George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

distinctive: Morris was for "no treaties with Russia," the repeal of the federal income tax,
and the "selling off of excess government industrial property such as TVA and REA"-what
the Reagan-Bush administrations would later call privatization.
Competing with Bush for the less militant conservatives was Dallas lawyer Robert
Morris, who recommended depriving the US Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction in
school prayer cases. [fn 15] In order to avoid a humiliating second-round runoff in the
primary, Bush would need to score an absolute majority the first time around. To do that
he would have to first compete with Cox on a right-wing terrain, and then move to the
center after the primary in order to take votes from Yarborough there.
But there was also primary competition on the Democratic side for Yarborough. This was
Gordon McLendon, the owner of a radio network, the Liberty Broadcasting System, that
was loaded with debt. Liberty Broadcasting's top creditor was Houston banker Roy
Cullen, a Bush crony. Roy Cullen's name appears, for example, along with such died-in -
the wool Bushmen as W.S. Farrish III, James A. Baker III, C. Fred Chambers, Robert
Mosbacher, William C. Liedtke, Jr., Joseph R. Neuhaus, and William B. Cassin in a Bush
campaign ad in the Houston Chronicle of late April, 1964. When McLendon finally went
bankrupt, it was found that he owed Roy Cullen more than a million dollars. So perhaps it
is not surprising that McLendon's campaign functioned as an auxiliary to Bush's own
efforts. McLendon specialized in smearing Yarborough with the Billie Sol Estes issue,
and it was to this that McLendon devoted most of his speaking time and media budget.
Billie Sol Estes in those days was notorious for his conviction for defrauding the US
government of large sums of money in a scam involving the storage of chemicals that
turned out not to exist. Billie Sol was part of the LBJ political milieu. As the Estes
scandal developed, a report emerged that he had given Yarborough a payment of $50,000
on Nov. 6, 1960. But later, after a thorough investigation, the Department of Justice had
issued a statement declaring that the charges involving Yarborough were "without any
foundation in fact and unsupported by credible testimony." "The case is closed," said the
Justice Department. But this did not stop Bush from using the issue to the hilt: "I don't
intend to mud-sling with [Yarborough] about such matters as the Billie Sol Estes case
since Yarborough's connections with Estes are a simple matter of record which any one
can check," said Bush. "[Yarborough is] going to have to prove to the Texas voters that
his connections with Billie Sol Estes were as casual as he claims they were." [fn 16] In a
release issued on April 24, Bush "said he welcomes the assistance of Gordon McLendon,
Yarborough's primary opponent, in trying to force the incumbent Senator to answer."
Bush added that he planned to "hammer at Yarborough every step of the way" "until I get
some sort of answer."
The other accusation that was used against Yarborough during the campaign was
advanced most notably in an article published in the September, 1964 issue of Reader's
Digest. The story was that Yarborough had facilitated backing and subsidies through the
Texas Area Reconstruction Administration for an industrial development project in
Crockett, Texas, only to have the project fail owing to the inability of the company
involved to build the factory that was planned. The accusation was that Audio