W.S. Bellows, a partner at Brown and Root, gave Lyndon Johnson his house at 1901 Dillman. A mortgage of $10,000 was signed and within 8 days Bellows had released his lien against the property, in effect illegally gifting the house to Lyndon Johnson as a bribe.
$10,000 in 1943 = $175,354 in 2023 dollars – Additionally, that huge property was probably worth $15,000 at a minimum in 1943 and not $10,000. This would be equal to a $263,031 bribe in 2023 dollars.
1901 Dillman Street, both then and now, is a huge property on a large lot: https://www.google.com/maps/place/1901+Dillman+St,+Austin,+TX+78703/@30.2960659,-97.7739785,3a,75y,124.59h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s29rC1RKoeORLQCwKM9YLIA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m7!3m6!1s0x8644b5581c668c77:0x9af29c03b15e1b9a!8m2!3d30.2958823!4d-97.7736714!10e5!16s%2Fg%2F11c2hryq7p?entry=ttu
1901 Dillman Street, Austin, TX 78703 in June, 2023 had a Zillow estimate of worth at $3,637,400 and it is 6 bedrooms, 8 baths and 4,899 square feet.
Here is the grave of that Brown and Root crook who helped to bribe Lyndon Johnson: Warren S. Bellows (1889-1967) Sir Warren S. Bellows (1889-1967) - Find a Grave Memorial
Yet another allegation of potential misconduct involved the Johnsons’ 1943 purchase of a two-story triplex in the fashionable Tarrytown section of Austin. The residence, bequeathed by the late Mrs. Hazel Harper White to contractor W. S. Bellows who instructed estate administrator Charles F. Herring to sell, achieved notoriety when the challenger raised questions implying it was a payoff to Congressman Johnson from the construction firm of Brown and Root. Citing Travis County property records, Hollers informed radio listeners that the incumbent had signed a promissory note to Bellows at the time of purchase for $10,000 payable at a rate of $100 a month. Official documents, however, revealed that Bellows had released his lien against the property eight days later thereby giving the Johnsons title free and clear of all encumbrances. Equally curious, he noted, was the fact that Bellows was "...at that time a partner in Brown and Root Company–the very same company that built the Corpus Christi Naval Base on a cost plus contract and numerous other war projects while you were a member of the House Naval Affairs Committee." Inviting Tenth District voters to draw their own conclusions, Hollers demanded an explanation.
Waging War With The Regulars:
Lyndon Johnson’s 1946
Renomination Battle
L. Patrick Hughes, Austin Community College
Securing tens of millions of dollars in federal funds for projects involving flood control, rural electrification, public housing, and military preparedness, Lyndon Johnson had transformed the Tenth District of Texas during four and one-half terms in the House of Representatives. His position appeared unassailable as World War II drew to a close. Factors nonetheless converged in 1946 to imperil his political future. Having initially ridden Franklin Roosevelt’s coattails into office amidst the despair of the Great Depression, the congressman now faced reelection in a different and increasingly foreboding environment. Roosevelt was dead, dissatisfaction with fourteen years of Democratic rule in Washington mounted daily, and the Republican party stood ready to exploit the inevitable frustrations of economic reconversion. Most threatening, however, was the escalating warfare within Democratic party ranks in Texas between moderate and ultraconservative factions known respectively as Loyalists and Regulars. Abandoning Roosevelt over court reorganization and the third term issue, conservatives seized control of state government, attempted to block the president’s renomination during the war, and targeted moderates such as Lyndon Johnson for defeat in the party’s primaries in 1944. Though Johnson easily won renomination, challenger Buck Taylor’s vituperative attacks upon the New Deal and the congressman’s personal finances foreshadowed the full-blown assault of Austin attorney Hardy Hollers and the Texas Regulars two years hence. This bitter struggle for supremacy warrants further study as it reveals both the skill required to safely navigate the treacherous waters of postwar American politics and the depth of Lyndon Johnson’s conviction that active government could improve the lives of all citizens.
The distrust of government and dread of highly centralized power
in a remote national capital which underlay the 1836 revolution against the
Republic of Mexico served as cornerstones of Texas’ political culture for a
century thereafter. Residents regarded government as a necessary evil whose
dangers had to be constantly guarded against and limited its size, cost, and
power whenever possible. Adherents of Jacksonian Democracy, they resisted the
growth of federal authority in favor of state and local programs viewed as more
representative and easier to control. So strong were these beliefs that Texas
chose secession and war in 1861 rather than accept the Republican party’s
promised use of federal power to create a national economic system and prevent
the geographic expansion of slavery. Experiencing large, expensive, and active
government for the first time during the Reconstruction era, Texans reacted
with a vengeance in the aftermath, restricted it in every way possible under the
Constitution of 1876, and accepted new laws and initiatives only when convinced
of their absolute necessity. Only when the Great Depression ravaged the state
in the 1930s were Texans willing to accept significantly larger government in
both Austin and Washington, D. C.
The absolute dominance of the Democratic party was the other
foundation of Texas politics. With the Republican party discredited by the
Civil War and Reconstruction experiences, the state witnessed unbroken
Democratic rule in the years following readmission. When discontent with the
status quo surfaced from time to time, it found expression in either third
parties or factional infighting within Democratic party ranks. Only against the
backdrop of this traditional political culture and the absence of two-party
competition is it possible to understand the reaction of Texans to the New Deal
and the resulting bifurcation of the Democratic party in the 1930s and 1940s
which proved the birth pangs of a viable Republican opposition in the Lone Star
State.
Though sheltered temporarily by its distance from the nation’s
financial centers and economic mainstream, Texas could not escape the ravages
of the Great Depression beginning in October, 1929. Banks failed, crop prices
plummeted, and unemployment climbed slowly but steadily as the deflationary
spiral deepened. Five cent a pound cotton and nickel a barrel oil became
inescapable facts of life. State and local officials, watching helplessly as
government revenues shrunk, simply did not have the financial resources to meet
the unprecedented demand for relief much less underwrite massive public works
programs to lower unemployment and promote recovery. Political leaders were
forced to turn to Washington, D. C. for help despite the traditional fear of government.
The state’s powerful congressional delegation, working with Vice-President John
Nance Garner and Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) chairman Jesse Jones,
made Texans consistent winners in the appropriations scramble of the early New
Deal. Jones’ RFC and the Federal Emergency Relief Act pumped nearly $50 million
into the state in 1933-34 alone. Farmers received more than $44 million by 1936
under the Agricultural Adjustment Act while various federal agencies financed
and/or constructed public buildings, hydroelectric dams, highways, parks, and
playgrounds. Spending levels testified to both the successful efforts of
political leaders and the new relationship with the national capital. While
state and local authorities were spending $80 million between 1933 and 1936 on
direct assistance and work programs, the federal government contributed $351
million!
While the majority of Texas Democrats gratefully accepted the
infusion of federal monies, a small but vocal minority organized as the
Jeffersonian Democrats in 1936, labeled the New Deal socialistic, and opposed
the president’s reelection bid. Tracts such as Roosevelt’s Red Record warned
voters that, if unchecked, the administration’s program would ultimately
destroy private enterprise and self-government. Given the peril, a return to
Republican rule was preferable to four additional years of Roosevelt from which
the country might never recover. The Jeffersonian Democrats, however, had
little if any impact on the November balloting in Texas which the president
swept by a seven-to-one margin. Their insurgency nonetheless testified to an
ideological rift within Democratic ranks which any presidential miscalculation
could well exacerbate. It occurred almost immediately.
The president’s ill-fated court packing scheme, submitted to
Congress in February, 1937 without prior consultation and agreement with either
party leaders or legislative powers, drove a wedge between moderate and
conservative factions which quickly escalated into open warfare. Lyndon Johnson
made the effort to philosophically redirect the court the centerpiece of his
initial congressional campaign. By contrast, Vice-President Garner,
Representative Hatton Sumners, and Senator Tom Connally argued that the plan
was unconstitutional and, according to Sumners, a prelude to dictatorship. The
defection of such powerful figures sealed the bill’s defeat. More significant
in the long run, it signalled the end of the sense of crisis which had unified
party ranks and temporarily muted Texans’ traditional fear of government and
centralized power.
While the administration pushed an increasingly meager legislative
agenda and halfheartedly tried to purge the party of its most conservative
elements in 1938’s nominating primaries, Texas voters turned to the colorful
but reactionary W. Lee "Pappy" O’Daniel to succeed Governor James V.
Allred. Conservatives were in open revolt by 1940 when Roosevelt broke with
tradition and pursued an unprecedented third term. Though he carried the state
in November, the shouting matches and fistfights between Roosevelt supporters
and those backing the candidacy of John Nance Garner at the party’s state
convention in Waco the preceding April were omens of even more bitter struggles
ahead.
The special election necessitated by Senator Morris Sheppard’s
death in April, 1941 proved yet another escalation in the struggle for
supremacy. The multi-candidate contest quickly boiled down to the race between
Governor O’Daniel, an enigma whose isolationist views and vitriolic attacks on
organized labor made him anathema to New Dealers, and Representative Lyndon
Johnson, who asked for and received the support of the Roosevelt
administration. The young congressman crisscrossed the state urging support for
the commander-in-chief’s defense measures under slogans such as "Roosevelt
and Preparedness" and "Franklin D. and Lyndon B." He warned
voters that O’Daniel’s isolationist views would leave the nation defenseless as
the probability of war with the Axis powers grew ever larger. Early returns
indicated a victory for the moderates. Vote fraud in the election’s aftermath,
however, denied Johnson the Senate seat he coveted and set the stage for his
life-or-death struggles with Texas conservatives for the remainder of the
decade. Blaming the conservative faction for his first electoral defeat, he
determined to go to whatever lengths were necessary to insure survival and
victory in future confrontations.
As Americans plunged into the war effort at home and abroad in
1942, the disintegration of the once dominant Democratic party coalition and
the increasingly conservative political trend in Texas became unmistakable.
Governor Coke Stevenson, in partnership with Lt. Governor John Lee Smith and
the state legislature, restricted expenditures, decried federal price controls
and rationing programs, implemented controls on labor unions, and defended
white supremacy when racial strife broke out in Texarkana and Beaumont. Perhaps
nowhere was the heavy hand of the conservative camp more evident than at the
University of Texas at Austin. Frustrated in an earlier attempt to purge four
economics professors whose ideas it considered too liberal, the university’s
gubernatorially-appointed board fired popular President Homer T. Rainey in 1944
when he protested its decision to remove John Dos Passos’ USA from
sophomore English reading lists. When the Board of Regents came under severe
criticism for its action, its most reactionary members accused Rainey of
tolerating communist teachings, coddling a group of homosexual faculty members,
and favoring the admission of Negroes to the state university.
Emboldened by success at the state level, conservatives attempted
to purge Texas’ congressional delegation of its most progressive members in
1944. The Committee for Constitutional Action, dispensing funds solicited from
oil interests in Dallas and Houston, bankrolled primary campaigns against
Wright Patman, Lyndon Johnson, and Sam Rayburn, who had assumed the speakership
of the House of Representatives in 1941. One-time legislative clerk and
political gadfly Buck Taylor assailed Johnson with charges of financial
impropriety, favoring Negro equality and an end to the state’s white primary,
and misrepresenting the nature of his military service in World War II. Taylor
also sought to link the incumbent with the massive wartime bureaucracy and
increasingly unpopular wage and price controls. While Congressman Johnson
regarded Taylor as a nuisance rather than a serious challenger and easily won
renomination, the well-financed and mean-spirited attacks convinced him that
the political situation was likely to degenerate even further.
Conservatives attempted as well to deny President Roosevelt the
support of Texas voters in his bid for reelection in 1944. Operating under a
strategy devised by State Democratic Executive Committee chairman George Butler
in consultation with Governor Coke Stevenson and others, anti-Roosevelt forces
packed the state convention in May, enacted a platform which condemned the
"Communist-controlled New Deal," and selected uninstructed delegates
to the national nominating convention in Chicago. Catching Texas New Dealers
unprepared, the Butler-dominated convention named a slate of
anti-administration presidential electors and tabled a motion requiring them to
cast their votes in the Electoral College for whichever candidate carried Texas
in the general election. In essence, then, electors were free to cast the
state’s twenty-three electoral votes for the Republican nominee or a third
party candidate even if, as expected, Roosevelt was the overwhelming choice of
Texas voters. When loyalists led by Austin attorney Alvin J. Wirtz reversed
these actions at the second state convention in September and substituted a
slate of electors friendly to the president, conservatives assumed the name
"Texas Regulars", organized a third party structure, and asked voters
to write in the name of any Democrat other than Franklin Roosevelt. Though the
president swept to a four-to-one triumph, the internecine warfare had now
escalated to the point where reconciliation was no longer possible. It came as
no surprise, therefore, when the conservative camp launched an all-out effort
to eliminate Lyndon Johnson in 1946.
While almost no one had considered Buck Taylor a viable candidate
or realistic replacement as representative in 1944, Hardy Hollers was a serious
opponent neither Lyndon Johnson nor his supporters could dismiss as a joke. A
graduate of the University of Texas Law School, he had built a successful legal
practice in Austin and functioned briefly as an assistant district attorney in
the 1930s. Hollers, an Army Reserves captain since 1933, went on active duty in
November, 1941 and served for the war’s duration in Europe as a member of the
Judge Advocate General’s office stationed in London and Paris. Attaining the
rank of full colonel by war’s end, his tour of duty culminated in Weisbaden,
Germany preparing materials for the war crime trials eventually held at
Nuremberg. Johnson also faced for the first time an adversary with the
financial backing sufficient to match campaign expenditures dollar for dollar.
For seven weeks the Hollers forces inundated newspaper readers and radio
listeners with an ever-heavier barrage of advertisements and broadcasts
savaging the congressman and the state of affairs in Washington, D. C. As
Johnson responded and the war of words, charges, and countercharges
intensified, the challenger kept pace each step of the way.
The open and enthusiastic support of ex-Governor Dan Moody greatly
strengthened the Hollers campaign. Having presided over a reformist
administration between 1926 and 1930, Moody had subsequently become one of the
state’s most successful lawyers whose clients included its largest oil
companies. His hatred of Lyndon Johnson, dating from the 1942 senatorial primary
when Johnson had backed James Allred against both Moody and W. Lee O’Daniel,
grew to epic proportions throughout the 1940s and beyond as the Democratic
party splintered into warring factions. While Moody had taken a prominent role
in the effort to deny President Roosevelt renomination in 1944, Johnson had
openly aligned himself with the Loyalists. Now, two years later, the
ex-governor appeared repeatedly at the challenger’s rallies where he invariably
berated the incumbent as ineffective and unworthy of the office he held. The
endorsement and participation of Moody and other Austin conservatives gave the
Hollers insurgency the imprimatur of the Texas Regulars, set the tone for the
primary, and convinced Johnson that he was in for the fight of his political
life.
The Hollers campaign was quintessentially negative in both tactics
and tone. Shunning a reasoned exposition of current issues and alternative
government policies, the challenger and his supporters assailed Congressman
Johnson, his family, and his friends on a myriad of fronts. In a more innocent
time before personal assaults and misleading allegations became the norm of
electoral politics, Central Texans witnessed perhaps the nastiest campaign in
area history.
Implementing the first component of a four-pronged strategy to
convince voters of the need for change, Hollers and his supporters argued that
the incumbent had, by his own actions, broken faith with the people of the
Tenth District and the entire state of Texas. Opening his campaign for the
United States Senate in San Marcos on May 3, 1941, Congressman Johnson, Hollers
reminded voters, had pledged, "If the day ever comes when my vote must be
cast to send your boys to the trenches, that day Lyndon Johnson will leave his
Senate seat and go with them." Though unsuccessful in his senatorial bid,
the representative, a naval reservist since 1939, obtained an indefinite leave
of absence from the House and went on active duty within hours of the American
declaration of war against Japan. Assigned the rank of lieutenant commander, he
surveyed manpower needs in stateside shipyards before departing the country in
May 1941 as part of an interservice team ordered to assess the military
situation in the South Pacific. The new lieutenant commander participated in
but one combat mission, albeit one for which General Douglas MacArthur awarded
him the Silver Star, before a presidential order recalled all members of
Congress in the armed forces to their legislative responsibilities. Congressman
Johnson’s military service ended with his arrival in Washington, D. C. in early
July, seven months following the attack upon Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Though Buck Taylor had made little headway criticizing the
congressman’s war record in 1944, Hollers made the issue one of the
cornerstones of his challenge. Lashing out from a two-page spread in the San
Marcos Record , the Austin attorney took Johnson to task.
"Everyone - and especially those of you who served in the sea forces -
know how he kept that pledge. He used his political influence on a naval
committee to wrangle a commission as lieutenant commander while the great
majority of you signed on as apprentice seamen or were commissioned as ensigns.
He went to a few months sight-seeing tour of the Pacific with a camera in one
hand and leading his publicity agent by the other. Then, before the navy, the
marines and the army began fighting their way back up the long road that began
at Guadalcanal, he hurried back to the safety of Congress."
Repeatedly denying any intent to belittle the incumbent’s war
record, Hollers maintained the issue was solely that of honesty; Lyndon Johnson
had failed to honor his word. The challenger’s scathing rhetoric, such as that
at a Brenham rally, testified otherwise. "Johnson became a lieutenant
commander without benefit of service as either an enlisted man or lower
officer. As a lieutenant commander, he was supposedly competent to command a
boat. I say that Johnson wouldn’t know how to start a destroyer moving and that
if he did get it moving by accident, he wouldn’t know how to stop it or to run
it anywhere but into the bottom of the ocean." In contrast to such
deprecations, Hollers and his backers publicized his military record whenever
possible hoping voters, and especially returning veterans, would reward an
officer who had served in the European theater for the duration of America’s
war effort.
Turning to a second theme upon which they hoped the campaign would
turn, the challenger and his sponsors argued that Lyndon Johnson had proven
himself unqualified for and unworthy of the position of honor with which
citizens had entrusted him in 1937. Introducing Hollers at a mass rally in
Austin’s Wooldridge Park, Dan Moody asserted that the incumbent was incapable
of providing the representation in Washington D. C. area residents deserved and
to which they had grown accustomed. Congressman Johnson simply lacked the
abilities of predecessors Joseph P. Sayers, Albert S. Burleson, and James P.
Buchanan. They had quickly become influential legislators of national
prominence. According to the ex-governor, "Mr. Johnson has been in
Congress now for approximately nine years. In that length of time, he has
neither enacted a good law nor repealed a bad law and in my judgment he does
not know which ones are good and which are bad, and if he was there for ninety
years I don’t believe he would either pass a good one or repeal a bad
one." So ineffective was the current officeholder, Moody concluded,
"...I think you could almost kill people with a stick on the streets of
Austin who have a greater ability to act as congressman than Mr. Johnson
does."
Building upon Moody’s observations, Hollers repeatedly addressed
the topic of ineffectiveness for the duration of the campaign. Chronic
absenteeism, he suggested, was one reason his opponent failed session after
session to craft legislative solutions to the growing list of national problems
which beset the American people. Citing the Congressional Record as
documentation in newspaper advertisements and radio broadcasts, the candidate
charged that Johnson had missed nearly forty per cent of all roll call votes in
the House of Representatives during the preceding year. Concluding that the
incumbent spent too much time in Austin running family-owned radio station KTBC
and touring postwar Europe on an extended congressional junket with no
meaningful purpose, Hollers pledged to be a full-time representative for Tenth
District constituents in the nation’s capital.
To make matters worse, Hollers continued, Johnson constantly
claimed credit for work done by others in hopes of shielding his own poor
record from Central Texas voters. Again and again he sarcastically ridiculed
the congressman’s assertion that rural electrification and the successful
harnessing of the Colorado River were the greatest achievements of his tenure
in office. "The credit for rural electrification does not belong to Lyndon
Johnson. It is a matter of record that the Rural Electrification Administration
was created on May 20, 1936 before my opponent was first elected to Congress
... As for the Lower Colorado River Authority–that was created in 1934 -- three
years before Lyndon Johnson became congressman. The heavy, back-breaking spadework
of that great project was not done by Lyndon Johnson, but–by Johnson’s
predecessor–Congressman James P. Buchanan ...I pledge you that when I am sent
to Congress from the Tenth Congressional District, I will not plagiarize my
predecessor in office, by stealing from him any of the credit which is
rightfully his just for the sake of a few votes."
A valid yardstick of Johnson’s record, Hollers maintained, was his
total failure as a member of Congress to anticipate and plan for the needs of
the postwar era. The task facing the nation was indeed monumental. Would
victory and peace, as many citizens feared, plunge the country once again into
economic depression? Hundreds of thousands of returning veterans required both
housing and jobs. Satisfying their demands would be exceedingly difficult given
a scarcity of building materials and industrialists’ need to retool as quickly
as possible for the manufacture of traditional consumer goods. Though no one
wanted an inflationary spiral similar to the one that plagued the nation
following the First World War, almost all Americans were eager for government
wage and price controls and rationing programs to end. Grudgingly accepted by
the majority of citizens as a wartime necessity, such economic measures became
political dynamite with the military defeat of the Axis powers. Work stoppages
were inevitable given organized labor’s determined efforts to defend and
management’s actions to reverse union gains of the preceding decade. Despite
the immensity of the task, could any knowledgeable citizen, Hollers asked,
blindly believe in mid-1946 that the federal government had not failed
miserably?
Hoping to take advantage of the growing anti-government mood
across the country, Hollers attempted to lay the many frustrations and dislocations
of the postwar era on Lyndon Johnson’s doorstep. He had to be "charged
with his portion of the blame for what has happened to us during this hectic,
disgraceful year of 1946." For example, the challenger argued, the acute
housing shortage in Central Texas was an unnecessary tragedy. Given the
probable influx of war veterans wishing to study at the University of Texas and
other area institutions, the congressman should have foreseen and addressed the
problem before it reached crisis proportions. The disgrace of homeless soldiers
who had served their country with distinction could have been avoided had the
Tenth District been represented by an efficient full-time congressman in
Washington, D. C. Where exactly, the challenger asked voters, did Johnson stand
on the Office of Price Administration? During his 1944 reelection campaign the
incumbent had promised constituents he would move for its abolition with war’s
end but now, nearly a year after Japan’s surrender, he appeared willing to let
bureaucratic interference in the private sector continue indefinitely.
Herein lay the real threat to America’s future. Johnson was an
integral part of the bloated, expensive, and overly-bureaucratized government
created to end the Great Depression but which had now outlived its usefulness
and impeded every needed change. What was needed, he steadfastly maintained,
was "...a return to our American way of life, an end to the despotic rule
of arrogant bureaucrats...Congress must be given new blood, new leadership."
A third focal point of the Regulars’ battle plan was Hollers’
charge that Lyndon Johnson had systematically constructed and put in place a
political apparatus which gave he and his cronies near dictatorial control of
the Tenth District. Whenever the opportunity had arisen since his election to
the House of Representatives in 1937, he had allegedly secured positions for a
growing legion of sycophants with numerous governmental agencies such as the
Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), rural electrical cooperatives, and the
postal service. Nor, according to Hollers, was the congressman reticent to
demand repayment. "Lyndon Johnson has spent his time telling post office
employees and other federal employees that to keep their jobs they had to work
for him; he has spent his time telling civil service appointees that they
cannot have their jobs unless he, Lyndon Johnson, approves their having those
jobs. Hardy Hollers charges and dares him to deny that he has ruined and
utterly devastated the great and good civil service system in this
District." So commonplace had the congressman’s manipulation of the
bureaucracy for his own political advantage become by 1946, the challenger
continued, he "...sent word to me through a friend that if I would
withdraw from this race that he was sure that I could get an appointment to a
certain high federal position in Washington."
Such a concentration of power, Hollers warned voters, struck at
the very heart of representative democracy. It stifled criticism, gave the
incumbent a near insurmountable advantage at election time, and insulated him
from the control of the people. How could citizens rely upon an official
virtually immune from the possibility of electoral defeat to hear and act upon
their sentiments in Washington, D. C. ? Without the threat of removal from
office, there could be no true democracy for the residents of Central Texas.
Who then did Lyndon Johnson represent? According to his
challenger, only the wealthiest and most influential members of the
congressman’s inner circle benefitted from his efforts. For Herman Brown,
prominent contractor and co-owner of the massive Brown & Root construction
firm, he had pursued and secured numerous profitable wartime contracts. While
average constituents had grappled with shortages and government controls during
the war, Brown had grown even wealthier building military facilities at
taxpayers’ expense. Alvin Wirtz, Johnson mentor, attorney for both Brown &
Root and Humble Oil and Refining Company, and chief counsel of the LCRA, had soaked
the river authority for almost $90,000 in legal fees while the congressman
stood silently watching. Edward A. Clark and Everett L. Looney, partners in the
legal firm which represented Congressman Johnson’s own radio station, had
muscled their way to the public trough as well. When Looney and Clark client
Central Power & Light had property to unload in Central Texas, the
attorneys found a willing buyer in the river authority over whose board of
directors Wirtz and Johnson exercised complete control. The attorneys, Hollers
inferred, also found the representative of invaluable assistance in obtaining
Securities and Exchange Commission approval for a utilities merger they had
negotiated and from which they stood to collect a hefty fee. While Johnson’s
coterie of insiders grew rich, the needs of average constituents received
little if any consideration.
The final and most aggressively pursued thrust of the Hollers
campaign involved an all-out assault upon the congressman’s character and
honesty. Building upon and expanding allegations first leveled by Buck Taylor
in 1944, Johnson, according to Hollers, Moody, and others, was an unprincipled
opportunist who had systematically used his position in the House of
Representatives to enrich himself and various members of his family.
The most serious of the many charges involved Mrs. Johnson’s
acquisition of struggling Austin radio station KTBC in early 1943 and its rapid
transformation into a profitable business enterprise. Seizing upon rumors which
had circulated throughout the capital city since the date of the purchase,
Hollers and Moody alleged that the congressman had exerted pressure upon the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny a pending sale to rival
applicant J. M. West, Sr. enabling the Johnsons to obtain the potentially
valuable operation for a mere $15,500. Publicly ridiculing the congressman’s
assertion that the station was his wife’s business in which he had absolutely
no interest or involvement, they questioned in every available forum how long-denied
requests for a change of frequency, an increase in power, and extended hours of
operation suddenly won FCC approval shortly after the station changed hands. To
make matters worse, they inferred, the incumbent used the radio station as a
conduit through which he could receive and legitimize payments from area
businessmen for defending their interests in the nation’s capital. According to
the ex-governor, "...he has had advertising on that radio station from
people who want favors in Washington in the way of priorities and other things
and to my way of thinking, a congressman or a man in that business, if he is in
that business, he has no business in Congress. He cannot serve two masters ...
as long as Mr. Johnson runs a radio station and takes advertising from people
who want favors from the department in Washington, Mr. Johnson ought not to
represent this district or any other district in the United States
Congress."
Nor, the opposition maintained, was the congressman content with
but one radio station in the growing Austin market. Aware of efforts by at
least one group of investors to gain FCC approval for a third Austin station,
Johnson wielded his political clout to secure an operating license instead for
ten war veterans, all of them close political allies. The congressman’s
intervention was yet another example of the preferential treatment received by
members of the Johnson machine. Even so, the relationship between Johnson’s
KTBC and KVET, as the new station launched by John Connally, "Jake"
Pickle, and eight others was dubbed, was indeed curious. Why, asked Hollers,
would Johnson welcome, indeed help create, competition for his own prosperous
business? Why would he grant the new station permission to broadcast its signal
temporarily from the KTBC tower? While neither Hollers nor his supporters ever
made the specific allegation, they clearly hoped that voters would surmise from
such questions that the congressman was a silent partner who masterminded
KVET’s creation to avoid real competition and thereby strengthen his
stranglehold on the Austin market.
Yet another allegation of potential misconduct involved the
Johnsons’ 1943 purchase of a two-story triplex in the fashionable Tarrytown
section of Austin. The residence, bequeathed by the late Mrs. Hazel Harper
White to contractor W. S. Bellows who instructed estate administrator Charles
F. Herring to sell, achieved notoriety when the challenger raised questions
implying it was a payoff to Congressman Johnson from the construction firm of
Brown and Root. Citing Travis County property records, Hollers informed radio
listeners that the incumbent had signed a promissory note to Bellows at the
time of purchase for $10,000 payable at a rate of $100 a month. Official
documents, however, revealed that Bellows had released his lien against the
property eight days later thereby giving the Johnsons title free and clear of
all encumbrances. Equally curious, he noted, was the fact that Bellows was
"...at that time a partner in Brown and Root Company–the very same company
that built the Corpus Christi Naval Base on a cost plus contract and numerous
other war projects while you were a member of the House Naval Affairs
Committee." Inviting Tenth District voters to draw their own conclusions,
Hollers demanded an explanation.
The avalanche of insinuation continued for the duration of the
primary election, repeated again and again over the radio, in daily newspaper
advertisements, and on the stump across the district. Why, for instance, had
the federal government chosen property owned by Johnson’s father-in-law, Thomas
Jefferson Taylor, as the site of an ordinance works? Why had Mr. Taylor
received $77,000 for his Harrison County property, nearly double what the
government had paid any of his neighbors for their land? "Now why do you
suppose," asked Hollers, "that this small country grocer suddenly
blossomed forth with all this land on a site chosen by the ordinance work for a
big government camp? Do you suppose Mr. Johnson had anything to do with
it?" Why also had Mr. Taylor suddenly gone into the construction business
at seventy years of age shortly after his son-in-law’s election to Congress?
Was it not true that the Taylor Construction Company, now valued at hundreds of
thousands of dollars, had prospered during the war years on projects involving
rural electrification, an area in which Congressman Johnson "by his own
admission, has been very active"?
While the campaign to unseat Lyndon Johnson concentrated
overwhelmingly upon his alleged shortcomings and abuse of power, the Hollers
platform, though couched in generalizations, was a classic indictment of modern
American government by the Texas Regulars. Significant action was needed to
solve a myriad of problems. Federal interference in the agricultural sector had
to end. The pyramiding of unnecessary rules and regulations devastating the
American businessman had to be systematically removed. According to Hollers,
"...we ought to cut out these cost-plus contracts; these big bureaucratic
salaries; this business of hiring everybody to work for the government who
doesn’t have the brains to make a living for himself in the ordinary walks of
life." Strikes and lockouts should be outlawed, a permanent Office of
Price Administration prohibited, and states allowed a free hand in the field of
education. Useless agencies and bureaus had to be eliminated. If Americans
would but demand a return to the concept of limited government upon which the
country was founded, Congress and president could slash expenditures, reduce
income taxes, and simultaneously balance the federal budget. While promising
support for rural electrification, farm-to-market roads, and preferences for
veterans, the Hollers program endorsed return to an earlier political era.
Having skirmished periodically with the ultraconservative element
since 1940, Lyndon Johnson now found himself the target in a political war he
could no longer escape. The postwar environment in Texas was perilous at best
for a liberal incumbent long identified with Franklin Roosevelt and the New
Deal. The opposition which had derisively shouted him down at the 1944 state
Democratic convention as "Roosevelt’s pin-up boy" was organized and
committed to his elimination. The president who had steered the nation through
both depression and war was dead and gone and the country moving in a more
conservative direction. While confident of his ability to defeat Hardy Hollers,
the congressman understood the stakes involved were great. A narrow victory
which revealed weaknesses and left the impression of vulnerability could well
encourage future challenges to his House seat. Even more important to Johnson,
still smarting from the theft of the 1941 election, a less than impressive
triumph in 1946 would likely doom a successful race against Senator W. Lee
O’Daniel whose term would expire in two years. Accordingly, Congressman
Johnson, upon learning of Hollers’ likely candidacy in March 1946, accepted and
began to act almost immediately upon Alvin Wirtz’s advice that he "had
better get in shape and be prepared to go at it hammer and tongs."
From his arrival in Washington, D. C. in late 1931 as
newly-elected Congressman Richard J. Kleberg’s secretary, Lyndon Johnson
understood with greater clarity than any of his contemporaries the inestimable
utility of information in the political arena. It was an edge he had sought to
maximize ever since and one which now paid handsome dividends. The network of
friends and allies so meticulously created and maintained throughout the years
in Central Texas provided details gleaned from various sources on Hollers’
activities including strategy and financial support. Such information allowed
the Johnson campaign to counter or blunt Hollers’ efforts. The congressman,
however, wanted more information even if it involved overstepping the bounds of
propriety.
Aware of Hollers’ hopes of capitalizing upon his military record,
Congressman Johnson turned to Tommy Corcoran and James Rowe, government
insiders and long-time friends, for assistance. Using his personal contacts
within the War Department, Corcoran obtained Hollers’ service files dating back
to 1918. Rowe, an ex-Roosevelt aide and Army officer assigned to the
international tribunal conducting the Nuremburg Trials, sought information on
the challenger’s legal contributions. Little, however, came of Rowe’s
inquiries. As he wrote Johnson, "I tried to get CIC [Counterintelligence
Corps] to move in on Hollers for me but they wouldn’t - my contacts aren’t good
enough - yet."
Using such contacts, the representative discovered that his
opponent, a self-proclaimed veteran of World War I, had spent all sixty-five
days of his enlistment on the campus of Southwestern University as a
participant in the Students Army Training Corps while pursuing his college
studies. As a colonel with the Judge Advocate General’s office during World War
II, Johnson learned, Hollers had spent all but three months of his tour of duty
in London and Paris working primarily on court martial proceedings involving
American soldiers. As for the challenger’s work on war crimes cases, he was but
one of a legion of lawyers preparing materials for the prosecution of Nazi
officials. Johnson, however, made only minimal use of such information in
public during the campaign. While he and his supporters occasionally referred
condescendingly to his opponent as "the little colonel", he may well
have sensed what Hollers and his spokesmen did not; voters were likely to
resent politicization of any veteran’s war record and hold the accuser
accountable.
The congressman did however move forcefully behind the scenes to
limit Hollers’ access to voters. Only two area radio stations - Johnson’s own
KTBC and WOAI in San Antonio - had the signal strength sufficient to cover all
ten counties of the sprawling Tenth District. Hollers speaking on KTBC was never
a possibility but Johnson feared a repeat of the 1944 primary when Buck Taylor
had used WOAI to blanket all of Central Texas with allegations of wrongdoing
against the congressman. He therefore instructed John Connally, functioning as
de facto manager of the Johnson campaign, to phone Hugh Halff, president of
WOAI’s parent company. "Ask him what time he has made available to Hollers
and to what extent. Ask him if the same time will be made available to us. Of
course, I would prefer that they handle the state races and not use their
limited time in our district, but this must be handled carefully."
A week later Johnson stepped up the pressure with his own letter
to Halff stating that he had done nothing in 1944 when Taylor had used a number
of stations including WOAI to spread "...a pack of slanderous, libelous
lies." Now Hollers, who had announced he intended to use the San Antonio
station, "...is telling exactly the same slanders." Congressman
Johnson concluded with a thinly veiled warning. "I am not going to act
hastily in filing suits for libel and slander, but other people, not connected
with me, are also brought into these libels and I cannot speak for them.
Necessarily, the disseminator of a slander or libel is equally culpable with
the person who utters it. I thought you would want to know my feeling in this
matter." Whether because of such admonitions or not, WOAI broadcast but
one address by Hollers who found himself limited to airing his speeches over
KNOW whose signal barely reached the city limits of Austin.
Unlike 1944 when Buck Taylor’s charges of enrichment had attracted
little attention and were therefore largely ignored by the incumbent, Hardy
Hollers’ repeated allegations quickly became an unavoidable issue despite
Johnson’s efforts to limit his audience. Immediately following Hollers’ first
speeches, Connally alerted the congressman that, "His insinuations about
your affluence and the enrichment of your friends will have some effect and
will have to be answered by someone. I do not think you will have to do it ...
we will have the people to answer him when the time comes." It came
quickly.
Convinced Hollers’ charges had to be addressed, the Johnson team’s
response was two-fold. While Lyndon or Lady Bird themselves would eventually
have to knock down the allegations, the Johnsons’ friends and supporters took
up their defense in mid-June with a series of well-publicized radio addresses.
John Connally led the parade of speakers to the KTBC microphone with a scathing
response to the politicization of the congressman’s military record. Reminding
listeners that Douglas MacArthur had awarded Johnson the Silver Star for his
voluntary participation in what Brigadier General W. F. Marquat had described
as a suicide mission, Connally denounced "the personal vilification and
the slanderous tactics employed by this special interest candidate." As
for the Johnsons’ supposed wealth, it consisted only of his salary as
representative and what his wife had inherited from her deceased mother’s
estate. "To you, Colonel Hollers, and to your fellow-traveler Texas
Regulars, until Congressman Johnson returns, I say that those of us who have
fought this war on the battlefields will turn the revealing searchlight of
truth on you and your purveyors of half-truths."
Over the next six weeks Johnson’s allies systematically dissected
and at least partially refuted the vast majority of the challenger’s
accusations. Henry Moore, an ex-Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, stated
that his examination of Johnson’s financial records revealed absolutely no
wrongdoing. Hollers’ comments to the contrary, he concluded, reflected either
total ignorance of the facts or a conscious attempt to twist and misrepresent
them for political purposes. W. E. Syers, one of KVET’s ten partners, denied any
financial involvement by the Johnsons in the new station and labeled Hollers’
insinuations as bordering on perjury. W. C. Wofford, attorney for the Taylor
Construction Company, rebutted the challenger’s "scurrilous
insinuations" and Charles F. Herring defended the purchase of the
residence on Dillman Street as a standard real estate transaction. O. L.
Norman, one-time chief engineer with the LCRA, and E. Babe Smith, an
instrumental force in the organization of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative,
testified to the congressman’s unstinting efforts on behalf of both flood
control and rural electrification. While Hollers belittled what he termed a
whitewash, their efforts provided voters with a rebuttal and helped make the
challenger’s credibility and motivation major issues.
It was Lyndon Johnson, however, who delivered the decisive blow.
Launching his reelection bid on the evening of July 6, 1946 before an overflow
crowd at Wooldridge Park and a live radio audience, the congressman delivered
the most important speech of his political career to date. Alone on the
platform except for his wife and mother, Johnson reminded listeners of the
Texas Regulars’ effort to unseat him two years earlier. "They spent untold
thousands sowing down this district with slanderous yellow sheets. They sent
hirelings to circulate - to whisper - to stand on street corners and
question–to voice every foul rumor these evil minds could concoct." This
time, Johnson continued, the same selfish interests "have dragged into the
mire the name of my sweet wife." They were attempting to mislead with
"craftily worded questions about property bought with money she inherited
from her dead mother and business affairs of her father which took place while
I was still in uniform." Their stories of wrongdoing, he insisted, were
"political yarns ... fabricated and circulated by stooges of Standard Oil
and Wall Street gold." He, however, refused to "wallow in their
pigpen." Brandishing folders containing records of every private and business
transaction which had come into question, Johnson climaxed with a dramatic
gesture. "I am putting them on this table for any and all to see."
There they remained, unexamined, for the remainder of the evening. As the
candidate reminded voters in Washington County three days before the primary,
not a single one of the ten thousand people present had come forward.
"That information was available yesterday, it is today, it will be
tomorrow to any sincere, honorable person who may have an honest doubt."
Having effectively parried the opposition’s knockout punch,
Johnson deftly turned the issue to his advantage during the campaign’s final
three weeks. Storming the district in his typical blitzkrieg fashion, the
congressman concentrated on past contributions and the challenge of the future
only occasionally referring to the opposition’s charges. "My mother taught
never to say ugly things about ugly people," he told voters. "I am
not going to reduce a campaign for an important office down to a mud-slinging
contest." Meanwhile, daily advertisements in the Austin papers under such
headlines as "False In One Thing - False In All", "Slander or
Statesmanship," and "Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness" pointed
out every inaccuracy in Hollers’ bill of particulars. The congressman’s spokesmen
did the same on radio. So completely had the issue been turned by campaign’s
end, Buck Taylor, who had first leveled such allegations of enrichment in 1944,
endorsed the incumbent. "I have seen and heard and read a lot of abuse and
slander and vilification in political campaigns," he noted. "But the
boys who are putting it on Johnson this year have reached new heights–or, I
should say, lows."
The Johnson camp succeeded as well in portraying Hardy Hollers as
a creation of and front man for ex-governor Dan Moody and the Texas Regulars
out to punish the congressman for his support of Franklin Roosevelt and the New
Deal. Describing the Texas Regulars in radio broadcasts as the
"illegitimate union of Republicanism and reactionary Democrats,"
Connally blasted Colonel Hollers and his "Houston millionaire
Roosevelt-hating Regulars" for their smear tactics. Reminding listeners of
Moody’s role in the 1944 state convention, he left little doubt that the
one-time governor was the primary architect of the Hollers campaign. The
Austin American-Statesman, long supportive of both Lyndon Johnson
and Franklin Roosevelt, echoed the same theme in a front page editorial
endorsing the incumbent. Recalling for readers the Regulars uprising of 1944,
the paper stated, "Mr. Hollers may not be fully aware of the kind of
support his candidacy is being given by the interests nor the manner in which
they are operating behind the scenes to add their control of the 10th Congressional
District to that of their control of state government with which these
interests have long been identified."
Despite the conservative mood sweeping the nation, the congressman
himself embraced and promoted a clear-cut contest waged along ideological
lines. The real opposition, he asserted, was not Hardy Hollers but PUP, an
acronym for a coalition of petroleum, utility, and packer interests
"sometimes called the Texas Regulars." Having failed to eliminate him
two years earlier, the same forces were now committed to his defeat for one
major reason: "I was for Franklin D. Roosevelt." Going down the line
with the president since his election to Congress, he had incurred the wrath of
Standard Oil and other petroleum companies by voting against legislation
awarding them unwarranted windfall profits. He had enraged giant utility firms
by supporting public power and ending their stranglehold on Central Texas.
Agricultural packers had joined the campaign after Johnson sided with small farmers
in defense of price controls necessary to check inflation and win the war.
Expressing pride in his support for the dead president, Johnson lashed out at
his adversaries. "I cry shame upon them tonight for carrying their hatred
of Franklin Roosevelt beyond the grave." While Hollers, Moody, and others
continued to allege wrongdoing and ineptitude, the congressman stressed his
record of service and the challenge of the future.
Voicing his belief in an activist government, Johnson pointed with
justifiable satisfaction to the amazing transformation of Central Texas since
his initial election to Congress. Working with officials of the Roosevelt
administration and the LCRA, he had helped secure the funds needed to complete
construction of the hydroelectric dams which had subsequently tamed the
Colorado River and brought public power to area residents. Devastating floods
were a thing of the past and consumers enjoyed utility rate savings of $1
million a year. Utilizing funds available from the Rural Electrification
Administration (REA), farmers and ranchers with the assistance of their
congressman had organized the world’s two largest electrical cooperatives and
connected over 12,000 rural homes to the LCRA’s power grid. Over $7 million in
federal monies had paid for the construction of farm-to-market roads across the
Tenth District since 1937 and Austinites enjoyed the benefits of slum clearance
and low-cost, self-liquidating public housing. Soil conservation programs
launched by the New Deal were preserving the farmer’s most precious asset.
Effective representation in Washington, D. C. had also insured Central Texans a
fair share of the war’s economic windfalls. Military installations in Austin,
San Marcos, and Bastrop had pumped federal funds into the region while
simultaneously making a vital contribution to the war effort. "Those are
some of the jobs which we, the people, have been working at since you sent me
to work for you in Washington," Johnson told constituents. "I have
asked for reelection on the kind of job I have done for you - as the best
evidence of the kind of job I’ll keep doing."
As the country struggled with reconversion, the congressman
assured voters he was at work representing their interests. Acknowledging
housing as a crucial need, he made public the award on May 1, 1946 of over
three hundred housing units for area colleges by the Public Housing Authority.
Added to the seven hundred units already secured for Austin, "the Tenth
District," the congressman noted, "has now received more emergency housing
than any other district of like size in the United States." His successful
negotiations with the War Assets Administration on behalf of the University of
Texas, came the announcement from Washington two days later, would return to
productive use the government’s abandoned magnesium plant north of Austin.
Leasing the facility for a dollar a year with an option to buy, the university
would utilize the property as a research laboratory and living quarters for
five hundred veterans attending school under the GI Bill. The military, at
Johnson’s urging, had already agreed to maintain operations at both Bergstrom
Field outside Austin and its helicopter base in San Marcos. Efforts were
underway to save Camp Swift in Bastrop. Campaigning in Luling, the congressman
announced approval by the REA of $1 million in loans for the electrification of
another 3,000 Tenth District farms by year’s end. The message to voters was
clear: Hollers promises while Johnson delivers.
Turning to the future, the congressman proposed two major projects
vital to the region’s continued economic development. The chain of highland
lakes created by the damning of the Colorado River, he claimed, was an
invaluable asset awaiting utilization as the recreational mecca of the entire
southwestern United States. Parks and tourist facilities along the lakes in the
picturesque Hill Country would inevitably attract a steady stream of fishermen,
hunters, boaters, and vacationers with money to spend. "It will be,"
he maintained, "our insurance against the next great depression when
business doors start closing. We have a great, year-round industry here, if we
properly develop it." Vision and hard work were all that was required. Far
more, Johnson conceded, would be needed to dredge and widen the Colorado River
to the Gulf of Mexico in order to make Austin a great inland port. Such a
project, though a massive undertaking, was feasible from both an engineering
and economic standpoint and would, if successful, transform the Central Texas
economy. "The same kind of cooperation that built the Colorado dams and
worked other ‘impossibles’ in the area," he stated, "can accomplish
these plans as well." Hollers ridiculed the idea, joking that "only
Lyndon’s dream boats will ever sail up the Colorado River." Responding to
such comments, the congressman revealed much about his approach to politics and
the breadth of his vision. "If we want the Colorado navigable," he
thundered, "we can have it. Of course we won’t get it by wishing for it,
or by saying it can’t be done. We have to make up our minds we want it and then
go after it."
Peace, however, was the greatest challenge of the future. "We
the people whipped the depression, we the people won the war and," he
pledged, "we the people will win the peace." Warning against an
isolationist retreat which would lead within five years to a confrontation
"that actually will be the war to end wars," Congressman Johnson
forcefully advocated an internationalist approach in foreign affairs. The
United States simply could not abandon its global responsibilities as it had
following World War I. Foreign aid, such as the bill assisting Great Britain
for which he had just voted, was essential to the stabilization of Western
Europe. Arguing for collective security, he pleaded, "the United Nations
has got to work. It’s our last chance." International tribunals such as
the World Court needed the power to resolve disputes between nations. Above all
else, atomic warfare had to be avoided. "Should we not all be frightened
men," he asked, "in the face of the sure knowledge that we can keep
the secret of the bomb no longer than months, perhaps, or a year, or at the
most, five years?" While voicing his support for an American military
sufficient to protect national interests and help the United Nations in its
mission, Johnson proposed outlawing nuclear weapons. Given sufficient
safeguards, atomic technology should be shared with the rest of the world and
its limitless possibilities turned to peaceful purposes. The people of Central
Texas could then live in security and, he predicted, "...put kernels as
big as walnuts on your ear of corn and raise pigs which are three-fourths pork
chops"
Corresponding with Jim Rowe in late May, Lyndon Johnson had set
his sights high. "I would like to get a landslide vote this time and
thereby obviate the necessity of having to put up with any more Taylors and
Hollers two years from now." On Saturday, July 27, 1946, Tenth District
Democrats awarded their representative the sweeping victory for which he had
hoped and worked so hard to achieve. Receiving nearly seventy per cent of the
votes cast, he carried all ten counties of the sprawling district for the first
time ever. "I will go back to Congress," he promised,
"strengthened by your expression of trust and confidence, and humbly, as
your servant, I will continue to work and fight for your welfare."
His had been a masterful campaign from start to finish. Taking
seriously the threat posed by Hardy Hollers and the Texas Regulars, he mapped
and carried out a complicated and grueling three week schedule of appearances
and radio addresses other political candidates could only regard with envy. In
one eleven day period he personally visited 162 of the 188 voting precincts
lying outside Austin and appeared in every town with a population of 300 or
more. He brought his bid for renomination to a close with a one day tour of the
entire district culminating with four separate rallies in the capital city
featuring singing cowboy Gene Autrey and free watermelon. As Edward Clark noted
of Johnson’s campaign style, "I never thought it was possible for anyone
to work that hard."
The Johnson apparatus, painstakingly constructed over the
preceding nine years, functioned flawlessly as well. Allies collected
information on the opposition, helped with arrangements for every Johnson
appearance, and effectively rebutted the challenger’s charges of enrichment.
Austin’s power structure endorsed his candidacy and lauded his record of
accomplishment. The Austin dailies owned by long-time supporter Charles E.
Marsh provided their traditionally strong backing. The candidate, however,
wanted and got the weekly rural newspapers as well. Glowing accounts of his
visits to every community, written on the spot by reporters in his own
entourage and fed by Johnson to country editors happy to print the stories as
their own, invariably appeared in his wake. Every step that could be taken to
insure victory was. Lyndon Johnson, however, paid dearly for his sweeping
victory.
While Hollers and his supporters clearly overplayed their
allegations of wrongdoing against the congressman, some contained elements of
truth. Subsequent investigations by both journalists and historians have
disproven Congressman Johnson’s protestations that KTBC was his wife’s business
in which he played no part whatsoever. Following their acquisition of the
property in early 1943, both he and Mrs. Johnson jointly hired new personnel,
reorganized the languid station, and aggressively pursued new advertising
accounts. While Lady Bird Johnson owned the station and operated it on a
day-to-day basis, the congressman, at work in Washington, D. C., won FCC
approval for the changes in frequency and power allowing KTBC to reach all
Central Texas listeners. He successfully importuned Columbia Broadcasting System
officials William Paley and Frank Stanton for network affiliation and its
popular entertainment programming. Congressman Johnson neither shook down
powerful constituents nor gave advertisers preferential political treatment; he
did make every effort through the years to guarantee that the investment in
broadcasting was a profitable one that would provide for his family’s future.
Without tangible evidence of such involvement, however, Hollers,
Moody, and others could not prove their case. They severely damaged their
credibility with voters by arguing that Lyndon Johnson belonged in the federal
penitentiary rather than the United States Congress. Their other charges of
financial chicanery did not bear up under examination. Couched in misleading
innuendo, they were easily and dramatically refuted by the incumbent and his
numerous defenders. Rather than helping the Hollers cause, their oft-repeated
but unsubstantiated charges regarding KVET, the house on Dillman Street, and T.
J. Taylor played directly into Johnson’s hands by fostering a backlash of
sympathy for the congressman which he utilized effectively as the campaign drew
to a close. "...if you expect me to match mud-slinging with the abandon of
a low-born fish wife," he said in Washington County, "then I’m sorry,
I’m not your man. I’m not going to say, now or in the future, that any man is a
liar, a thief, a perjurer or an accepter of bribes except when I have evidence
to lay before a grand jury. Then I’ll say it in the privacy of the grand jury
chambers."
Though his greatest triumphs still lay ahead, Johnson’s reputation
never completely recovered from the onslaught in 1946. Questions of personal
finances, perpetuated by Dan and Mildred Moody, Hardy Hollers, J. Evetts Haley,
and other arch-conservatives for the rest of their days, simply refused to go
away. Two decades later during his campaign for the nation’s highest office,
Johnson was still trying to refute stories of his involvement in KTBC’s affairs
raised by Haley in A Texan Looks At Lyndon and journalist
Louis Kohlmeier in The Wall Street Journal. The 1946 race also set the tone for his future battles with
political reactionaries in the Lone Star State. Having witnessed the lengths to
which the conservative camp would go to oust him in the mid-1940s, Johnson,
with his future hanging in the balance, responded in kind two years later.
While vote fraud in South Texas provided the razor-thin margin of victory over
Coke Stevenson in 1948 and thrust Johnson into the United States Senate, it
also fixed for all time the image of a wheeler-dealer willing to do whatever it
took, ethical or not, to insure triumph. It was a perception he never shook.
Most significant, however, Lyndon Johnson refused to abandon his
faith in activist government despite the increasingly conservative environment
and the withering assault of Hardy Hollers and the Texas Regulars. Neither an
ideologue who would sacrifice elective office rather than adapt nor an
unprincipled opportunist who constantly reversed directions, he worked within
the constraints of electoral politics to better the lives of all constituents
and develop the resources of the Tenth District through the best means
available. If circumstances forced limited retreats as his constituency,
opportunities, and responsibilities grew in future years, his last race for the
United States House of Representatives provided a clear indication of the
course to which he would always return.
©L. Patrick Hughes, 1999
Originally published in Locus (October,
1992).
No comments:
Post a Comment