Yellow Dogs and Republicans: Allan Shivers and Texas Two-Party Politics

Chapter Four. Ascent and Election in His Own Right 1949–50

ch apter four Ascent and Election in His Own Right 1949–50 many years later, price daniel recalled his feelings upon hearing of Jester’s death: “I figured I hadn’t been living right.” Shivers’s ascension presented problems for Daniel’s planned race for governor. The sudden shift in political fortunes required both to rethink their positions. While Shivers had likely planned to run for governor in 1950, his plans had not factored in incumbency. It offered some advantages, but precious few guarantees. Between July, 1949, and September, 1950, Shivers fought not just for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, but for control over the party machinery itself. He succeeded through superb political intelligence and organization. A special legislative session allowed him to press a moderate reform agenda and appeal to rank-and-file Texas voters. However, he remained true to his conservative allies in his opposition to civil rights and his antifederal position in the developing controversy over offshore oil.1 Three months after becoming governor, Allan Shivers commissioned Austin public relations man J. J. “Jake” Pickle to do a detailed political reconnaissance of the state. Pickle was no stranger to politics. He, too, had been president of the University of Texas student body. He worked on Lyndon Johnson’s National Youth Administration staff and had assisted Johnson with his early political campaigns. After World War II, Pickle helped form the Austin-based public relations firm of Syers, Pickle, and Winn, which mainly catered to a political clientele. After accepting the governor’s commission, Pickle met with “leading citizens” in each county seat and large town in an effort to create a statewide network of key Shivers supporters. Pickle’s forays into the hinterland revealed problems for the governor. Some believed Shivers’s long service in the state senate had made him a pawn of special interests. Although his wealth may have given him greater independence than other lawmakers, his money aroused as much suspicion as his lengthy political career. Other observers worried over the “Dewey factor,” suggesting that Shivers looked good but lacked substance.2 One opponent admitted that “women were fascinated by his good looks,” a fact that worried some of the politicians who faced Shivers. Once, in an early race, an opponent accused Shivers of wearing a toupee. A friendly source described him as a “consummate candidate” with a good memory for faces and names. However , he was also “aloof” and a bit of an elitist. He was never fully comfortable with working crowds, plainly preferring the company of the well heeled. Audiences found him “articulate” and “impeccably dressed,” even “regal.” “If a man could be beautiful,” liberal legislator Edgar Berlin recalled some years later, “he was a beautiful man.”3 Pickle reported that he had encountered “valid criticism” that the governor seemed “too stiff, too unbending, too good-looking, too polished, too smooth, too much reserved.” Shivers’s ideological transformation from his early days in the state senate did not play well either. It appeared that “too many oilmen, too many big businessmen, too much upper-crust” surrounded the new governor. The taint of elitism fed East Texas rumors that Shivers owned as many as twenty-one cars. Pickle advised him to “take the lead for one or two liberal things.” One could, he suggested, oppose the poll tax or call for better eleemosynary institutions or oldage pensions and “make no one especially mad.” The governor might even get away with mild criticism of special interests if he chose his words carefully. Lastly, the veteran political observer told his client that religion might pose a problem. Shivers’s wife was Catholic and this caused worries in some quarters. “You hear it all the time,” Pickle explained, but cautioned against responding directly to such criticism. A “Little Red Arrow Character and religious speech” before an audience of his fellow Baptists would blunt any simmering prejudice.4 Normally easy-going and jocular gubernatorial aide Weldon Hart, who had known Shivers since his student days, also offered some plain words of advice. He urged his boss to exhibit a kinder, gentler side. The “personally cold, calculating , ruthless, and inordinately ambitious” image Shivers projected had to change. Such advice ran counter to the increasing pressure the governor felt from Democratic Party conservatives. Hints of varying subtlety reached Shivers from the right in late 1949 and early 1950. Former railroad commissioner Olin Culberson appeared primed to challenge him. Attorney General Price Daniel had worked to stake out an irreconcilable position on...