Over Lyndon's Shoulder

As Texas Democrats poured into Dallas for their state convention last week, the party's voice of moderation, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, was riding high. Behind him was a decisive victory over Governor Allan Shivers in the fight for control of the party machinery; ahead, the horizons were Texas-broad. A trum-pet-and-trombone-led parade fanfared his election as both a favorite-son presidential candidate and chairman of the state's 56-man delegation to the national convention.

For a while it looked as if Johnson's ability to carry water on both shoulders might win him every honor in sight. He and the party's hard-core liberals, dominant in Texas during the early Roosevelt days, but almost voiceless during Shivers' years as governor, had agreed in advance upon the election of Temple's Byron Skelton, 51, longtime party loyalist, as national committeeman. But when Johnson tried to balance Liberal Skelton by proposing McAllen's conservative Mrs. Lloyd Bentsen Jr. as national committeewoman, he overstepped. The resurgent liberals, pointing to Beryl Bentsen's past support of Shivers, rallied behind their own candidate, Mrs. R. D. Randolph, a spry, 62-year-old grandmother and banker's wife from Houston. Late that evening Beryl Bentsen withdrew and Frankie Randolph was elected from the floor.

It was a sharp rebuff in his own backyard, but with the Texas delegation bound by the unit rule and Johnson moderates outnumbering liberal delegates two to one, Lyndon was still the man in the Texas saddle, still one of the most potent Democrats in the pre-Chicago picture. What Frankie Randolph's election meant was that in his future practice of moderation, Lyndon Johnson will have a beady eye looking over his left (liberal) shoulder.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.