ustxtxb_obs_1975_05_09_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

BILLIE CARR REPORTS … Ides of March So many things have happened since my last report. I’ll try and bring you up to date, starting where I left off last time. Texas Democrats The Texas Democrats meeting and workshops in Corpus Christi were very successful. Attendance was better than we had hoped. Mary Paul Cherney, Jeff Bishop, and Guy Watts did a splendid job. Next meeting, for regional coordinators and district and county club chairpersons, is to be held in District 1 East Texas. The meeting will be on June 21,1975 at 10 a.m. at the Angelina Hotel in Lufkin. Our host will be JOe Warren Bell. Chicago Meeting Congressman Donald Fraser and other ADA types invited one person from each state to a meeting in Chicago. Harris, Caddell and Hart, all leading pollsters, of this country feel we need radical solutions for social change and that we need education, business, science, religion and civil liberties have never been better candidate for president must convince people of his or her credibility, and be do not support either of the major parties. The rest of the meeting was discussions concerning issues with special interest on the economy. We also reviewed the Democratic Charter and the delegate selection plans. We of course, told everyone about the Texas -Bentsen bill. The meeting provided good information but no action was taken. The SDEC Meeting At the SDEC meeting, three additional members were elected to the DNC. The liberal coalition supported Leo Reidel, Alicia Chacon, and Eddie Bernice Johnson. Calvin Guest chaired the meeting in his usual confused manner. The voting procedure would be hilarious had it not been such a serious matter. The results were that Alicia Chacon was the only liberal candidate elected. Claudia Brummet was elected easily. The real excitement came when Chairman Guest cast an illegal vote to break a tie between Lem Allen, conservative and Leo Riedel, labor-liberal; even though Harry Hubbard, AFL-CIO President, tells me that he was assured by Guest that he would support the labor candidate, Leo Riedel, Guest cast his vote for Lem Allen. Other candidates who ran were Lois Ham, labor-liberal who found herself on the conservative ticket, Anthony Hall, liberal, who had also been promised the support of Chairman Guest. Hall switched his vote from Allen to Riedel which caused the tie vote. Annie Laurie Day from Brookshire, former SDEC member, conservative candidate, who did most of the work and raised most of the money in the two years she was on the Committee, nevertheless did not gain support of her friend, Calvin Guest. Where is Leonel Castillo when we needed him? During all the excitement, the Texas Affirmative Action Plan was adopted with many objections. The main one being that this was the first time that anybody had laid eyes on the Affirmative Action plan. We have challenged that plan and the results of that challenge will be decided on probably by the time you receive this edition. The Democratic National Committee Meeting At the Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington, D.C. in March the the Site Selection Committee would give special emphasis on holding the national convention in states which had ratified the ERA and that the committee would, in fact, lobby for ratification in states in which they will be working. This was a compromise from what we really wanted which was an out and out statement that we would not meet in states where the ERA had not been approved. Instead, we have some assurances that, all things being equal, an ERA state would win out over a state that had not moved that the definition of “all party affairs” be referred to the By-Laws Committee for interpretation. This motion carried and the effect of the motion means that the Compliance Review Commission definition, which was totally unfair, is motion that the CRC’s regulations were only proposals which must be sent to the By-Laws Committee and back to the full DNC for vote. It passed unanimously. We supported this resolution because the CRC has entirely overstepped their duties and responsibilities in trying to change the intent of the delegate selection plan as NA/ell oppose the approval of any further military assistance to IndoChina in the fiscal year 1975. You may be interested to know that it passed overwhelmingly. The only vote we lost was a motion that all financial records of . the Democratic party be open for public inspection. Strauss opposed this from the chair. New Democratic Coalition We were very pleased to have been elected one of the co-chairpersons for the New Democratic Coalition. The other chairpersons are Congressman Ron Dellums and Dr. Bernard Sorokin. Twelve vice-chairpersons were elected, a Treasurer, Secretary, the Executive Committee, and an Advisory Council. We did interview and hear speeches from the following presidential hopefuls: Morris Udall, Fred Harris, Jimmy Carter and Terry Sanford. The officers of the Coalition have appointed a committee to draw up a questionaire which will be sent to all presidential candidates. Then we will have a screening of those candidates after the questionaire has been received. We will then make available in a packet or booklet form both the questions and answers for interested Democrats around the country. In this manner we feel that you will have a yardstick with which to measure the candidates. You will be hearing more about the New Democratic Coalition. Austin The rest of the month of March and the first part of April, I have spent in Austin working on the Schieffer bill. The bill passed the House and in the Senate it received 18 amendments. The bill is now in a Conference Committee and I expect that they will meet before this newsletter can reach you. It is still a bad bill because it still provides for winner-take-all. If the bill is ever passed and becomes law then we are planning to hold a meeting with liberal leadership to decide what action we will take. Both Senator Yarborough and Sissy Farenthold, as well as staff from the presidential hopefuls will be asked to participate. While in Austin, I also supported the ERA rally and have been keeping up with the Voter Registration Bill which Rep. R. C. Nichols has been working on. Eddie Bernice’s bill on party purity, with some help from Rep. Jim Mattox, passed unanimously in the committee and it is our hope that it will be voted on before the session ends. Am especially glad that the two constitutional amendments one the legislative pay raise and the other for teachers and state employees retirement plans passed. In a press release, I supported both amendments. Paid Pot Adv. by Billie Carr Expense Fund, 2418 Travis, Houston, Texas 0111111101111111111111111111111111MENNIF