ustxtxb_obs_1996_02_23_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

experience. In a 1988 temporary injunction hearing in Travis County, Senator Yarborough sat for three days, under stiff crossexamination for most of his testimony. He maintained his composure and testified in good humor and with incredible recall of events and personalities of sixty years before. All of us, I suppose, had appreciated his broad historical perspective and commitment to the rule of law, and it was no surprise that his testimony reflected these qualities. The remarkable impression was of Senator Yarborough, in his late eighties, showing no diminution of his energy, tenacity, or his commitment to obtain for the school children of Texas what was lawfully theirs. One incident during the course of his testimony provided a lovely irony and demonstration of Senator Yarborough’s unwavering tenacity. One of the underlying fact issues in our case concerned the 1934 activities of senior members of a politically powerful oil-and-gas law firm in Fort Worththe same firm whose current members would cross-examine the Senator about the substantial reputations of their predecessors. During cross-examination, Senator Yarborough conceded that those lawyers had formidable reputationsand then proceeded, much to our pleasure, to describe how these same titans of the bar had attempted in 1934 to persuade Jimmy Allred to fire the young Ralph Yarborough, because he was too vigorously litigating against the oil companies on behalf of the Permanent School Fund. Jimmy Allred refused to corral Yarborough, who continued then and throughout his life to champion, without hesitation, the rights of the people against those interests that would pervert the common good. Our lawsuit proceeded to an important victory in the Texas Supreme Court, and ultimately to a satisfactory financial settlement for the Permanent School Fund while Senator Ralph Yarborough was still with us, and able to take pleasure in the ultimate fruits of his efforts. David Richards, who has practiced civil rights and labor law in Texas, is now a lawyer in Santa Fe. A Titan Reconsidered BY DAVE SHAPIRO Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, with many lesser interests grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. James Madison in The Federalist Papers, Number 10 STUDENTS OF THE POLITICAL history of Texas will acknowledge that the torch was passed from Sam Houston, friend and ally of Andrew Jackson, to James Stephen Hogg, who voted for the nomination of William Jennings Bryan at the 1896 Democratic Convention, to James V.Allred, the great New Deal Attorney General and Governor of Texas, to Ralph W.Yarborough, who served as an assistant attorney general under Allred, who later appointed him to the original board of directors of the Lower Colorado River Authority and to a district judgeship in Travis County in the 1930s. Those Madison located in the faction of the landed, manufacturing, mercantile, and moneyed interests trace their political lineage to Mirabeau B. Lamar, adversary of Sam Houston, and who tore up Houston’s treaties with the Indians; to the Whig antecedents of the business-backed, conser vative Democrats of the Shivers era; forward’ to the modern-day Republicans and what remains of today’s Establishment Texas Democrats. Thus, there should be no surprise when a John Connally or a Phil Gramm, ad infinitum, announces a switch to the GOP. They were always in the camp of the moneyed interests. I was only two years old at the time of his 1938 campaign for attorney general, but Ralph W. Yarborough was my mentor and teacherfrom the time of his 1952 gubernatorial race against Allen Shivers through his 1991 battle against the American General Bill in the Texas Legislature. In 1991, the creation of privately-dominated governmental districts with the power to issue tax-exempt bonds would have allowed American General’s real estate subsidiary to develop a large luxury resort on land it claimed to own on South Padre Island. The result would have been serious ecological damage to the Laguna Madre, off the coast of Willacy County. So Ralph Yarborough, at eighty-six years of age, traveled several times to the Capitol to assist state Senator Carlos F. Truan of Corpus Christi, whom I served at the time as staff counsel. Yarborough helped rally public opinion and editorial opposition to the American General Bill, lobbied for not only by Vinson and Elkins but also by Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feldtwo of the most powerful lobbying law firms in the country. Nothing could have been more appropriate than Ralph Yarboroughtwenty-one years after he left the U.S. Senateconfronting in the Texas Capitol the law firm of which John Connally was once a name partner, and where Connally ally, Bob Strauss, is a name partner today. In the years between Yarborough’s 1952 race for Governor and the 1991 fight against the American General Bill, there were: an epic struggle against Shivers in 1954; the 1956 race for governor, lost to Price Daniel by a mere three thousand one hundred and seventy-one questionable votes in the run-off; the’ 1957 special election for the U.S. Senate to fill Daniel’s seat; the 1958 campaign against Dollar Bill Blakely; and the 1964 campaign against Gordon McClendon in the Democratic primary and George Bush in the general election. In all of these campaigns, I served as one of Ralph Yarborough’s troopsnever more than an aide de camp, in the state headquartersand briefly on his U.S. Senate staff in both Austin and Washington. But Ralph Yarborough’s world view, and most especially his Texas view, has been seared into my mind, as it has into the minds of at least three generations of Texans who rallied to his banner. I have omitted from this list the 1970 12 FEBRUARY 23, 1996