Lyndon Johnson's Politics in Texas
EUBANKS, BICKNELL
Lyndon Johnson's Politics in Texas By Bicknell Eubanks DALLAS SENATOR Lyndon B. Johnson (D.- Tex.) is putting his technique to good use at home. He is applying the same methods he uses to...
...This has left Mrs...
...The opposition was a vestige of the hard feelings left among liberals when, with their help, Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Ray burn wrested control of the state organization from former Governor Allen Shivers...
...Rayburn was not willing to take it out on any Democrat who had kept faith with the party, and it is not Johnson's way to turn a party battle into a vendetta...
...There is every reason to believe that no one, not even the Senator himself, knows whether he will be a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960...
...They stress his ranch background, his intense interest in water-conservation problems, his own civil rights program...
...Randolph and her strong supporter, Ronald Dugger, editor of the liberal weekly, the Texas Observer, in a completely exposed, isolated position...
...His Texas backers began to emphasize many aspects of his record acceptable to liberals...
...The liberals were upset because Johnson and Rayburn did not go all the way to remove Shivers' conservative backers from all important party posts...
...His most important consideration right now is his health...
...Johnson is often linked with the Southern Democrats, with whom he unquestionably has many things in common...
...The Senator comes from southwest Texas, the section where the Old South begins to blend with the New West: He is really more of a Westerner than a Southerner...
...but he hardly fits the stereotype...
...The political results are two-fold...
...And when it became clear, on top of all this, that the State's labor movement was more willing to go along with Johnson than to buy a liberal pig-in-the-poke, the game was up...
...He is conscious of that, and, though he is working hard, friends and close associates note that he has learned to pace himself—something he was never able to do before his heart attack a few years ago...
...Besides, both of them have enjoyed considerable support from Texas conservatives, even though on their records they are quite liberal, from a Texas point of view...
...Politicians in the Texas capital believe Johnson's backers have already begun a campaign to convince voters north of the Mason-Dixon line that this is the case...
...But they were handicapped by the lack of a prominent statewide political figure to lead them...
...What Johnson has done, so quietly that few political writers in Texas are aware of it, is virtually to annihilate the remaining opposition to his leadership of the Texas Democratic party...
...This left the liberals floundering, and Johnson lost no time in moving in...
...For a year or so, the Texas liberals appeared to be a real threat to Johnson and Rayburn...
...They approached Senator Ralph Yarborough, Texas' junior Senator, who, though he accepted their election support, tactfully but firmly rejected their larger overtures...
...Johnson will now have little to worry about in his campaign for re-election next year—and he will have more time and energy to contemplate the national political situation and to assess his own prospects on that level...
...The organizational sparkplug of the liberals' drive was Mrs...
...But an important factor will be the uses to which he puts his particular geographical background...
...Thus, though he may seem to be uninterested in his own presidential prospects, his activities and those of his backers are inevitably undercutting that appearance of indifference...
...R. D. Randolph of Houston, national committeewoman from Texas...
...He is applying the same methods he uses to harmonize diverse Democratic party elements in the Senate to a situation that had made his position in Texas rather uncomfortable for the past couple of years...
Vol. 42 • February 1959 • No. 7
