ustxtxb_obs_1984_02_10_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

“When you go into a strong Democratic area, you kick up a red ant bed,” Strake was quoted in the Jan. 21 Washington Post. “We tried that in 1982, and all we succeeded in doing was uniting the Democratic Party. All the coyotes and rabbits and rattlesnakes held hands to fight the Republicans.” Who among the Democrats are the coyotes, who the rabbits, and who the rattlesnakes? Alas, Strake did not say. But it’s clear that what he is really talking about is what we can begin to call the Shapiro effect. When you have a large GOP primary in an area the Democrats can nominate more progressive candidates, thereby really changing the political situation. Lillian Collier Lillian Collier of Mumford died on Sept. 4, 1983, in Bryan at the age of 87. A suffragette the old-fashioned kind of feminist Lillian was closely identified with the crusades and causes of the late Minnie Fisher Cunningham of New Waverly, the first woman to run for governor of Texas in Lillian, and their group worked closely with Mrs. R. D. Randolph and me in establishing and promoting the Observer, for which in the late fifties Minnie Fish was a frequent columnist. Having suffered enough at the hands of men, sometimes Minnie Fish’s “Devastating Dames” \(as I once when they saw early in the life of the Observer that I badly needed help, they sent Sarah Payne of Abilene to help me, and Sarah became one of the three or four mainstay persons in the history of this journal. Lillian formed the Texas Women’s Democratic State Committee in 1953 and served on the State Democratic Executive Committee during the Jester, Daniel, and Shivers administrations. A school teacher and a postmistress in Mumford, she was energetic, direct, and passionate about the causes at hand. Nan A. Cardwell, one of the group who were organized around Minnie Fish and Lillian, writes me: “You know, Lillian rode the Truman campaign train all over Texas in 1948. She was part of FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy, traveling throughout the Americas. I remember a picture of Minnie Fish and Lillian, along with others, in front of the Hotel Galvez at a meeting of suffragettes.” Swan-Shaped Soap I have just gotten around to reading Leon Harris’s profile of billionaire Caroline Hunt Schoellkopf of Dallas in Ultra last spring. Mrs. Schoellkopf, one of the five children of the late H. L. Hunt, has decided, Harris reported, to “create her own chain of the smallest and finest hotels in the world.” She owns the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, Hotel BelAir in Los Angeles, and The Remington on Post Oak Park in Houston, so far. “Our plan,” she told Harris, “has always been to build very small hotels for a very small clientele successful businessmen who don’t have to worry what a meal or a room costs and who insist on living and conducting their business away from home in the same optimum luxury conditions they enjoy at home. The usual hotel built today costs about $100,000 per room. Our just-opened Houston hotel, The Remington, cost twice that, but then we’ve spent over a half a million dollars just on art and antiques for each of our hotels. . . . “For years,” she also said, “the trademark of the BelAir Hotel has been its beautiful white swans. I have convinced the Payot of Paris cosmetics people to make their swan-shaped soap in a special scent, suitable for both men and women, exclusively for us. These may be the most expensive soaps used by any hotel in the world for all I know, but they are the kind of special touch that clients who pay our luxury prices deserve. They’re like our 100 percent cotton sheets, our extra heavy terrycloth bathrobes or the brass fixtures we have at The Mansion, enough to keep two full-time polishers busy. We spend $1500 to $2000 for flowers just at the Mansion 52 weeks a year. That’s not thrifty, but what a sumptuous way to welcome our guests.” Mrs Schoellkopf’s five-year plan, according to Harris’s article, calls for the construction of eight or ten small, elegant hotels at a total cost of $350,000,000. A Fact of Moment Cong. Jim Wright of Fort Worth is the solidified favorite to succeed Tip O’Neill as Speaker of the House when the latter retires. Potential challengers to Wright include Cong. Tom Foley of Washington, the party’s House whip, Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, the chairman of ways and means, and Jim Jones of Oklahoma, the conservative budget chairman. Wright won his majority leadership by one vote over the late liberal Cong. Phil Burton of San Francisco, and another candidate of that kind could emerge, too. But O’Neill “quietly passed the word to leading House Democrats,” according to the New York Times last spring, that he favors Wright as his successor. In the internal politics of the House of Representatives this fact makes Wright the overwhelming favorite to win the post. Furthermore, O’Neill has told Wright that he would be the first to know when the Speaker decides to retire. Taking a leaf from Lyndon Johnson’s book, Wright is campaigning hard for his fellow House Democrats all over the country, raising money for them, and contributing to their campaigns from his own campaign fund. The once very liberal state representative from Weatherford, Texas, is two or three years away from becoming Speaker of the House. Pickle on No First Use As Congress returns in Washington I wish to call particular attention to a position taken by one Texas congressman who is not noted for getting out in front on controversial issues, but has on the issue of the first use of nuclear weapons. Congressman Jake Pickle of Austin and the tenth district joined Congressman Ted Weiss of New York and others last session in co-sponsoring House Joint Resolution 50, “which calls on the United States,” as Pickle says, “to renounce the first-strike use of nuclear weapons and to seek treaties encouraging all nations involved in the production or development of nuclear arms to do likewise.” China and the Soviet Union have both renounced first use. The American Bishops, in their pastoral letter on nuclear weapons, made the point that since Hiroshima a fragile psychological barrier against first use has been built up. However, the United States has refused for 38 years to pledge that we will not again make the first use of nuclear weapons. “I feel strongly,” Pickle says, “that our adoption of this [no first use] doctrine will assure that nuclear arms are used solely for deterrent purposes. . . . We are not positioning ourselves to receive a nuclear attack without retaliation. . . . We are simply stating that the United States . .. will not launch an offensive, preemptive nuclear attack against any nation. We are taking the lead in insuring that the perils of nuclear war will not be unleashed against any nation as a first-strike option. I feel this is a responsible position.” Jake Pickle is right, and Texans should work to get the Texas delegation to swing in behind him on this issue in Congress. R. D . 6 FEBRUARY 10, 1984