Roundup Time

Certain that he heard the call of "the people," Texas' conservative Democratic Senator Price Daniel decided last spring to interrupt his term in Washington to run for governor, lifted himself by the coat collar, threw himself into the saddle and went thataway. Supporting him were a solid array of 1952 "Eisencrats," a phalanx of the oil-rich, and the more stable elements of the newly eclipsed machine of Governor Allan Shivers (TIME, May 14). Opposing him: a passel of hombres whose political tendencies are as diverse as the many species of badlands cactus, e.g., Liberal Democrat Ralph Yarborough, cornhusking, rabble-rousing W. (for Wilbert) Lee ("Pappy") O'Daniel, ultraconservative, ultra-segregationalist J. Ev-etts Haley.

From the Rio Grande to the Red River, the candidates roamed, some shooting their arguments from the hip, others employing the chuckwagon gambit--from offers of pie-in-the-sky to accusations of fingers-in-pots. Ex-Governor, ex-Senator O'Daniel, who climbed from the valley of a dingdong radio hillbilly band in the old days to the butte-top of mediocrity, gave the crowds a Texas-sized helping of every thing: a twanging hillbilly quintet, prom ises of a 25% state-funded rebate on fed eral income taxes, veterans' bonuses, old-age pensions, and a vicious harangue about "those nine cowards" in the Su preme Court who "tell us we got to eat [with Negroes], play together, sit to gether, sleep together, and do everything together. Pretty soon, there'll be little parties . . . nature will take its course, they intermarry, and the mongrel race takes over." Yarborough rode even harder, plying the city folks with warnings about the Shivers regime's land corruption, greasing the rural populace with his own cowboy band (three guitars), offers of higher pen sions ("We'll just let those rich Repub licans pay for it"). Though he hedged considerably on the segregation issue, Yar borough could at least proclaim his strict party loyalty.

Meanwhile, back on the range, Price Daniel was waging his colorless but cu riously effective campaign. He made no bones about his 1952 support of Eisenhower, spoke quietly and sincerely, radiated a comfortable aura of respectability and conservatism. Coolly in favor of segregation ("separate but equal"), he allowed that he would back the Democratic presidential nominee this year "unless that nominee makes it impossible" for him to do so, offered to give the people "simple honesty and moral integrity in government."

When roundup time came in Texas last week, it was plain that Price Daniel had ridden well. He corralled 553,000 votes; Yarborough limped in with 409,000, Pappy O'Daniel bit the dust with 310,000. Next scene: a Daniel-Yarborough runoff on Aug. 25. The boys in the bunkhouse were predicting an even wider margin of victory for Daniel.

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