Invitation to a Brawl

No Governor has ever run successfully for a fourth term in Texas. Still, John B. Connally might have given it a try if only his old friend Lyndon Johnson had taken him aside to plead: "John, we need you. Please run again next year." The President, mindful of Connally's virulent unpopularity among the state's sizable Mexican-American population, apparently merely shrugged and said: "John, it's up to you." So John decided to quit. In Texas, where party politics is only slightly more refined than saloon fighting, his decision not to seek re-election was an invitation to a bare-knuckled brawl.

Connally's conservative wing of the Democratic Party--the tough club in which Lyndon Johnson first learned the art of politics--has dominated Texas for generations. But if the state lacks a genuine two-party system, it does have a highly active two-party party. Next year, in the vacuum that Connally will leave, liberal Democrats led by the Governor's bitter enemy, Populist-minded Senator Ralph Yarborough, have hopes of breaking the conservative hegemony in Austin. Lamented one Connally partisan: "We just don't have anybody who can keep the thing together."

Thrice defeated in bids for the governorship during the fifties, Yarborough, 64, is thinking of making the run next year. "I could win hands down," Yarborough said last week in Washington. "But that doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to run." At least 18 other Texans are also being discussed as candidates, although only Lieutenant Governor Preston Smith, a colorless, ultra-conservative Democrat, has yet announced. "Everyone's coming out of the woodwork for this one," said a Republican leader.

Crossing the Line. The thing that troubles Connally Democrats is that "Raff" Yarborough might well win next spring's primary hands down, only to be defeated in November by a Republican--who would be the first to hold the office since Reconstruction. Though outnumbered 6 to 1 in voter registration, Texas Republicans are ideologically close to Connally Democrats. In a 1961 runoff election to fill Johnson's old Senate seat, Conservative Republican John Tower won handily, was re-elected last year with a startling 57% victory margin. Next year, Tower will be a possibility for the governorship, along with freshman Republican Congressman George Bush, a 20-year Texas resident who is the son of Connecticut's former Senator, Prescott Bush.

In the state's open primary, many Republicans might cagily cross party lines to vote for Yarborough. Their purpose would be to set up the liberal Democrat for November against a conservative Republican. In that situation, tens of thousands of conservative Democrats, unable to stomach their own party's liberal candidate, would probably vote Republican.

If that happens, Lyndon Johnson may regret that he did not persuade John Connally to stay on. A heavy turnout for the Republican Party in Johnson's home state in a presidential year would be more than an embarrassment: Johnson could conceivably lose Texas in the national election.

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