Stevenson’s change of mind: Boyett, Murphey, Stevenson, Jr., interviews. Meeting at Center: Murphey interview.
Coke’s two speeches: Stevenson, quoted in DMN, HP, Aug. 15; HP, Aug. 17; AA-S, DMN, Aug. 18.
“It is no secret”: DMN, HP, Aug. 20.
“Repetition”: Bolton interview. No funds for repetition: Boyett, Murphey, Bolton, Brown interviews; author’s analysis of newspapers, Aug. 19–28. “If you have”: One of the places this ad did appear is FWS-T, Aug. 19. “So what?”: Connally interview. Johnson’s on the air three times a day: For example, Pickle to O’Brien, Aug. 16, “District 2 Chairman–Chilton O’Brien,” Box 106, JHP. Transcribed recordings: For example, DMN, Aug. 14. Mailboxes filled: A complete picture of the immensity of the Johnson mail Campaign, in its various forms, emerges from Boxes 63–127, JHP.
“Strange coincidence”: Peddy, quoted in CCC-T, July 7. Same phrases: AA-S, Aug. 19, 20. “Curiously”: McKay, p. 231. Stevenson’s schedule known: Boyett, Murphey, Stevenson, Jr., interviews. “We didn’t do”: Connally interview. Wallace charges: AA-S, DMN, HP, HC, CCC-T, Aug. 19, 20, 21.
“Coke can’t do that”; “She’ll fly”: Bolton, Jenkins interviews. “I really believe”: Nichols OH. Fear of flying: Mrs. Johnson interview with author. Five gallons; “You ask them”: Steinberg, p. 225, Smith, p. 139. “We need”: Johnson, quoteds by Busby. Told Marietta Brooks: Mrs. Brooks, quoted in FWS-T, Aug. 25; see also Montgomery, p. 37. “Overwhelmingly, vastly, horribly”: Mrs. Johnson, quoted in Montgomery, p. 37; Smith, p. 139. “Fanning out”: Rather, quoted in Smith, p. 138. Corpus Christi interview: CCC-T, Aug. 3. “Just like me”: Mrs. Johnson, quoted in Montgomery, p. 38. “I just pack and unpack”: Mrs. Johnson, quoted in FWS-T, Aug. 25. “A great asset”: Clark interview. “I couldn’t possibly”: Mrs. Johnson, quoted in CCC-T, Aug. 3. Adjusting the light: HP, Aug. 7. Car overturning: AA-S, Aug. 29; Smith, p. 140. Flood of mail: Smith, p. 140; Clark interview. “Wonderful”: Taylor to Johnson, Aug. 28, “District 18 Chairman-Jay Taylor (Abilene),” Box 107, JHP. “Sweet voice”: Mrs. W. S. Harris to Johnson, Nov. 4, “10—Hays County,” Box 80, JHP. “Hot, muggy”: Smith to Johnson, Nov. 4, “Houston–S,” Box 79, JHP. “Told her”: Montgomery, p. 37; Smith, p. 140. Telephoning: Montgomery, p. 38; Rather interview.
13. The Stealing
SOURCES
Books and documents:
Dugger, The Politician; Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics, 1945–1957; McKay, Texas and the Fair Deal, 1945–1952; Texas Almanac, 1949–50.
Leslie Velie, “Do You Know Your State’s Secret Boss,” Reader’s Digest, Feb. 1953.
Oral Histories:
Malcolm Bardwell.
Interviews:
Paul Bolton, Ernest J. Boyett, George R. Brown, Walter Buckner, Horace Busby, Edward A. Clark, John B. Connally, Kellis Dibrell, Charles W. Duke, D. B. Hardeman, Charles Herring, Walter Jenkins, Barney Knispel, Henry Kyle, William J. Lawson, Frank B. Lloyd, Ernest Morgan, Frank C. (“Posh”) Oltorf, Daniel Quill, Mary Rather, Luis Salas, Emmett Shelton, E. Babe Smith, Coke Stevenson, Jr., Warren G. Woodward, Ralph Yarborough.
NOTES
(All dates 1948 unless otherwise indicated)
Contrast between Hancock House and Brown Building: Author’s analysis of interviews with Bolton, Brown, Busby, Clark, Connally, Jenkins, Woodward, Herring, Rather and Quill. Polls: AA-S, Aug. 22, 27, 28. The day before the second primary, Hobby’s Houston Post ran a story—conceived by Charles Marsh—in which his own newspapers and other aggressively pro-Johnson papers “reported a shift in sentiment toward” Johnson. But this “newspaper survey” was not taken seriously by informed Texas political opinion (HP, Aug. 27).
“We needed blocs”; trips to the Valley: Clark interview. Secret Boss: Velie, “Do You Know Your State’s Secret Boss.” Using Brown & Root plane: Brown, Clark interviews. “Knew how”: Yarborough interview. “Our people”: Salas, “Box 13,” p. 55.
Quill’s importance to Johnson: Caro, Path to Power, pp. 282, 441, 719–20. “Need some money”: Quill to Johnson, Monday p.m., “San Antonio-PQ,” Box 67, JHP. “The man with the muscle”: Connally interview. Johnson wanted the Kilday organization: Johnson to Quill, July 28, “San Antonio-PQ,” Box 67, JHP; Bardwell OH; Connally, Hardeman, Duke, Quill interviews. See also Johnson to Owen Kilday, June 29, July 23; Johnson to Paul Kilday, Dec. 2, “San Antonio-IJK,” Box 66, JHP. Johnson’s reply assures Quill, “We will find some financial help someway,” but is notable mostly because of the inspirational tone he adopts to the tough, Tammany-type postmaster who idolized him. “We slept through the last one, but we can easily win this one,” Johnson wrote. “Won’t you take hold for me as you know I would take hold for you if you had a crisis on your hands.” Quill replied: “In a crisis you will not find me wanting.” (Quill to Johnson, July 31, all in “San Antonio-PQ,” Box 67, JHP.) See also HP, Aug. 28; Dugger, p. 3.
“Of course, there was Valmo Bellinger”: Connally interview; Johnson to Quill, July 28; Quill to Johnson, July 31 and undated, “San Antonio-PQ,” Box 66, JHP.
Final week: AA-S, CCC-T, DMN, DT-H, FWS-T, San Antonio Express-News, San Antonio Light, HP, HC, Aug. 24–28; McKay, pp. 233–40; Valley Evening Monitor.
A thousand dollars: Knight, quoted in Dugger, p. 321. San Antonio, Johnson on Election Day: Bardwell OH; Connally interview; SAE, AA-S, DMN, Aug. 29.
“This time had no trouble”; scene at Precinct 13: Salas, “Box 13,” p. 56; Lloyd, Rowe, Salas interviews. Holmgreen felt: Holmgreen, quoted in the San Antonio Express-News on July 31, 1977, said: “I saw more votes stolen for Lyndon Johnson than Johnson won the election by.” Young men were sure: HP, Aug. 29.
Stevenson didn’t know: The scene on the banks of the Llano at the Stevenson Ranch was described to the author by Boyett, Dibrell and Stevenson, Jr. It is also described in DMN, Aug. 28; HP, Aug. 28, 29. 10,000 votes from West Side: Quill interview; Bardwell OH.
Election returns: All the following returns were reported in various editions of the AA-S, CCC-T, DMN, HP, Aug. 29-Sept. 5. They were not official returns—there would be no official returns until the Democratic State Executive Committee certified the returns on September 14—but were the returns announced by the Texas Election Bureau. The Bureau was an unofficial, cooperative organization whose expenses were paid by participating newspapers. Its returns had previously been accepted as official because during the thirty-two years of its existence, the Bureau had always been correct in predicting election results. AA-S, Aug. 30.
Wild confusion: The atmosphere of vote counting in Texas during the 1940s is derived from the author’s interviews with Texas politicians active at that time, including Smith, Bolton, Clark, Boyett, Quill, Hardeman, Oltorf, Lawson, Jenkins and Shelton. Also DMN, Aug. 30, Sept. 1, 7. “In counting”: State Observer, Sept. 13. Perhaps the only instance: Caro, Path to Power, pp. 733–35. “Duval always votes”: DMN, Aug. 31. On August 30, Duckworth wrote: “The county [Duval] usually reports its vote complete before time for poll closing (DMN, Aug. 30).
10,000 Johnson votes in San Antonio: Malcolm Bardwell, a longtime aide to former San Antonio Mayor Maury Maverick and, in the 1948 election, the man who “handled the arrangement of the money and so forth for the organization,” said in his oral history interview, “People have always likened Lyndon to winning by—it was 83 votes and claimed it [was] Duval County. The truth of the matter, the 83 votes were won in Bexar County. Bexar County went about 10,000 votes in the [first] primary against Lyndon Johnson, and in the run-off, we changed it over and it was about 83 votes or 100 votes, something like that, for Lyndon Johnson. So really Bexar County is the guilty one and not Duval County.… Bexar County votes were the ones that were changed over.” At a later point in the interview, he said, “Over 10,000 votes had changed here. They never questioned Bexar County.” (When asked, “You don’t have any idea where those 10,000 votes came from?,” Bardwell replied, “People just changed their minds.”) Bardwell’s “10,000” figure is an approximation, of cour
se, but that figure is also used, in interviews with the author, by other figures—from both the Johnson and the Stevenson camp—familiar with the 1948 voting in San Antonio. Postmaster Dan Quill, who in the same interview explained how Mexican votes were bought in San Antonio, and how “they’d just stuff the ballots in there—as many as you wanted,” says of the August primary, “We got him 10,000 votes.” Quill says the Mexican-American vote amounted to “half the vote” in San Antonio. Stevenson aide Ernest Boyett says that “everyone knew Johnson bought 10,000 votes in the Mexican areas. His people boasted about it for years.” Because of the manner in which votes were falsified in San Antonio—the locking of doors and simply pulling levers after the polls were locked for the night, for example—and because, in contrast to some other counties, no testimony was ever taken under oath from any San Antonio election official—it has been impossible, forty years after the election, to determine the number of votes illegally cast for Lyndon Johnson in San Antonio, or to determine if the 10,000 figure is correct. But that figure does not appear to be greatly exaggerated. The votes cast for Stevenson may be assumed—both because of his popularity among Mexican-Americans and because no one from either camp contends that any substantial number of votes for him were cast illegally in either Mexican-American or black precincts—to have been valid votes. (He may, in fact, have received more votes in the second primary than were reported for him; there were reports, unconfirmed [perhaps because no investigation was ever made in San Antonio] of misreported figures.) In the July primary, in the twenty-five San Antonio precincts in which Mexican-Americans comprised 50 percent or more of the population, Stevenson, so popular among Mexican-Americans, had received 4,593 votes to 2,580 votes for Johnson—and, according to San Antonio observers, a substantial portion of even those Johnson votes were, in one way or another, illegal votes. In the August primary, Stevenson received 3,062 votes in those precincts, Johnson 4,396 votes. This represented a net gain for Johnson of 3,347. In fifteen precincts with a population between 30 and 50 percent Mexican, Stevenson’s total fell from 4,281 in July to 2,853 in August—a net Johnson gain of 2,266. In eleven precincts in which blacks combined with Mexicans made up 50 percent or more of the population, Stevenson led in July, 2,815 to 1,678, and Johnson led in August, 2,345 to 1,678—a net gain for Johnson of 1,802. In those fifty-one heavily Mexican-American or black precincts, therefore, Johnson’s total vote in August—9,594 votes—represented a net gain of 7,395 votes over Stevenson. But San Antonio’s twenty-three other precincts also included some with substantial pockets of Mexican-Americans, of course, and dramatic shifts to Johnson, amounting to well over 1,000 votes, occurred in some of them, too. (Author’s analysis of “1948 Bexar County Democratic Primary, Precinct-by-Precinct Official Returns” and “1948 Bexar County Democratic Primary Run-Off Precinct-by-Precinct Returns,” Record of Democratic Primary Elections, 1944–1952, Bexar County Administrator, San Antonio, Tx.) (Bexar County precincts 1–70 and 118–121 were in San Antonio.)
Johnson’s night: Jenkins, Rather interviews; DMN, Aug. 30. Brown Building telephone calls: Clark interview. Call to Huntress: Huntress, quoted in SAE, June 29, 1975. Also San Antonio Express-News, Aug. 7, 1977. Call to San Marcos: Buckner, Knispel, Kyle interviews. Kyle, from whom Johnson stole a college election while they were classmates at San Marcos, says that when he heard about the 1948 call, “I thought: it’s college all over again.”
Calls to Parr: Dugger, pp. 326–27, includes a quote from Homer Dean, a Parr lieutenant who was Johnson’s campaign manager in Jim Wells County, that “Looney and Ed Lloyd [Parr’s chief lieutenant and Dean’s boss] were in constant communication after the runoffs”; Salas interview; confidential source. “It was Lyndon Johnson’s office”: “Confidential source,” quoted in Dugger, p. 326. Duval County announced: DMN, Aug. 30.
“That was how”: Boyett interview. Stevenson understood: Boyett, Stevenson, Jr., interviews; DMN, Aug. 29, 30; HP, Aug. 29; AA-S, Aug. 30. “The thing that brought protest”: DMN, Aug. 31. “All of those”: Green, p. 115. Jumping into his car: DMN, Aug. 30. “The news came”: DMN, Aug. 30. “In the closest”: FWS-T, Aug. 30. 4,662 out of 4,679: DMN editorial, Sept. 1; Texas Almanac, pp. 458, 474. “The most exciting”: DMN, Aug. 31.
Election Bureau announced “complete” returns: HC, Sept. 1; FWS-T, Sept. 2. “Little doubt”: Bob Johnson, quoted in HP, Aug. 30. “Consistently accurate”: HC, Sept. 1. “Should Johnson lose”: DMN, Sept. 1. “STEVENSON LEADS”: CCC-T, DMN, Sept. 1.
“STEVENSON’S MARGIN FIRM”: DMN, Sept. 2.
351: At 7 p.m., an altered return, apparently due to election night confusion, arrived from Yoakum County in West Texas which showed Stevenson losing 126 votes, and his lead was cut to 255 votes, but a telephone call from Chambers County had already informed the Election Bureau that when the county’s official returns arrived the next day, they would show Johnson losing 96 votes, restoring Stevenson’s lead to 351. “STEVENSON HOLDS”: Brownsville Herald, Sept. 2.
“Good Senator”: DMN editorial, Sept. 2. Stevenson’s statement: DMN, HP, Sept. 2, 3. Election seemed over: FWS-T, DMN, Sept. 2.
Precinct 13 change: See following chapters. Final tabulation: Texas Almanac, 1949–1950, p. 474.
14. Lists of Names
SOURCES
Books, articles and documents:
Banks, Money, Marbles, and Chalk; Calvert, Here Comes the Judge; Dugger, The Politician; Jenkins and Frost, “I’m Frank Hamer”; Kahl, Ballot Box 13; Lynch, Duke of Duval; Matthews, San Antonio Lawyer; McKay and Faulk, Texas After Spindietop; Miller, Lyndon; Texas Almanac, 1949–50; Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy; Webb, The Texas Rangers.
James M. Rowe, “The Mesquite Pendergast: George B. Parr—Second Duke of Duval” (unpublished manuscript), Ingleside, Tex., 1959–60; Edgar G. Shelton, “Political Conditions Among Texas Mexicans Along the Rio Grande” (master’s thesis), Austin, Tex., 1946.
Clyde Wantland, “The Story of George Parr’s Ballot Box 13,” Texas Argus, Apr., 1962 and Spring, 1964.
Stevenson v. Tyson, Johnson et al., Civil No. 1640, United States District Court, Northern District, Texas, Fort Worth, Sept. 21–22, 1948 (Davidson, District Judge). Referred to hereafter as “DC Hearing transcript.”
Oral Histories:
Robert Calvert, Josh H. Groce, Callan Graham, Vann M. Kennedy, J. J. Pickle.
Interviews:
Paul Bolton, Ernest J. Boyett, George R. Brown, Horace Busby, Robert Calvert, Edward A. Clark, John B. Connally, Kellis Dibrell, O. C. Fisher, D. B. Hardeman, Walter Jenkins, Sam Houston Johnson, Herman Jones, Luther E. Jones, Vann M. Kennedy, Joe M. Kilgore, William J. Lawson, Frank B. Lloyd, Wingate Lucas, George Mahon, Gerald C. Mann, Ernest Morgan, Robert W. Murphey, Frank C. (“Posh”) Oltorf, Daniel Quill, James M. Rowe, Luis Salas, Emmett Shelton, E. Babe Smith, Arthur Stehling, Coke Stevenson, Jr., Gerald L. Weatherly, Ralph Yarborough, Harold Young.
NOTES
(All dates 1948 unless otherwise indicated)
“A concentrated effort”; “The corrected votes”: Stevenson, Johnson quoted in AA-S, Sept. 4. DMN comment: Editorial, Sept. 8. Johnson’s broadcast: AA-S, DMN, Sept. 7.
Restated by Rather, Jenkins, Herring: NYT, Aug. 2, 1977.
Late returns in Johnson’s 1941 election: Caro, Path to Power, pp. 736–40. No countywide totals anywhere: Texas Almanac, p. 474.
“The first instance”: Stevenson, press release, Nov. 12; In a statement on Sept. 11 (DMN, Sept. 12), Stevenson stated: “Much has been said by my opponent … about certain of those bloc voting counties having cast their votes for me in former elections.… This is the first time, however, that the returns have been amended several days after the polls had closed, to the point of trying to control the election of a state official.” More than a score: Among them, Hardeman, Young, Mahon, Yarborough, L. E. Jones, Herman Jones, Lloyd, Smith, Lawson, Kilgore, Lucas, Fisher, Mann, Stehling, Morgan, Shelton, Rowe, Stevenson, Jr., Kennedy, Johnson, Quill, Weatherly interviews. “Never”: Connally inter
view. “I never did know”: Clark interview. Typical of the opinion of informed observers is that of Gerald Weatherly. Weatherly, a Fort Worth attorney, was considered so expert on election contests in Texas that for twenty years he represented both George Parr and various members of the Guerra family in court battles over elections. “From my knowledge of these contests, and in all the counties from Laredo to Corpus Christi, I would say that Johnson was not correct in saying this was par for the course. It was not usual.” The difference, he says, was in the “grossness” of the 1948 results in Box 13, “the two hundred names in different ink,” for example. A well-informed outside observer of Valley politics, reporter James M. Rowe of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, who covered the Valley for more than twenty years, wrote in his manuscript, “The Mesquite Pendergast” (p. 40), that “it was customary for the count in Duval County to be complete in almost any election, no matter how many candidates were listed on the ballot, within two or three hours after the polls closed.” “The possible dangers”: Shelton, “Political Conditions,” pp. 125–26. “Lyndon, I’ve been”: Caro, Path to Power, p. 739.
Stevenson’s filings; Boyett, Murphey, Stevenson, Jr., interviews; Graham OH.
“Made us spread-eagle”: Tijerina, quoted in San Antonio Express-News, Aug. 7, 1977.
Graham’s youth in Junction; idolizing Stevenson: Graham OH. Stevenson’s faith in FBI; “no badge or gun”: Dibrell, quoted in Miller, p. 127. “A little uptight”: Graham OH; Graham, quoted in Miller, p. 127.
“Very clearly stated in the law”; “we cited”: Graham OH. “About 200 tallies from the end”: Brownlee, DC Hearing transcript, p. 15. Adams had “snuck in”: Graham OH. He had noticed: Adams, DC Hearing transcript, Sept. 21, p. 10. Also see Adams quoted in Dugger, p. 331. “Intimidated”: Graham OH.
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