Means of Ascent (62 page)

Some of the men who received these calls replied that technological considerations prevented them from helping. In San Antonio, Sheriff Kilday’s chief deputy,
George Huntress, received a telephone call from “the Johnson camp … inquiring into the possibility of additional votes.” Huntress reminded “the person inquiring” that San Antonio now used
voting machines, and that the
results had been recorded. For other recipients of these calls, the considerations were ethical. The Johnson man who took
the call in San Marcos replied that “of course he couldn’t ‘find’ any more votes; the election was over.” But other calls went to a more receptive man, a man who could “find” not just a few more votes, but a few hundred more. A politician in San Diego, county seat of Duval, who took one of those
calls remembers: “
It was Lyndon Johnson’s office. It was very important that they get hold of George.” Early Sunday morning a rumor began to circulate in Austin, and later that morning the rumor was confirmed. The Valley had already done a lot for Lyndon Johnson: a 27,000-vote plurality. But the Valley was going to do more. In particular, George Parr was going to do more. The Duke of Duval had given Lyndon Johnson a 100–1 plurality, more
than 4,000 votes, in his county alone. Now, on Sunday, with Johnson behind despite the Duke’s efforts, Duval County announced that there were more votes from the county to come. It had just been discovered, Parr’s election officials told the
Texas Election Bureau, that the returns from one of Duval County’s precincts had not yet been counted; it was hoped to have them later in the day.

O
UT ON THE BANKS
of the South Llano, over a telephone that had been installed—on a tree—for Election Night, Stevenson had been hearing rumors of the Johnson camp’s maneuvers. Confirmation came from one of his county managers in the Panhandle, who told the former Governor that he had just received a telephone call from someone in Johnson’s headquarters who was under the impression that he was
Johnson’s
county manager and who had asked him if he couldn’t change at least three votes. “
That was how we first learned what Lyndon was doing,”
Ernest Boyett recalls. “When he was behind, he got on the telephone to his managers around the state, and asked them if they couldn’t change votes.”

Stevenson remained calm; he might not be participating in, or even aware of, what his own allies might be doing in Austin, but he was certainly aware that such maneuvering was within the normal parameters of Texas politics. But then, early Sunday morning, he heard about the Duval announcement—which went beyond the parameters.

Stevenson and his advisers understood at once the significance not only of the fact that Parr was announcing that new votes would be coming in from the Valley, but of the fact that now, more than twelve hours after the polls had closed, these votes had not yet been counted, so that no one could tell how many each candidate had received. In later years, Johnson aides would argue that such a late finding of votes in the Valley was customary in Texas politics, but it
wasn’t. As
Allen Duckworth wrote in the
Dallas News
that day, “
The thing that brought protest from the Stevenson camp was the lateness of Duval’s final report this time. The county usually reports, practically complete, on Election Night.” George
Norris Green, whose book
The Establishment in Texas Politics
analyzes Texas elections in the 1940s, notes that Stevenson had won the
Valley vote in his previous races but comments that “all of those votes had at least been turned in on time.” Since few constraints limited Parr in the number of votes he reported (“he just counted ’em”), the effect of his turning in votes late would be that he could report almost any number of votes needed—which would mean that to a considerable extent the Duke of Duval could decide the result of any close statewide election all by himself;
that the only limit would be the number of poll taxes he had paid. The 27,000-vote margin already given to Lyndon Johnson by the Duke of Duval and his allies in the Valley hadn’t been enough to elect Johnson. So now, this Sunday, what, really, was George Parr doing but just waiting to see how many more votes would be needed? Jumping into his car, Stevenson accelerated so fast that he left a plume of dust behind him as he sped to Austin. But there was nothing he could do once
he got there. All day Sunday, the Election Bureau was inundated in the usual blizzard of vote changes from all over the state, a few large, most small; but all day, looming over the counting of these ballots was that missing box down in the Valley.

For Coke Stevenson, Duckworth wrote, “The news came at dusk Sunday. It was bad, as expected.” And it came at a strategic moment. All day, minor changes had in general balanced themselves out, and Stevenson had stayed ahead, by approximately the same 800-vote margin. Then, about seven o’clock, twenty-four hours after the polls had closed, upward revisions for Johnson came in from several Houston precincts—revisions in themselves so suspicious
that there were immediate calls for an investigation. Suddenly, Stevenson was leading by a bare handful of votes. And then, at this crucial point, Duval announced that it now had its returns ready. The vote it had reported on Saturday night had been 4,195 for Johnson, 38 for Stevenson. Now Duval election officials said there had been 427 previously unreported votes in that “uncounted” precinct. Stevenson, they said, had received two of them; Johnson had received 425.
Four hundred and twenty-five new votes (Duval’s count was now Johnson 4,620, Stevenson 40) and for the first time Stevenson was no longer ahead in the statewide totals. “
In the closest major race in the state’s long political history,” the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
reported, “Lyndon Johnson rode into the lead of the U.S. Senate race Sunday night on a sudden tide of votes from Duval County.” (No
newspaper commented on a remarkable aspect of the Duval vote. Since another two votes would later be found there for Johnson, making Duval’s final vote 4,622 to 40, 4,662 persons thus voted in a county in which only 4,679 poll tax receipts had been issued—the 99.6 percent turnout was an astonishing display of civic responsibility.)

On Monday, however, the Election Bureau received in the mail written returns from counties that had previously reported over the telephone, and there were the usual corrections made necessary by transpositions, discoveries of double-counting and simple mistakes in arithmetic—as well as, perhaps, other kinds of “mistakes.” But Monday brought only one new return from the Valley—80 new votes for Lyndon Johnson in Starr County
(final returns from Starr were Johnson 3,038, Stevenson 170; Parr’s two key counties alone therefore gave Johnson an edge of more than seven thousand votes: 7,660 to 210)—and Stevenson received more benefits from the corrections than Johnson. Hour after hour all that day and into the evening, Johnson worked the telephone in his den, alternately sprawled, half reclining, on the day-bed and pacing back and forth across the little room, telephone in hand, lighting one
cigarette from the end of another, the skin on his gaunt face drawing tighter and tighter, the circles under his eyes growing darker and darker—a candidate by El Greco. But by the end of the day, Stevenson had 494,396 votes, Johnson had 494,277—Stevenson led by 119 votes in what Duckworth, in a view echoed in newspapers throughout the state, wrote was “
the most exciting Senate race Texas has ever known.”

Tuesday brought more transpositions—including a sizable one from Eastland County in West Texas. When someone at the Bureau re-checked Eastland’s 2,645–2,317 figures, which had had the higher figure in Johnson’s column and the lower in Stevenson’s, it was found that they should, in fact, have been reversed, and that change pushed Stevenson further ahead. And under Texas election law, seven p.m. Tuesday (seventy-two hours after the polls
closed) was the deadline for precinct election judges to turn over to their county chairmen all ballot boxes, containing not only the actual ballots that voters had cast but the tally and poll sheets kept by election judges and clerks. At that hour, the Election Bureau announced it had “
complete” (complete in the sense that all boxes had reported) returns in all of the state’s 254 counties except for one box in sparsely populated Borden County, where about forty
votes were supposed to be still unreported (and, of course, except for the two “Stevenson” counties Hansford and Kinney, which hadn’t held primaries because Stevenson’s men had not considered them necessary). At seven, the Election Bureau announced its final returns for the day: Stevenson, with 494,555 votes, was 349 votes ahead of Johnson, who had 494,206. Election Bureau Manager Bob Johnson told a reporter that “there was
little
doubt the bureau’s unofficial count would give Stevenson a majority.” And, as the
Houston Chronicle
pointed out, “The [Election] Bureau, although it cannot actually elect an officeholder on the basis of its unofficial returns, has been
consistently accurate during the thirty-two years of its existence. It has never missed naming the eventual winner.” Indeed, the returns
from each county
had been checked and re-checked so many times by both sides that no further major changes were expected. Lyndon Johnson’s second Senate race apparently had ended like the first; “
Should Johnson lose by a few hundred votes,” as Duckworth wrote, “it would be the second time he has been nosed out on his quest for a seat in the upper house.” The blaring headlines—
“
STEVENSON LEADS
BY 349 WITH ABOUT 40 VOTES OUT”
—seemed to trumpet the death of his dreams.

L
ITTLE CHANGE
in the situation occurred on Wednesday, September 1, the fourth day after the election. A day of checking and re-checking returns produced only seventeen revisions—most of them downward because of discoveries of double-counting—and these were so evenly divided between the two candidates that they virtually canceled themselves out, producing a net change of only thirteen votes. These were in Stevenson’s
favor, and his lead increased to 362 votes, “
STEVENSON’S MARGIN FIRM,”
a typical headline said; the vote in the race for United States Senator from Texas seemed to have all but hardened into its final form.

Little change occurred on Thursday, the fifth day after the election. Eleven revisions reduced Stevenson’s lead by a total of 11 votes to 351. Many newspapers were treating the race as over; “
STEVENSON HOLDS FINAL VOTE LEAD
,” said the
Brownsville Herald
. His supporters exulted; in an editorial entitled “
Good Senator by Bad Margin,” the
Dallas News
said
that “Texas has made a good senatorial choice.… It is a remarkable victory when it is clearly in the face of what in mere politeness may be termed ‘bloc voting’ in four [sic] Southwest Texas counties. Duval County had come quite close to being represented in Congress by a Senator of its own.” Reporters found Stevenson at the Travis County Courthouse, performing legal work for a rancher who was his neighbor in Kimble County. Pressed for a statement,
he said that “All the counties have been re-checked carefully,” and he was sure he had won. And Stevenson’s feelings were echoed by even the most cautious Texas politicians; the election seemed to be over.

But their feelings were incorrect. The Valley wasn’t done yet. On Friday, September 3, the sixth day after the election, the Valley was heard from again.

Hardly had the Election Bureau opened at nine when corrections were reported from the Rio Grande: 43 new votes for Johnson from Dimmit County, 38 new votes for Johnson from Cameron County.

In particular, George Parr wasn’t done. With Duval County poll taxes exhausted, no more votes could be produced in that county, of course, but there were other counties in his domain. One was Zapata, and Friday morning, Zapata produced 45 votes more for Johnson. Corrections came
in from counties in other areas of the state that Friday morning, but all were small—none as big as those from the three Valley counties. At noon the
Valley’s 126 new votes had played the major role in reducing Coke Stevenson’s lead to 157 votes, 494,096 to 493,939.

Another county in Parr’s domain was Jim Wells, where the reformers’ strength had forced Parr to exercise discretion on Election Day. The only precinct in that county that had been run as the Duke liked precincts run was Luis Salas’ Precinct 13. The vote reported by Salas on Election Night, 765 to 60 in Johnson’s favor, had provided the bulk of Johnson’s 1,788–769 margin in Jim Wells. Now, on Friday morning, the Democratic
Executive Committee of Jim Wells County was meeting to make its final certification of the returns and report them to the state committee. In the County Courthouse, one of the committee members,
B. M. Brownlee, was unfolding the tally sheets and reading off the totals. The totals for the first twelve precincts were the same as those that had been reported on Election Night. Then Brownlee unfolded the tally sheet for Salas’ Precinct 13. This total was not
the same. The figure for Johnson, which had been reported as 765 on Election Night, was now 965—because, according to testimony that would later be given, someone had, since Election Night, added a loop to the “7” to change it into a “9”. Johnson had 200 more votes.

At about 12:30 p.m. on Friday, with Stevenson’s lead holding at 157 votes, Jim Wells County telephoned its amended return, including those 200 additional Johnson votes, to the Election Bureau—and suddenly, with virtually all the counting in the election over, Coke Stevenson was no longer ahead. Lyndon Johnson was ahead. With so few counties still to be reported—and only minor remaining changes to be made—those 200 votes from Precinct 13 were
decisive. In the Bureau’s final tabulations, Johnson had 494,191 votes, Stevenson 494,104. Out of 988,295 votes, he had won by 87—less than one hundredth of one percent.