The Twilight of the Texas Democrats: the 1978 Governor's Race
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THE TWILIGHT OF THE TEXAS DEMOCRATS: THE 1978 GOVERNOR’S RACE Kenneth William Bridges Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS December 2003 APPROVED: Gregg Cantrell, Major Professor Roy deCarvahlo, Minor Professor Randolph B. Campbell, Committee Member Gus Seligmann, Committee Member John S. Gossett, Committee Member Harold Tanner, Chair of the Department of History Sandra L. Terrell, Interim Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Bridges, Kenneth William. The Twilight of the Texas Democrats: The 1978 Governor‘s Race. Doctor of Philosophy (History), December 2003, 278 pp., references, 155 titles. This dissertation examines the results and strategies used in the 1978 Texas gubernatorial election to determine what issues, demographics, and campaign strategies led the Republican Party nominee, Dallas businessman Bill Clements, to defeat the Democratic nominee, Attorney General John Hill, to break the 105-year old Democratic lock on the governorship and how this victory affected the evolution of Texas into a two-party state. Research materials include manuscripts and published speeches, letters, oral interviews, elections results, and secondary materials. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………..ii 1. TEXAS IN 1978....................................................................................................1 2. THE DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION...............................................................41 3. A FAMILY AFFAIR: THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY....................................88 4. EYE OF THE STORM………..........................................................................122 5. THE BEST-LAID PLANS…………………………........................................147 6. —AND THE PEOPLE WIN EVERY TIME:“ NOVEMBER 7, 1978...............198 7. THE ONCE AND FUTURE GOVERNOR......................................................217 APPENDIX A: PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TOTALS IN TEXAS, 1976-1980……………………………………………………………..…230 APPENDIX B: DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY RESULTS BY COUNTY ……….231 APPENDIX C: 1978 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION TOTALS AND PERCENTAGES ………………………..................................................238 APPENDIX D: DEMOCRATIC TURNOUT, 1978 GENERAL ELECTION.…245 APPENDIX E: GUBERNATORIAL VOTING TRENDS, 1974-1982.………...252 APPENDIX F: 1978 GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS BY COUNTY............259 APPENDIX G: TEXAS VOTER REGISTRATION AND TURNOUT TOTALS, 1974-1982.……………………................................................266 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................268 ii CHAPTER 1 TEXAS IN 1978 Destiny can either arise out of the labor of men or out of the creations of some greater cosmic force. These philosophical questions of whether individuals make history or remain helpless to the forces of time frame many questions over the choices that societies make. Elections typically provide the opportunity for the people either to ratify the status quo or call for a change in their community‘s approach to problems of society and governance. An election can also signal the beginning of an immense shift in demographics and ideology or confirm that a new way of thinking or population shift has already solidified in the eyes of the voters. The 1978 governor‘s election in Texas provided such an opportunity. Texas in 1978 stood in a whirlwind of change that steadily pushed the economy and society in new directions. These same forces, internal and external to the Lone Star State, led many to question their traditional political loyalties. The result of the gubernatorial contest of that year, an election fraught with bitterly divisive debates, would lead to an entirely new type of politics in the state, establishing a viable Republican Party and a shaken and weakening Democratic Party for the next generation of Texas politicians. Until that fateful year, the Democratic Party had held the governor‘s office in the state for more than a century. No change seemed in sight. The Democratic Primary pitted Attorney General John Hill and former Gov. Preston Smith against incumbent Gov. Dolph Briscoe. The results surprised many observers with the ouster of the sitting governor. The general election contest between Democratic nominee John Hill against Republican businessman Bill Clements shook the politics of the state to its foundations by ending the Democratic monopoly on 1 statewide offices.1 By the late 1970s, Texas had long since evolved into a more complex state than the classic images of cotton farms, dusty cattle trails, and patches of oil derricks. Agriculture and oil still remained a powerful component of the state‘s economic engine; but finance, real estate, technology, and manufacturing all served to build an urbanized, technological Texas.2 The traditions that had built Texas, however, continued to shape the character of the state. The Reconstruction period and the backlash against it had an incredibly powerful impact on the psyche of the state. Analysts of Texas politics often mutter the phrase, —For the first time since Reconstruction“ to describe the impact of many of the state‘s recent political developments. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the federal government over the next decade instituted a series of broad policies to rebuild the shattered former Confederate states and reshape them politically and socially.3 The Republican Party controlled this process in each of these states. For the newly freed African-American population, Reconstruction represented a tremendous opportunity to exercise the most basic civil liberties for the first time. Siding overwhelmingly with the Republican Party for its postwar policies of emancipation and civil rights, African-Americans throughout the South voted and won election to office for the first time. For the population of white Confederates, Reconstruction remained an exercise in 1 Austin American-Statesman, November 9, 1978; Dallas Morning News, November 9, 1978. 2 U. S Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, States and Areas, 1939-78 (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office): 620-623. 3 For more information on Reconstruction in Texas, see Randolph B. Campbell, Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1880 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1997); and James M. Smallwood, Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans During Reconstruction (Port Washington, NY: Kennikut Press, 1981). 2 unrelenting humiliation. Furious that the federal government had mandated a new social order of racial equality, the former Confederates feverishly worked to reclaim the state governments. By the close of the 1870s, Democrats had forced the Republicans out of office and worked to marginalize them over the ensuing decades.4 African-Americans would see their modest gains vanish quickly. Texas voters evicted its Republican governor of the Reconstruction era, Edmund J. Davis, in 1874.5 Afterward, the last vestiges of Republican power withered away in the state. The disgust many whites felt over Reconstruction aided the Democratic Party in developing almost a complete monopoly over politics. As a result, over the next several decades after Reconstruction, loyalty to the Democratic Party became deeply embedded in the state‘s political culture.6 No viable alternative existed to the Democrats before the war, and during Reconstruction the Democrats became the most vocal opponents of the excesses of the Republican governments. Thus the first time the state voted Republican in a presidential contest resulted from the vitriolic 1928 contest between Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and New York Governor Al Smith.7 Evangelical Protestants, a clear majority of Texans in 1928, had furiously protested the candidacy of the Roman Catholic Smith, delivering the state to the Republicans for the only time until 1952. After the collapse of the slave-based plantation economy and society following the Civil 4 For a brief synopsis on the history of southern politics after Reconstruction, see George Brown Tindall, The Persistent Tradition in New South Politics (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1975). 5 Rupert N. Richardson, et al, Texas: The Lone Star State, 7th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997): 239-240. 6 James Lamare J. L. Polinard, and Robert D. Winkle, —Texas: Lone Star (Wars) State,“ The New Politics of the Old South, Charles S. Bullock and Bradley R. Rice, eds. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983): 246. 7 —Texas Secretary of State,“ www.sos.state.tx.us. 3 War, the state found itself trying to find new industries to sustain itself. The Civil War had left the wealth of many cotton plantations in ruins, but other powerful interest groups, especially the ranching, railroad, and lumber interests quickly moved in and dominated the state in the seven- decade period from Reconstruction to World War II.8 Coupled with the recovery of agriculture in the late 1800s, this helped to build and maintain an economic elite to dominate the political apparatus of the state Democratic Party. The economic interests of the state, however, remained fairly evenly distributed. The economic interests of one area of the state never seemed poised against another area, as in other states.9 The Great Depression of the 1930s crippled the nation‘s economy and left countless Texans destitute and desperate. The chaos of the disaster overpowered the traditional avenues of help for the poor and unemployed. With no jobs available and