ustxtxb_obs_1970_10_30_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

Tower, the G.O.P.’s chief fund raiser this campaign year, has admitted that Bush has received more national Republican money than any other candidate. Yet, despite the support of bigwigs and big money, Bush still seemed the underdog, as the Observer went to press. Many political reporters, assuming that Republicans have more at stake in this election and that they will have a stronger turnout, speculate that the only way the Republicans can win is if fewer than two million Texans bother to go to the polls. Bush’s personal appeal is greater than Bentsen’s. He has the warmer, friendlier, more progressive image. But he has been unable to grasp any issue that would convince voters to break their Democratic habits and elect a second Republican to the U.S. Senate. The candidates vary little on issues. The Observer planned to have an issue by issue comparison of their views, but the views are so similar that it seemed a futile exercise. The main question seems to be whether the next conservative senator from Texas should be a Republican or a George Bush Democrat. Bush argues that the state should move beyond tired old party labels. He avoids the Republican label as much as possible. Bentsen and the rest of the Democratic slate say what a good job Democrats have done in the past and urge their people to launch get-out-the-vote drives. As of this writing, the state’s big newspapers were lining up behind the Democrats. On Oct. 18, both the Houston Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News described the two candidates as good ‘conservatives, successful businessmen, and war heroes, and both papers chose to endorse Bentsen. The Chronicle explained that “Most Texans are conservative Democrats, as Bentsen is.” The News said that “as a moderate-conservative, Bentsen would represent the philosophy of the great majority of the majority party in Texas; if he is defeated, that majority would have no representation in the Senate.” The Houston Post has endorsed Bush. The votes are not in, however, and the outcome of the election seems, finally, to lay in the relative effectiveness of the candidates’ ambitious television campaigns. Down to the finish line it will be a battle of image vs. image. K.N. Smith and Eggers at it again Austin, Amarillo, Dallas The Smith-Eggers race has been a drab affair. Paul Eggers, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, was expected to offer a serious challenge to incumbent Gov. Preston Smith this year. After all, as a political novice in 1968, Eggers won a 1.6 million votes, the bigtest total ever for a Republican running in Texas. After his defeat, the Wichita Falls tax attorney went on to Washington to become general counsel for the U.S. Treasury Department. It was with reluctance that he resigned early this year to try again for the governorship. The cognoscenti speculated that the state Republican hierarchy must have promised him considerable money and help to convince him to run once more. This year Eggers does have more campaign money and the support, as well, of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. To make things even better, Smith is a vulnerable opponent. In a state noted for the constitutional weaknesses of the governorship, Preston Smith has been an outstandingly weak governor. He rarely has attempted to wield any sort of power. During a period of fiscal crisis last year, the governor laid out an impossible tax program and then sat back and watched the Texas Legislature come close to passing a sales tax on groceries and succeed in increasing the general sales tax. Instead of specifying what he would or would not accept, Smith kept his belief’s on a one-year appropriations bill to himself and then vetoed the bill after it had been passed. THE GOVERNOR is famous for his blunders in dealing with minority groups and students. But, nevertheless, Preston Smith usually manages to come out on top. Perhaps the highlight of the gubernatorial campaign was Smith’s late October visit to the University of Houston. He walked out of U. of H. meeting without making a scheduled speech because a small group was demonstrating and chanting “Free Lee Otis, Free Lee Otis.” Smith admitted in Austin later in the week that he was mystified by the meaning of the demonstration: he thought they were saying “frijoles, frijoles.” “I wondered as I walked in there what in the world they would have against frijoles,” Smith said, “You all know about frijoles . . . I think they are some sort of dried bean.” Smith’s failure to recognize the name [Lee Otis Johnson, a black militant sentenced to 30 years in prison for giving a marijuana cigarette to an undercover police officer \(Obs., students. It showed the governor’s ignorance of a cause dear to the hearts of many youthful, pot-smoking Texans. A few persons muttered about a governor who lacks the forcefulness to quiet a few demonstrators but, for the most part, the U. of H. incident brought Smith a great deal of public support. “The best thing that has happened for Smith’s campaign this year was when a group of students jeered him off a campus stage in Houston,” the Dallas Morning News reported Oct. 18 in an article on “The Mood in Texas.” Indeed, in his own bumbling way, the governor once again had come out on top of an awkward situation. The News also said that this year “Preston Smith is running against Preston Smith; that is, in most cases, he is the issue. Paul Eggers is almost incidental.” Smith’s campaign is almost non-existent. When the Observer went to press, his campaign office, run by his son, Mickey, had issued only about eight press releases. The governor had no plans to campaign in the large cities until the last few days of the election. During the early part of October, he confined himself into a few forays into the boondocks, where he has always found his strongest support. His tentative schedule called for two campaign October 30, 1970 7