Up & Away With LBJ

Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson this week rode out of his LBJ ranch to hit the presidential campaign trail with no fewer than 63 personal appearances booked over the next two months. Principal object of his affections: the county organizations that will control the 61 Texas votes at the convention. Once he stamps his LBJ brand on this big herd, he will be ready for the hard-eyed political trading by which he might get the other 695 votes he will need to win the nomination.

Democrat Johnson kept right on protesting that his hard work was aimed only at ensuring re-election next year to his Senate seat, which he won last time by 80% of the primary vote. But House Speaker Sam Rayburn, 77, Lyndon's political papa ("I've watched this young man, and all in all he has been pleasing to me"), called a Dallas press conference to launch a full-scale Johnson-for-Presi-dent organization intended to spread from Texas through the South and beyond.

One man who might help round up LBJ votes outside Texas is Harry S. Truman, at the moment behind Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington, but committed to help Rayburn's Johnson-for-President campaign if and when Symington falters

(TIME, June 1). In Dallas for a fund-raising rally when Rayburn made his announcement, Truman beamed. "If I was from Texas, I'd do the same thing," he said, "but we have to wait until we hear from Missouri."

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