Means of Ascent (67 page)

But Coke Stevenson’s side was working the committee members, too—and working hard—and his side had legislative leaders and state officials and county officials who had had alliances with Coke through the long years, and all that night the fight went on. “Johnson knew damn well that Stevenson had some real pros on his side,” Oltorf says. “They might not have been working during the campaign, but they were working that
night.” Lyndon Johnson didn’t sleep at all that night—and neither did his men. Midnight turned into one o’clock, and one o’clock into two, and Lyndon Johnson’s men worked the corridors and the bars in the big hotels. At two o’clock and three, Ed Clark’s big hand was on the shoulders of committee members. “That was
the longest night,” Clark says. “I was up all night, and Ben Ramsey was with
me, and he was up all night.” But no one knew which candidate was ahead. In this fight the committee members were particularly anxious not to be joining the losing side. Recalls Clark: “People were asking me for a commitment that if they gave me their vote, they’d be on the winning side.” But Clark had his code of honor. “I said, ‘I cannot give that commitment.’ ” Some committee members were telling each side what it
wanted to hear, so it was difficult to be certain even of some votes that had been promised. And as pressures
and counter-pressures were brought to bear by both sides, votes kept shifting. “I knew we had turned around votes they still thought they had, and so I felt sure they had done the same to votes we still thought
we
had,” Clark says. He was carrying around a list of the fifty-eight potential voters, he recalls, and he had to keep
switching names from one column to the other. “I just didn’t know how it was going to go,” he says. The only certainty in the Johnson camp, and in the hotel room in which Lyndon Johnson sat all night amidst the bright modernistic decor in a shirt soaked with sweat, his face gray with fatigue and stubble, his eyes sunk in his head, hunched over a telephone and a list, was that, with those three new votes Herman Brown had flown in, it was going to be terribly
close. Lyndon Johnson’s fate was on the piece of paper lying on the desk in front of him—in that list in which votes were counted not in tens of thousands but one by one. And the list kept changing.

T
HEN
it was Monday.
“SHOWDOWN MONDAY.”

As convention delegates and Executive Committee members were crowding into the Blackstone’s high-ceilinged, dimly lit Venetian Ballroom at ten a.m., the lobby outside was filled with more delegates, and with tension. An elevator door opened and Lyndon Johnson stepped out, behind a phalanx of aides. His hair was slicked down so flat that it might have been pasted to his skull, the circles beneath his eyes were as dark as bruises, his skin, covered with nicks from
the closeness of his shave, was sallow. As his entourage was pushing through the crowd, one of its members,
Jerome Sneed of Austin, who was also a member of the Executive Committee, suddenly collapsed, gasping for breath and writhing in pain on the lobby floor from what appeared to be a heart attack (it was later diagnosed as ptomaine poisoning). Sneed was quickly surrounded by shouting, excited delegates—and by one man who was always calm, the man whose
mind worked so fast. While other men knelt by Sneed’s side and loosened his necktie and shouted for a doctor as he gasped in pain, Alvin Wirtz knelt by his side, scribbled something on a piece of paper and, handing it to Sneed along with a pen, told him to sign it: it was his proxy; Wirtz had saved a Johnson vote.

Johnson entered the ballroom in the midst of his aides, smiling, waving and reaching out to shake hands. Stevenson had arrived early, and was sitting quietly, puffing his pipe. As Johnson was passing Stevenson’s seat, an enterprising newspaper photographer tried to persuade them to pose together. The two men were not far apart; “just for a moment, they looked like two dogs wanting to get at each other and held back by a leash,” says a man who was
between them. The moment passed; Stevenson’s
mask and Johnson’s smile were back on, they turned away from each other, and Johnson and his entourage moved to another part of the big room. Pulling out a pack of cigarettes, Johnson lit one, drawing on it deeply; oblivious for once to photographers, he put on his eyeglasses.

After the seven members of the “canvassing subcommittee”—three neutral; two representing Stevenson; two (Wirtz and
Alma Lee Holman of Taylor) representing Johnson—had been appointed, the ballroom was cleared, and at about 10:45 a.m. the subcommittee began its meeting there.

At almost the same moment, the District Court hearing began in Alice, so that for the next few hours, the two interlocking actions were proceeding simultaneously.

During those hours, therefore, the pattern—of Stevenson trying to open the Box 13 records and of Johnson trying to keep the records closed—became clear. And so did the tactics—haste in Fort Worth, delay in Alice—by which Johnson’s men were trying to accomplish his aims.

In Fort Worth, Wirtz was attempting to hurry the subcommittee through its work. Stacks of big manila envelopes were piled on the stage of the Venetian Ballroom: the returns for 252 counties. Wirtz wanted to dispense with opening them. No sooner had the subcommittee meeting begun, with Democratic State Secretary
Vann M. Kennedy reporting that on purely arithmetical grounds Johnson had indeed won by the eighty-seven votes previously reported, than
Wirtz moved that the subcommittee, without any further deliberations, certify those figures as official and report to the full Executive Committee that Johnson was the nominee. And when this motion failed—the subcommittee’s three neutral members agreeing with Stevenson’s representatives that it was their function to canvass the election county by county—Wirtz kept urging the canvassing along. One of those manila envelopes contained the Jim Wells return,
the return based on the tally sheet on which the “7” had allegedly been changed into a “9,” the return which had given Johnson the 87-vote majority. At the moment, it was the only Jim Wells return. If the Jim Wells committee met and authorized one of its members to telephone the subcommittee and say that the return was being corrected, anything could happen. Once the subcommittee reached Jim Wells in
its canvassing, and made the old return official, the danger of a new certification would be over. But the subcommittee was going through the envelopes alphabetically, and there were 122 counties between Johnson and safety. So Wirtz hurried the subcommittee along—and when the Jim Wells return was finally reached, and Stevenson’s representatives showed some disposition to discuss it, Wirtz said, in a statement with which the neutral members agreed, that they could not do
so: so long as the court restraining order
was in effect, he said, the subcommittee was prohibited not only from changing the Box 13 vote but from investigating it—even, in fact, from discussing it.

In Alice, meanwhile, Johnson’s representative, attorney
Dudley Tarleton, was working to keep that restraining order in effect—at least until the subcommittee had finished its work. So, as speed was the order of the day in Fort Worth, delay was the order in Alice.

Stevenson attorney
Wilbur Matthews considered the case so clear-cut that he thought the hearing in Alice wouldn’t take long. No court should stop the Jim Wells committee from opening the records, investigating the returns, and, should the findings justify such an action, revising the returns—and, he said, nothing could be clearer: to support his view, Matthews read passages from the authoritative
Texas
Jurisprudence
, which said flatly that because intra-party primary elections were not open to all voters but only to members of a political party, disputes in it were to be considered intra-party matters “
of which courts are not to take cognizance.” What could be clearer than that? he asked. Judge Archer’s restraining order, he said, “has
no parallel in the judicial history of the United States” and no
justification under Texas law; it should be dissolved at once.

Tarleton’s presentation was somewhat longer. He read, in what Matthews considered “a deliberate manner,” Judge Archer’s order and Johnson’s petition asking for the order. He read “at length” from the primary election statutes. Then he started in on various court decisions. It was evident, Matthews was to write, “that he was stalling for time.” He was still reading when Judge Broeter called a two-hour recess
for lunch. And he was still reading when court resumed after the recess.
²
Tarleton’s recitation may have been unnecessary. Early in the court proceedings that morning, an extra-legal occurrence had convinced Stevenson’s attorneys, had any further convincing been needed, of the slimness of their chances of having the order vacated. The occurrence was the arrival in court of George Parr. Striding
past the benches where other spectators sat, he pushed through the low swinging door into the section of the courtroom customarily reserved for attorneys and sat down at the table with Johnson’s attorneys, relaxed and at ease, as if he owned the courtroom (which, of course, many of the persons watching him felt he did). His nonchalance
slipped only once; during a recess, the Duke of Duval was expansive and smiling as he explained to
newsmen that the reports about his political influence were untrue: “You don’t control votes,” he said. Then a question, an innocuous one, annoyed him, and for just a moment the reporters saw the true face of George Parr. He “
stopped short,” one wrote; “His eyes seemed to pierce his glasses and his smile and hearty laughter” were replaced by what the reporter described as “a resolute expression.” After
the recess, he returned to the attorneys’ table, where he bent his gaze on Judge Broeter. But despite Parr’s presence, there was always a possibility of a miscarriage of the ducal brand of justice—always a possibility that the judge might rule for Stevenson and vacate the restraining order. Members of the County Democratic Committee, including Adams and Poole, were in the courtroom, hoping to be allowed to look at last into Box 13. So Tarleton took no chances. He
delayed as long as was necessary. And his tactics served their purpose. At 2:30 p.m., a newspaperman brought a wire service bulletin into court. Reports conflict on its contents, but it appears to have stated that the canvassing subcommittee had reached Jim Wells County in its tabulations. It’s “too late,” Matthews told Judge Broeter. Dissolving the restraining order would no longer serve any purpose. “The case is moot and should be dismissed,” he
said in disgust.

Broeter did not dismiss the case. “
I am not saying that there was fraud or that there was not fraud,” the judge said. “If it so happens that our laws do not set out adequate means and speedy procedures to correct illegal acts I regret it,” but “I do not make the laws.…” At three p.m., a rumor swept the courtroom that the subcommittee was refusing to certify the Jim Wells returns, and was waiting to hear
what the court ruling was. Broeter thereupon gave the ruling. It was in favor of Johnson. The judge said he did not see how granting Johnson’s request for an injunction would “interfere in any way with an election contest.” Therefore, he said, he was continuing the injunction until such a contest was filed, or until the present case was heard on its merits. Until that time, no change could be made in the Box 13 tabulations. The case “failed
in the face of the power of George Parr,” Matthews was to write. Delay had been Johnson’s purpose, and that purpose had been served. When the subcommittee had reached Jim Wells, there had been no new certification for them to look at.

U
P IN
F
ORT
W
ORTH
, however, Lyndon Johnson was now to receive a most unpleasant shock. His attorneys had assured him that in the absence of a new certification from Jim Wells County, the canvassing subcommittee would have no choice but to accept the old one and send his name to the Executive Committee as the party’s senatorial nominee. But suddenly,
without
warning, the subcommittee was refusing to do so. When, with the county-by-county tabulation completed, Alvin Wirtz moved that the subcommittee certify Johnson’s 87-vote majority, one of Stevenson’s two representatives on the seven-member subcommittee, retired Major General Albert Sidney Johnson, objected. Declaring that the 87-vote majority included at least 202 clearly illegal votes from Jim Wells County, he moved to amend Wirtz’s motion. His amendment would
certify the returns from 251 counties—but not the Jim Wells returns. The “
question of the correct and legal vote” of Jim Wells should be submitted to the full Executive Committee, he said—and until that correct and legal vote was ascertained, that county’s votes should not be included in any tabulation.

Without those votes, Coke Stevenson was the party’s nominee. Johnson jumped to his feet. Grabbing his sleeve, Wirtz pulled him down, and he and another of Johnson’s attorneys,
Charles I. Francis, made Johnson’s argument, Francis almost screaming at Subcommittee Chairman
W. B. Simmons that with a court injunction in force, “For this or any other committee to refuse to accept the vote as now certified
would be violating that injunction.” Simmons, however, ruled that the subcommittee could vote on General Johnson’s amendment. Wirtz and Mrs. Holman voted against it, as did one of the subcommittee’s neutral members, but the other neutral member voted with Stevenson’s two representatives. With the vote tied, three to three, Simmons cast the deciding vote. It was for General Johnson’s amendment, which thus carried, four votes to
three, and became the subcommittee’s majority report. Wirtz announced that he would make his motion a minority report, but that was what it was: a
minority
report. Johnson had been confident that, if only his attorneys could stall long enough down in Alice, he would emerge from the subcommittee meeting bearing its imprimatur as the party’s nominee and with the two hundred indispensable votes from Jim Wells firmly certified as his. The stalling had worked, but
not the rest of his strategy. He would be going into the crucial Executive Committee meeting with neither of those two advantages.

The vote had been taken at five o’clock. The meeting of the Executive Committee would begin at seven.