ustxtxb_obs_1972_07_07_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

A fairly fair convention San Antonio 9 a.m. Desks at which the delegates could collect their credentials were to have opened at 8:30. There are still no credentials available. Thousands of anxious delegates are jammed together in a huge, sweating pack, waiting. It’s Roy Orr’s revenge. What an on -house. 9:30 a.m. The credentials lines begin to move slowly. It takes 45 minutes in the steambath to get the precious card and plastic pin-case. Foul-ups galore. Anger-red faces at the press desk, shouting, “Goddamnit, lady, I wrote in a month ago.” And rumors, rumors everywhere. Roy Orr asked for Can-in Patman’s head in return for his support of Briscoe. They’ll nominate Patman from the floor. Billie Carr is on an ego trip. You can’t get visitors’ passes unless you’re on the right side. 11:15 They run out of plastic holders for the credentials cards. 11:30 They run out of credentials cards. So they try Xeroxing one with a special stamp’ on it. Then they try Xeroxing them and stamping them afterward. 11:30 Inside the convention hall. Whatever the band is, it is not Procul Harem. The color guard is from TMI. I trust you noticed that the 14th [Travis] is back in the boonies. The invocation is delivered by the Rev. Bonn of Palestine, a black. He prays for peace. Barnstone is taking petitions to nominate Johnson for vice-chairman. Who’s Johnson? Roy On welcomes us. Dolph Briscoe pleads for party unity. Bill Hobby pleads for less ideology and makes everyone mad. Barefoot Sanders pleads for unity. John Hill pleads for unity. Bob Armstrong pleads for unity. Bob Strauss asks for money. District caucuses are called to elect representatives to the permanent credentials committee. District 20 \(Nueces day. Roll call vote! Roll call vote! Roll call vote! What’s happening here? Anderson won’t give us a roll call vote. He’s violating his own rules. Why won’t he? He’s afraid of us. He knows we’ll win if he calls the roll. Actually, he hasn’t got a roll. Watch out! He pushed me! Why you long-haired creep. You can’t push this lady around. I didn’t push her. And don’t yell at me like that. 14 The Texas Observer Humpty Dumpty Orr . . . and all of Dolph’s horses and all of Dolph’s men couldn’t put Roy back together again. You think you’re tough, uh? You wanna just step outside and prove it? The McGovern leadership has already had an in-group fight or 17. Just what is the problem here? That Terry Weeks [Travis delegate] said Billie Carr was not the leader of the McGovern forces. Right in front of Briscoe. He disgraced us. Just who do you people from Travis think you are? We’ll stay in this convention. They think we’re going to walk out. For God’s sake, we know better than that. We haven’t been able to go to the bathroom without clearing it with the Travis delegation. They think that Billie and I are the Devil, that we’re going to walk out. We’ve told them 5,000 times we’re not going to walk out. We know we have to stay. Now we’ve got a going thing and they want to take it over. We’ve done all the work. Roy On tells us that Dolph Briscoe is a man who takes the bull by the horns. I’ll tell you what the problem is. It’s a conspiracy of competence. The Peter Principle is in force. Some people have already reached their level of incompetence and we’re just trying to reach ours. This leadership was imposed on us. The McGovern people have never had a chance to vote on it. That caucus last night was a shambles. There’s no communication. There was supposed to be a meeting this morning no one knew about. Billie objected to having our people at the other two mikes. The students are furious about it. We’re just trying to get some efficiency into this operation. We’ve tried to do it friendly. The results of the delegates’ presidential preference poll are announced: for Wallace, 33 percent; for McGovern, 28 percent; uncommitted, 22 percent; for Humphrey, 16 percent. Wallace supporters are ecstatic. On asks us to please attempt to squeeze a one-day convention into six days. Rumors of irregularities in the presidential preference poll. Careful check. Unfounded. There is a youth problem. If you consider young people is proportion to their number in the entire population, they can come out as much as 19 percent worse off than if you count them in proportion to the voting population. Or maybe 30 percent. Or maybe 40 percent. How are we counting them? The worst way, of course. Those people from Travis just think nobody else can do anything. And Roy Evans is behind it, let me tell you. He just wants to be at the head of somebody’s parade. Rumors, more rumors. The deal in the 8th District is falling apart. Hall Timanus has ordered the Wallace people to go for everything they can get and to hell with fair play. Evans says Don Gladden is screwing the Wallaces in the Fort Worth district. The Briscoe people say they’ll balance it all in the at-large delegation so it really doesn’t matter. The Briscoe people, ha! That Phil Patman, Briscoe’s man from Travis, is just running around stirring up trouble and rumors everywhere: we’re spending all our time putting out the fires he starts. The Travis people can’t get credit no matter whose side they’re on. “The real problem,” said Boyce Hornberg, a Travis delegate, “is that they’re closing the chingaderas before the hoochies have been officially delineated.” Some kids from the 25th District Janey Briscoe in the face of a “conspiracy to deny fair representation.” J. Briscoe’s response unknown. 4 p.m. The epic Orr-Johnson struggle begins. Calvin Guest, Briscoe’s man and the newly-elected convention chairman, is not overwhelming. But Will Davis and Neal, Spelce, those old pros, are backstage