Washed Out

Cloudbursts in Texas last week took at least 20 lives and incidentally washed out enthusiasm for Texas' Senatorial campaign. The 27 spellbinding candidates (Goat Gland Doctor Brinkley withdrew) slogged down in the gumbo.

Attorney General Gerald Mann, leading in the polls (27%), baited by supporters of New Deal Candidate Lyndon Johnson, began losing his preacher's temper before less excited audiences. Governor O'Daniel, second by poll (25.6%), acted as though he couldn't make up his mind whether he really wanted to leave beautiful Texas after all. Martin Dies (23.7%) had developed a strange, ethereal technique that baffled audiences used to his old bellowing, hellfire oratory: he suddenly became dignified, proper, precise. Lyndon Johnson (19.4%, up from 5% at the campaign's beginning), running as "the Roosevelt candidate for the U.S. Senate," was coming up faster than anybody else as the rains came down.

Texans blamed the rains for the slump. Last week in Madisonville, "Pappy" O'Daniel's sound truck ran into a cloud burst; rain got on the record of his speech; the needle got caught in a groove; the golden voice sang out to the drenched crowd: "I will get more money in Washington for the old folks the old folks the old folks the old folks the old folks the old folks the old folks the old folks the old. . . ."

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