| |
LBJ
AND EAST TEXAS POLITICSby
Archie P. McDonald | |
| Lyndon
B. Johnson’s victory over Coke Stevenson for a Senate seat by only 87 votes earned
this future president the nickname of "Landslide Lyndon." Everyone agrees that
Johnson’s aides "stole" that election by "finding" additional votes for their
candidate in Box 13 in Jim Wells County. What everyone might not know is that
Johnson had been burned by a similar tactic in a special Senate race in 1941,
and had vowed never to be caught short again. |
| | "Boyhood
Home of Lundon B. Johnson"
Postcard
courtesy rootsweb.com/~txgenweb// postcards/Index.html |
W.
Lee O’Daniel served as governor when Senator Morris Sheppard died in 1941, and
the Legislature, disgusted with O’Daniel’s leadership, urged him to appoint himself
as Sheppard’s replacement, mostly to get him out of the governorship. O’Daniel
appointed 87-year-old Andrew Jackson Houston, instead, someone not likely to challenge
him in an election. Indeed, Houston died soon afterward.
O’Daniel did file
in the special election to determine Sheppard’s successor, as did 28 others, including
Congressmen Martin Dies and Lyndon Johnson. Johnson and O’Daniel campaigned hard
for the post, and their styles differed greatly. O’Daniel campaigned as he had
for governor, in rural areas with country musicians playing "That Old Time Religion."
Johnson flaunted his connections with the New Deal through the slogan "Franklin
D and Lyndon B—That’s Good Enough For Me."
Early returns on election day
favored Johnson, which caused him to make a fatal mistake. It was assumed that
both sides were "buying" votes, and that Johnson’s strength would lie in Central
and South Texas and O’Daniel’s in East Texas. So when Johnson looked like a sure
winner, the word went out to his South Texas representatives to go on and report
their votes, which gave him a lead of over 5,000 votes. "Barring a miracle," said
and official of the Texas Election Bureau, Johnson had won. That "miracle" occurred
in East Texas, where officials suddenly found thousands of votes that had not
been counted or reported, and most of them favored O’Daniel. Only 46 percent of
Shelby County’s vote had gone to O’Daniel, but he gained 64 percent of the "new"
votes. Similar discovers in Newton, Angelina, Anderson, Cass, Panola, Van Zandt,
and other counties, eventually gave O’Daniel a winning margin of over 1,000 votes.
Some of Johnson’s team wanted to protest the likely fraud in those returns,
but he declined. At the same time, he vowed never to be so cheated again, or,
as some opponents charged after his equally questionable victory in 1948, he just
learned to cheat more successfully.
© Archie P. McDonald
All
Things Historical
January 5, 2005 column
A syndicated column in over 40 East Texas newspapers
| | Recommended
Books |
| The
Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) |
|
| Means
of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 2) |
|
Lyndon
B. Johnson: Portrait
of a President |
|
(This column is provided as a public service by the East Texas Historical Association.
Archie P. McDonald is director of the Association and author of more than 20 books
on Texas.)
See Johnson
City, Texas | | |
