The Ayes of Texas

Four times in the past 19 years, Austin Attorney Ralph W. (for Webster) Yarborough had glad-handed his way across Texas in tireless battles for state office (attorney general, governor). Four times he failed--and before the last time former Governor Allan Shivers began to call him a "three-time loser." Last week Texas Liberal Yarborough, 53, took a fifth swing, this time at the 21-month, unexpired term in the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Price Daniel--who beat Yarborough for governor last year. Candidate Yarborough hit a home run.

At Yarborough campaign headquarters in Austin, his supporters whooped it up as the good news came in, reached their peak when they read a congratulatory telegram from Songstresses Patience and Prudence, whose Texan uncles helped Senator-elect Yarborough's campaign. They talked of sending off a wire to conservative Democrat Daniel, who is no Yarborough fan, simply quoting that line from the P. and P. hit record: "So long my honey, goodbye my dear, gonna get along without you now."

But there was more to the Texas result than could immediately be seen before voters' ayes, as a second look at the ballots showed. In the winner-take-all field of 22 candidates, little-known Houston Attorney Thad Hutcheson, an Eisenhower-backed Republican, got 220,361 votes, placed third. Second, with 291,106 votes, Democratic Congressman Martin Dies, a segregationist and onetime Red hunter, whose conservatism runs so deep that he had labeled Republican Hutcheson a "federal-righter." The combined Republican and conservative-Democrat vote gave Hutcheson and Dies about half a million votes, while Liberal Yarborough got 363,834 votes, 38% of the close to million-vote total. Yarborough had actually won with fewer votes than he had polled in any of his earlier, losing gubernatorial campaigns.

The results showed that 1) Texas Republicanism is still clearly in the minority, and 2) despite Liberal Yarborough's victory, conservatism is still the dominant political force in Texas. Editorialized the do-or-Dies Dallas Morning News: "Yarborough the liberal can no more win the 1958 senatorial nomination than he could in three unsuccessful tries for governor, unless Texas Democratic thinking changes materially."

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