous potential of the medium.” Bernal’s Woes Sen. Joe Bernal, already facing a stiff challenge for reelection in San Antonio from Rep. David Evans, has run into some trouble for taking a job on the payroll of the local Catholic Church archdiocese. He is supposed to work in that capacity in behalf of the well-being of Mexican-Americans. The San Antonio dailies have raised questions about separation of church and state, wondering editorially if a man can serve well both as a legislator and as a salaried lay worker in the church. Of course, many state legislators have jobs that raise questions about their independence in serving their constituency in Austin lawyers on “retainers” from certain firms with particular interests in what goes on at the Capitol, and the like. But this is the first time in memory a legislator appears to have been put on retainer by a church denomination. Liberal Trey Ellison, who is running against Rep. Guy Floyd, a San Antonio conservative, has sent a letter appealing for financial help from members, alternates and supporters of the liberals’ 1968 challenge delegation at the Chicago Democratic convention. Rep. Bob Atwell, Dallas, the head of the House Revenue and Taxation Committee, has predicted that the 1971 Legislature will increase by three-quarters percent the state sales tax but still exempting food from the tax. Atwell further predicted that either a personal or corporate income tax will be enacted sometime during the decade. He said the state’s commitment to education has assured such tax increases. Republican gubernatorial candidate Paul Eggers said in an Austin television interview earlier this year that he believes the sales tax has been extended and increased about as much as it can go, at least at the present time. State Sen. Charles Wilson, Lufkin, continues his campaign against unregulated telephone rates. During the paychecks and used for purposes other than paying them. This is a violation of a federal law, according to Anderson. The Libs’ Decline