Landslide Lyndon and hardball Texas politics
They do know how to play hardball politics in Texas. Always have. Their current standoff, with the Republican governor howling for the blood of Democratic legislators (The Dems currently are holed up in New Mexico so a vote the Repubs want can’t happen) who are cackling in laughter at the Gov – is yet another shining star in the grand Texas tradition of politics.
Witness how LBJ became a Senator…
In 1948, Texas Governor Coke Stevenson ran for a U.S. Senate seat against Texas Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson:
Early indications were that Congressman Johnson had lost. Six days later, however, Precinct 13 in the border town of Alice, Texas, showed a very interesting result. Exactly 203 people had voted at the last minute — in the order they were listed on the tax rolls — and 202 of them had voted for Johnson. (Wow, this is almost as miraculous as Chicago, where 200 year old people voted regularly…)
While Stevenson protested, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black upheld the result, and Johnson squeaked by with an 87-vote victory. For this feat, columnist Drew Pearson gave Johnson the sobriquet Landslide Lyndon
It was not until July 30, 1977, that Luis Salas, the election judge in Alice, admitted that he and southern Texas political boss George Parr (who had killed himself in 1975) had rigged the election.