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on this matter, he kept grinning in obvious pleasure whenever the “Roll call vote” chant swelled up anew. Another Evans’ mistake was in his handling of Rosa Walker, longtime director of the Women’s Activities Division of the AFL. Walker had actively opposed Evans two years ago, telling her friends .that if Evans were elected, she would be fired. He didn’t fire her but some time after he was elected Evans “promoted” Walker, not, as he says, “in terms of money but in terms of responsibility.” He took her off the W.A.D. and made her COPE director. He later switched her back to her original job. One Evans supporter said, “That was the dumbest thing Roy ever did. First he goes and gets rid of her and then he takes her back and sends her out on the road where she’s been working against him ever since.” In point of fact, Evans was forced to reinstate Walker as director of the W.A.D. Neither Walker nor her friends appreciated her “promition” and the women demanded a full-time W.A.D. director. And a close look at the unions that have endorsed Hubbard suggests that they will split badly when it comes time to actually vote. Gene Freeland was musing the other day that after Hubbard wins, Evans will, of course, be out of a job. While Freeland very much wants Hubbard to win, he did Hubbard’s position in the race is not entirely clear. Evans believes that Hubbard began preparing to run against him two years ago. But those close to Hubbard believe he sincerely agonized over the question of whether or not to run. What some of his loyal friends don’t understand is how he got mixed up with the people behind his campaign, primarily Don Horn of the Houston council, Gene Freeland of the Dallas council and Gerald Brown of the Building Trades. All three are distinctly of the get -along-with-the-Establishment style of labor leadership. In the old days this involved getting invited out to The Ranch for lunch when LBJ was alive, being asked along on Connally hunting trips, included in outings on Ben Barnes’ houseboat, etc. In return for which, for one reason or another, not much labor legislation ever got passed. Labor politicking tends to be refreshingly sincere: what happens is that everybody agrees to forget all that garbage about fair play and get down to the dirty fighting at once. Hubbard’s people spread all manner of dirty stories about Evans, whose people then had to run around the state putting out little fires of gossip and untangling lurid versions of certain incidents. It was difficult for Evans & Co. to make up any stories on Hubbard, who, unfortunately for their purposes, leads a blameless life. However, they could set to with a will on the men behind Hubbard and counter-propaganda began sloshing around the state. The Hubbard team seems to have done a terrific brain-washing job in terms of convincing almost everyone that Hubbard is a dead-cert cinch for election. “Not one major union has endorsed Evans,” declared Horn proudly. Not yet. 4 The Texas Observer Austin If the present plight of Coastal States is any indication, the energy crisis will be a bird’s nest on the ground for o. & g. attorneys and reserve geologists. The litigation piling up against Coastal should keep a gaggle of experts in filets and Ferraris for years to come. In recent months, Coastal States, or rather its intrastate subsidiary, Lo-Vaca Gathering Co., has been unable to supply as much natural gas as its 400 Texas customers need. Company officials maintain that they unwittingly sold more gas than they can profitably supply, that they are blameless victims of the energy pinch. As one knowledgeable lawyer puts it, “They got caught speedin’.” Some of Coastal’s critics claim the firm is holding out on its long-term contracts in an effort to blackmail customers into renegotiating. San Antonio, for example, has a 20-year contract under which Coastal presently is supplying the City Public Service Board with natural gas at 24 cents a thousand cubic feet. Meanwhile, some Texas producers are asking 50 cents for a thousand cubic feet. That’s a good incentive to weasel on a contract. No one seems to know how much gas Coastal has. The company has given conflicting reports to customers, the Texas Railroad Commission, the Federal Power Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. And according to a suit filed by Pennzoil Pipeline Co., employees have been working busily in to suggest to his companions that, after all, old Roy had been a loyal unionist all these years, whatever their differences, and after the election they really must try to find him a job. Sherman Fricks, Evans’ running-mate in this campaign, replied, “I’ll go along with that if you make the offer good for Harry too.” M.I. Coastal’s Corpus Christi offices shredding documents so that no one will ever get a precise accounting of the company’s reserves. COASTAL STATES Gas Corp. is the brainchild of one Oscar Wyatt, Jr., a man former Secretary of State Bob Bullock calls “the meanest s.o.b. I ever met.” Wyatt, a native of Beaumont, was a combat pilot in the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he attended Lamar Junior College while leasing a rice farm outside of Beaumont to pay his tuition. He made a bundle on a bumper crop in 1947, enabling him to transfer to Texas A&M, from which he subsequently received a degree in mechanical engineering. Wyatt worked for Kerr-McGee Oil Co. and Reed Roller Bit before he formed a partnership with A. A. Moore in 1951. The partnership was dissolved in 1955 and Wyatt formed Coastal States Gas Producing Co. Coastal States originally was comprised of five gas gathering systems and interests in 90 oil and gas wells in South Texas, but Wyatt was determined to have a natural gas empire. He took on subsidiaries as fast as he could find financing for them. Early this year Coastal merged with Colorado Interstate Corporation of Colorado Springs to become Coastal States Gas Corp. Its wholly owned subsidiaries include Lo-Vaca Gathering Co., Coastal States Marketing Co., South Texas Natural Gas Gathering Co., Link LPG Co., Rio Grande Valley Gas System, Coastal States Crude Gathering