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In 1970, Ralph Yarborough, the populist liberal Democratic senator from Texas, was expected to easily win his third term in the Senate. Yarborough was a prominent national figure, close friends with the Kennedy brothers, Al Gore, Sr, HH Humphrey, and the rest. He held the chairmanship of the powerful Labor and Public Welfare Committee. He was a strong Civil Rights supporter and an opponent of the Viet Nam war and of Richard Nixon, and was well loved and trusted in Texas. Yarborough's liberal social policies were offset by his conservative personal life. He was a devout Baptist, a family man, a hunter, a former military officer during WW II, and never drank alcohol.
He was challenged in the Democratic primary by Lloyd Bentsen, and unkown conservative Democrat from south Texas whose father owned a series of banks. No one took Bentsen seriously. He was far behind in the polls, and everyone expected Yarborough's real challenge to be a young former congressman from Houston, George HW Bush. Yarborough had already beaten Bush once.
Yarborough had been a liberal champion in the Senate. He voted for every Civil Rights Bill, spearheaded the bilingual education move, fought LBJ to create a national park on Padre Island in Texas (and also helped create national parks in the Guadalupe Mountains and Big Thicket), and was a constant opponent of the Viet Nam War, while doing everything he could to support the troops back home, including leading a Veterans benefit bill.
In 1970 Nixon nominated consecutively two conservative southern judges to the Supreme Court. Both were segregationists, and were part of the Republican "Southern Strategy" to win the south by being racist. Yarborough voted against both of them, and both were defeated. After the second defeat, Nixon bitterly proclaimed that he would not nominate another Southern judge because "Northern liberals" would defeat any southerner he appointed.
Benstsen jumped on this vote, which was one month before the primaries in Texas. Bentsen was trailing badly. He had been rebuffed by even conservative Dems like Connally, and LBJ had refused to support him, and it seemed hopeless. One month before the election he accused Yarborough of being anti-southern. "Yarborough should vote for Texas at least once in a while," Bentsen proclaimed, and accused Yarborough of siding with "anti-southern" and "ultra-liberal" northerners who viewed the Supreme Court as a "place to write laws rather than interpret them."
This vote was the turning point in the primary. Several conservative businessmen and politicos who had backed Yarborough until then changed their allegiance to the "pro-Texas" Bentsen. There was a rumor that LBJ had privately begun to back Bentsen against his close friend Yarborough. Bentsen received more funding to run a series of late ads attacking Yarborough.
The commercials were vicious, slanderous, and outrageous. They showed clips of rioting in the streets, and balmed Yarborough. They showed anti-war protests and implied (falsely) that Yarborough had taken part in anti-war rallies where flags were burned. One commercial showed a split screen, with Ho Chin Min on one side and Yarborough on the other, facing each other while chatting and smiling. The commercial proclaimed that Yarborough was the best friend Ho Chi Min had in Washington. Some Texans took this literally, believing the two men actually knew each other, and the commercial did nothing to dispell that misconception.
Rumors said that Bush, the Republican nominee, was helping the Bentsen campaign with funding and ideas. (as far as I know, the rumors haven't been proven). Indeed, Bentsen's campaign should not have been able to afford the million dollar advertising blitz, but Yarborough's vote against Nixon's nominee had struck a nerve, and money flowed into Bentsen's camp from all over, no doubt from Republican, probably even Nixonian, sources. In addition, the Republicans began a campaign of their own, to convince their voters to vote in the Democratic primary for Bentsen, and this campaign seems to have worked.
Yarborough went from a solid lead to defeat in one month, because his liberal record was portrayed as a "northern, anti-southern" record. texas had long been a populist state, and that populism split between liberal and conservative libertarian sorts. After 1970, the conservatives in Texas began to gain ground in both parties, and the Democrats were increasingly portrayed as non-southern, non-Texan. "Liberal" began to mean non-Texan. We've never recovered from that.
Obviously, it wasn't Yarborough's one vote which swayed the entire future of Texas politics, but his one vote did open the financial door for Lloyd Bentsen to defeat him. Texas had never been a strong segregationist state, like other southern states. Two of Texas's strongest figures, LBJ and Ralph Yarborough, were strong supporters of the Civil Rights movement from the 50s. But eventually the constant alliance with northern forces over southern politicians turned the tide.
When Yarborough left the Senate, Eagleburger spoke at a rally for him. "Ralph Yarborough would rather be right than be Senator," he said, to much applause. It was meant as a compliment, and it was. Yarborough refused to compromise for political reasons. His integrity, and that of many like him, changed America, ending (mostly) segregation and winning Civil Rights. Yarborough frequently said that the Civil Rights battle had lost the south for the Democrats, but he also believed, as I'm sure all of us do, that it was worth it, that it was the right thing to do.
But the fact still remains that we are still slipping down a steep conservative slope because of it.
I have no ultimate proof in this story. The current battle over Alito and whether Dems should support or oppose the nominee has some resonances. Both sides of the argument can find proof that they are right in Yarborough's history (a similar history could be told for Al Gore, Sr, btw). One major difference between the vote against Judge Harrold Carswell in 1970, and the current battle with Alito is that Yarborough knew his side would win the battle. It was political suicide for a noble victory. If our current Dems mount a battle against Alito, it probably won't win (Reid will know the results before the vote starts, so he will adjust his strategy accordingly).
But I thought it was an interesting story, anyway. It's a microcosm of how we got where we are today, if nothing else.
For the record, I cribbed a lot of my story from Patrick Cox's biography of Yarborough, "Ralph W. Yarborough: The People's Senator," although many of the interpretations, and any mistakes, are mine.
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