Texas: Rallying to Resign

Into the modernistic Civic Center in the Rio Grande city of McAllen (pop. 32,728) last week crowded some 650 Texans to cheer Davy Crockett’s words from the movie, The Alamo: “There’s right and there’s wrong. You gotta do one or the other. You do the one and you’re living. You do the other, and you may be walking around, but you’re dead as a beaver hat.” Then nearly 200 of them announced their resignations from the Democratic Party and pledged their allegiance to the G.O.P. in Texas.

This meeting, and a similar one the next night in nearby San Benito, where 153 professed Democrats bolted their party, were the latest instances of a new sort of Texas political charivari: the “resignation rally.” Out of such a rally in Fort Worth came some 600 signed resignation cards; at Harlingen about 150 switched; at Littlefield, 126. Rallies are now being held almost weekly, to the delight of G.O.P. leaders fired up by last May’s election of Republican John Tower to the Senate seat vacated by Vice President Lyndon Johnson.

There is an air of caution and curiosity as longtime Democrats head for the meetings. Said one man at the McAllen rally: “My wife’s family will cut her out of the family will for this. Why, they’ve been Democrats for as long as anybody can remember.”

Democrats were openly scornful. Said Young Democratic Club Leader Carlos Moore after the Fort Worth meeting: “These people are just a bunch of far right-wingers who have been supporting the Republican ticket for 20 to 30 years. They can’t win their viewpoint within the Democratic Party.” But the criticism missed the point. Although many Texans have indeed been voting Republican for years, only recently has actual G.O.P. membership become respectable.

The Texas G.O.P. has vigorous and youthful new leadership. U.S. Senator Tower is 36. State Chairman Tad Smith is 33, County Chairman Max Allen of San Antonio is 29, and County Chairman James Bertron of Houston is 31. Among those who signed pledge cards were some solid political pros, such as Breckenridge Oilman Jack Cox, 40, who picked up 619,000 votes (40% of the total) in challenging Governor Price Daniel in the Democratic gubernatorial primary last year. Cox appears set for an even more serious bid for Governor next year—as a Republican.