New Texan on the Potomac

JOHN is meaner than an alligator with abscessed teeth, but he's also a hell of an interesting animal to watch." With these words, a former associate of Secretary of the Treasury-designate John Connally previewed the spectacle awaiting Potomac watchers who may seek to unravel the dynamics of President Nixon's newest Cabinet member.

Connally earned his reputation in the tough crucible of Texas politics and big-oil money. Born 53 years ago in Floresville, a small farming community south of San Antonio, he remembers his childhood as just slightly removed from "raw frontier. I'm not trying to play the humble-beginnings record, but I studied by kerosene. We had no electricity. There were no paved roads." His father worked as a tenant farmer, a butcher and laborer before the family moved to San Antonio when Connally was ten. There, the senior Connally operated a one-vehicle bus line from San Antonio to Corpus Christi.

Young Connally, with some financial help from his parents, entered the University of Texas, the undergraduate club for the state's business and political leaders and an academic must for an ambitious young Texan. He stacked books in the library for 17-c- an hour and doubled as campus representative for Beech-Nut chewing gum. Handsome and articulate, he ran for student body president--partly because the job paid $30 a month--and won. He completed his academic career by marrying the campus beauty, Idanell Brill, University Sweetheart, Cactus Beauty and Relay Queen.

While still a student, Connally caught the eye of a young Democrat making his first race for Congress. When Representative Lyndon Baines Johnson went to Washington in 1937, he took Connally with him as an administrative aide. Connally stayed in Washington until 1941, when he enlisted in the Navy as an ensign. At the end of the war, he was a lieutenant commander decorated three times as a flight officer on the carrier Essex. Connally used his mustering-out pay to open a radio station in Austin with ten other veterans--among them Congressman Jake Pickle and Judge Homer Thornberry, an L.B.J. Supreme Court nominee--and for three years was general manager and the largest stockholder of KVET.

He did another brief stint in Washington with L.B.J., by then a Senator, but in 1950 came back to Texas to make his fortune as chief attorney for the late oil magnate Sid Richardson.

Throughout the '50s, he maintained his contacts with Political Mentor Johnson, working behind the scenes on campaigns, lining up financial backing among his oil-industry friends and serving as Johnson's liaison man with local Democratic leaders. At the 1960 Democratic Convention, he headed Johnson's bid for the presidential nomination. When L.B.J. became John F. Kennedy's Vice President, Kennedy made Connally Secretary of the Navy.

Connally resigned from his Pentagon post in December 1961, to run for Governor, only to discover that his longtime role in the back rooms of Texas politics had left him a virtual unknown with the voters. With oilman backing, he launched the most expensive gubernatorial campaign in Texas history--and easily carried the day. Midway through Connally's first two-year term as Governor, President Kennedy went to Texas to try to heal the bitter rift in the state's Democratic Party. The conservative wing, already becoming known as the Connally wing, and the liberal wing, led by Senator Ralph Yarborough, were engaged in an internecine war. In the Dallas motorcade for Kennedy, Connally had a coveted seat in the presidential limousine--and was seriously injured in the lung, arm and leg by one of the bullets that passed through Kennedy.

Connally went on to become a three-term Governor, an enormously popular figure in state politics and an increasingly important national figure. He was the absent L.B.J.'s eyes and ears at the fratricidal 1968 Democratic Convention, helping to push through the adoption of the pro-Viet Nam War platform plank. During the election campaign, he played at kingmaker, courted by Nixon and desperately sought by Humphrey for his clout with the huge contributors in the oil industry. Connally sat out the bulk of the campaign, only bestirring himself on Humphrey's behalf during the closing days, when Humphrey began to gain ground (he won Texas by 38,960 votes). Since leaving the Governor's mansion in January 1969, Connally has practiced law and tended to chores as a director of banking and oil interests in Texas and New York.

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