Texas

"When we came back from the Los Angeles convention," said Texas Attorney General Will Wilson, "I would guess that the state was only about 35% for Kennedy. We had an unacceptable platform to contend with, the religion issue and a loud anti-Johnson group." The Democrats got to work, corralled the Negro, Latin American and labor, vote for Kennedy, then drummed up old-fashioned party loyalty everywhere else. They got an unexpected break in the last week, courtesy of Republican Congressman Bruce Alger, who egged on the group of rowdy Republicans who jostled Johnson and his wife Lady Bird in a Dallas hotel lobby, spat at him, roughed up his wife's hair. Johnson therefore played the martyr's role like an old pro. Dallas County stayed as Republican as ever--Nixon got 149,333 votes, 23,972 more than Ike's 1956 mark--but in the central and east Texas rural areas and in some of the smaller Texas cities, the Democratic ticket picked up steadily, and Bruce Alger's blunder made a big difference. One top Nixon adviser insists that it even helped lose South Carolina, where voters resented the unchivalrous attitude toward Lady Bird.

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