Master of the Senate (181 page)

The means was a mountain canyon, a canyon not in the South but more than two thousand miles away: beyond the Appalachians, beyond the Mississippi Basin, beyond the Great Plains, beyond the Rocky Mountains—in the rugged Sawtooth Mountains that rose beyond the Rockies in America’s far Northwest.

Hells Canyon (it had been given its name by pioneering mountain men whose boats had been capsized by its foaming white rapids) was an astonishing work of nature. Carved into one of the most inaccessible parts of the Sawtooth Range by the Snake River, its rock walls rose from the Snake’s turbulent waters in a widening V that was almost eight thousand feet high—a thousand feet higher than the Grand Canyon; it was the deepest river gorge on the continent of North America. And it had been the subject for some years of a debate over who would harness the enormous power generated by its turbulent waters: the public, through a dam built by the federal government, or a private power company.

That question had become in some ways the hottest political issue in Oregon and Idaho, the two states separated by the Snake. For ten years, public power advocates, including both of Oregon’s current senators, Wayne Morse and Richard Neuberger, had been trying to obtain authorization to build a federal dam, and for ten years these attempts had been blocked by private power advocates in Congress. And then hardly had the Eisenhower Administration taken office in 1953 when its Secretary of the Interior, Douglas McKay, a former Governor of Oregon, announced that legislation would be introduced to allow the Idaho Power Company to build three hydroelectric dams in Hells Canyon and sell the electricity they generated. The full extent of this “giveaway” of national resources became known when it was revealed that the Administration had granted Idaho Power an accelerated tax write-off that would generate $239 million in additional profits. But to Republicans, including President Eisenhower, the idea of using taxpayers’ money to build a project that private capital was willing to finance was a perfect example of New Deal profligacy. Assailing the Administration’s “shocking abandonment” of the public power concept, Morse reintroduced his proposed authorization of a federal dam, but when the showdown over his bill came in 1956, “Republican senators reported,” as Marquis Childs wrote, “that they had never before [during the Eisenhower Administration] been under such pressure,” and the bill had been defeated.

That defeat, however, made the issue hotter than ever. The governors of Oregon and Idaho, supporters of Idaho Power, ran for re-election in 1956, and both lost. In that year, furthermore, McKay returned to Oregon to run against Morse, calling the issue “American free enterprise” against “the left-wing Socialist idea.” McKay was routed. Across the Snake, in Idaho, there was another Senate campaign, with Herman Welker, private power advocate, running for re-election against Frank Church. “The campaign was Frank Church versus Idaho Power,” one of Church’s aides says. “They fought him tooth and nail.” Welker lost, too.

Since Morse and Neuberger and Church had made Hells Canyon their central campaign issue, their constituents would be watching to see if they produced on it. And the senators
wanted
to produce on it—all three believed deeply in the concept of public power.

The Hells Canyon fight had reverberations in other states—in the Far Northwest and southward down the long line of the Rockies—for these states were tied together physically by the transmission lines from huge federal dams already built (the lines from the Bonneville Dam on the Oregon-Washington border, for example, ran not only across these states but into Idaho and Montana as well) and philosophically by the concept symbolized by these lines: that America’s rivers belonged to the people, and the electricity they generated should be provided to the people at the lowest possible cost. Hydroelectric power generated in these states by the fall of the waters of their rivers down through their tall mountains was the region’s greatest natural resource, and
in nine states—the seven so-called “Mountain States” (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Nevada) and the Far Northwest states of Washington and Oregon, whose mountains were not the Rockies but the Cascades—the question of how to get water, scarce in those states, and the power that water can generate, out of the rugged mountain ranges to irrigate millions of acres, mechanize tens of thousands of farms, and furnish inexpensive electricity to attract new industry was a fiercely contentious issue. The debate between those who wanted the rivers developed by the federal government in order to keep rates down, preserve natural resources and beauty, and encourage the comprehensive development of river basins, and those who hated the concept of public power because they believed it led to socialism, bureaucracy, and a planned economy (and to lower profits for private utilities) was a continuing focal point of politics in these states—and in the Senate: Morse’s speeches on behalf of a Hells Canyon Dam had been notable, but no more notable than those of Washington State’s Scoop Jackson; and that state’s other senator, Warren Magnuson, while no great speechmaker, had used his Commerce Committee gavel effectively in the dam’s behalf. Morse, Neuberger, Jackson, Magnuson, New Mexico’s Anderson, Montana’s Murray—all were members of a western “public power bloc” in the Senate. In all, there were, from these nine western states, a total of twelve Democratic senators who wanted the dam in Hells Canyon to be a federal dam.

Despite years of effort, however, the public power bloc had not been able to get that dam authorized. The private power forces in the Senate were, as Leland Olds had learned years earlier, very strong. (Olds had the lesson taught to him again in 1955 after he had testified for two days on behalf of the Hells Canyon Dam: a Federal Power Commission examiner called his testimony “irrelevant,” and had every word of it stricken from the record except for two items: his name and address.) During the 1956 battle over Morse’s Hells Canyon Dam Bill, Republicans had made the necessary arrangements. Welker had secretly approached Louisiana’s Russell Long, for example, and pledged to support the Tidelands oil legislation Long wanted if Long would vote against Hells Canyon in the Interior Committee. Long had agreed, and Morse’s bill had died in Interior. Now, in 1957, Morse and Neuberger were again trying—with assistance from Church—to persuade Interior to report the bill out, but they weren’t succeeding. The western senators simply didn’t have enough allies on public power.

As the South didn’t have enough allies on civil rights.

L
YNDON
J
OHNSON
saw a potential connection between those two realities. No one else had seen it. During the ten years that Hells Canyon had been before Congress, there had never been the slightest link between the dam and civil rights. The civil rights issue had never aroused much interest in these western
states—in part because so few of their residents would be directly affected by it. More than half a million people lived in Montana in 1956; about one thousand of them were Negroes. Another half million lived in Idaho; about one thousand of
them
were Negroes. The total Negro population of the nine states was about 79,000—fewer Negroes than lived in some
counties
in Georgia or Mississippi, fewer than lived in the single congressional district that was New York’s Harlem. But now Lyndon Johnson saw that not only could the dam authorization bill be brought into a relationship with a civil rights bill, but that that relationship could be the key to passing a civil rights bill.

The very paucity of Negroes in the western states was a key to his reasoning. Although many of the twelve Democratic senators from these states were liberals, civil rights was not a high-priority issue to their constituents, so these senators had flexibility on a civil rights bill: they could support it or not, with impunity. Hells Canyon, on the other hand,
was
a high-priority issue. Years later, talking with Doris Kearns Goodwin, Johnson would explain his reasoning, with his customary hyperbole—and his customary brilliance. “I began with the assumption that most of the senators from the Mountain States had never seen a Negro and simply couldn’t care all that much about the whole civil rights issue,” he told her. “I knew what they
did
care about, and that was the Hells Canyon issue. So I went to a few key southerners and persuaded them to back the western liberals on Hells Canyon.”

Tidelands wasn’t the most important issue this year, he told Russell Long; there was more at stake now. Long understood the oblique phrase—and besides, the Louisiana senator was to recall years later, “With Herman Welker out … it was a whole new … ball game”; with the deal he had made with Welker now void, “it was not a matter of great consequence to me whether you built a high (federal) dam at Hells Canyon or a low (private) dam at Hells Canyon.” What mattered was that civil rights bill—the jury trial amendment, for example—and Lyndon managed to “work it out in such a fashion that some of the western senators would go along with us on the jury trial problem if we’d go along with them on the Hells Canyon issue.” Long was happy to go along.

With southern gentlemen like Long, the matter was handled in a gentlemanly fashion; putting his arm around one of these southerners in the cloakroom, Johnson would say, “Look, if you don’t help them [the western senators], you can’t expect them to help you when it’s your ox that’s getting gored.” In other cases, the transaction was more straightforward. Montana’s Jim Murray approached Jim Eastland to solicit his vote for the dam. “I need help on Hells Canyon,” he said. Eastland’s reply was blunt: “I need help on civil rights,” he said. He told Murray to “see Dick Russell,” and Russell told the elderly Montana liberal—in a statement seconded by Johnson—that southern votes would be available for Hells Canyon if the westerners were prepared to be “reasonable” on civil rights. And with other southerners, the transaction was blunter still. Some of the southern conservatives felt so strongly about the
“socialism” symbolized by the proposed dam that they responded to Johnson’s overtures by saying they couldn’t vote for it. Johnson spelled out for these senators a reality they had overlooked. Senate authorization of a federal dam wouldn’t
really
mean that a dam would be built, he said; House authorization and presidential signature would still be required—and neither requirement was likely to be met. Johnson may even have
guaranteed
some southerners that those requirements would not be met; at least one administrative assistant says that Johnson let it be known that the House Interior Committee was not going to let the Hells Canyon bill come to the House floor.

One way or another, Johnson persuaded the southern senators to place at his disposal as many votes as would be needed to pass the Senate bill authorizing a federal dam in Hells Canyon; in a particularly shrewd gesture, Richard Russell agreed that he would be one of those senators, although in previous years he had opposed such authorization. That gesture would be so plain that even the densest westerner would be able to understand it: Russell
was
the South; the westerners would know that if he was with them, the South would be with them—with as many votes as were necessary. Then Johnson let the westerners know what he had done—and why, assuring them that they would have the backing of the South. And “in return,” he was to tell Doris Kearns Goodwin, “I got the western liberals to back the southerners” on civil rights.

S
INCE THE WESTERNERS
WERE
LIBERALS
, and proud of their liberal image, they were not eager to have it known that they had traded away their support for a strong civil rights bill. They let the final arrangement be confirmed through an aide, Morse’s trusted assistant Merton C. Bernstein, a young labor lawyer. Shortly before Morse’s bill authorizing the high dam was to come to the floor, the confirmation had not yet taken place and the western senators were unsure if they would really have the southern votes. A luncheon was therefore arranged in Bobby Baker’s office one flight up in the Capitol at which Johnson would be present along with a group of western senators and Bernstein. During the lunch, Bernstein recalls, “Lyndon Johnson didn’t put a bite of food in his mouth. He never stopped talking.” But not about Hells Canyon—not a word. After the senators had finished dessert, Morse said, “Well, Mert, you know where everybody stands,” and walked out—as did the other senators. “I was left there with Lyndon Johnson,” Bernstein recalls. And then, with the westerners not there to hear the sordid details, “Johnson went down the whole list of senators who could be persuaded to do something helpful. He undertook to get those who he could”—and he made clear he could get enough. “Now, Smathers is a private utility man,” Bernstein recalls Johnson saying. “But I think I can bring him along.” The westerners could stop worrying about Russell Long: “Leave him to me,” Johnson said; “I can get Russell Long.” They could stop worrying about Alan Bible, he said. “Bible will do whatever I
tell him to do.” As for Harry Byrd, Johnson said, “Now Harry Byrd is a man of principle. I can’t ask Harry Byrd to do anything against his principles. But I
can
ask Harry Byrd—and he
might
oblige me—to stay away [during the vote on the Hells Canyon Dam, and not vote against it].” Bernstein understood what Johnson was doing. The Majority Leader was letting him know—and through him, Morse and the other western senators—that “he was working hard to get the votes for us because he wanted” western votes in return. Johnson was sealing the deal. Bernstein reported the conversation to Morse, and, at Morse’s instructions, to the other western senators, and they also understood what Johnson was doing—and the price he wanted in return. “We knew that Johnson was not being a Boy Scout. We knew that he was trying to build a coalition” against the parts of the civil rights bill “to which the southerners were objecting.”

The westerners agreed to pay that price. Lyndon Johnson, Russell Long was to say, “put together sort of a gentleman’s agreement where about four of us would vote for the high dam at Hells Canyon and about four of the fellows on the other side would vote with us…. Four votes shifted in favor of that high dam at Hells Canyon and then four votes shifted, or at least came down on … a completely unrelated subject: civil rights.”