George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Bush was also smarting under Yarborough's repeated references to his New England birth
and background. Bush claimed that he was no carpetbagger, but a Texan by choice, and
compared himself in that regard to Sam Rayburn, Sam Houston, Austin, Colonel Bill
Travis, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and other heroes of the Alamo. Bush was not hobbled
by any false modesty. At least, Bush asserted lamely, he was not as big a carpetbagger as
Bobby Kennedy, who could not even vote in New York state, where he was making a
successful bid for election to the Senate. It "depends on whose bag is being carpeted,"
Bush whined.
In the last days of the campaign, Allan Duckworth of the pro-Bush Dallas Morning News
was trying to convince his readers that the race was heading for a "photo finish." But in
the end, Prescott's networks, the millions of dollars, the recordings, and the endorsements
of 36 newspapers were of no avail for Bush. Yarborough defeated Bush by a margin of
1,463,958 to 1,134,337. Within the context of the LBJ landslide victory over Goldwater,
Bush had done somewhat better than his party's standard bearer: LBJ beat Goldwater in
Texas by 1,663,185 to 958,566. Yarborough, thanks in part to his vote in favor of the
Civil Rights Act, won a strong majority of the black districts, and also ran well ahead
among Latinos. Bush won the the usual Republican counties, including the pockets of
GOP support in the Houston area.
Yarborough would continue for one more term in the Senate, vocally opposing the war in
Vietnam. In the closing days of the campaign he had spoken of Bush and his retinue as
harbingers of a "time and society when nobody speaks for the working man." George
Bush, defeated though he was, would now redouble his struggle to make such a world a
reality. Yarborough, although victorious, appears in retrospect as the fading rearguard of
an imperfect but better America that would disappear during the late sixties and
seventies.
NOTES:
1. George Bush and Victor Gold, Looking Forward (New York, 1987), p. 84.
2. Bush and Gold, p. 84.
3. John R. Knaggs, Two-Party Texas (Austin, 1985), p. 34.
4. For a summary of the southern strategy, see Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes (Boston, 1970), pp. 262 ff.
5. For a profile of Yarborough's voting record on this and other issues, see Chandler Davidson, Race and
Class in Texas Politics ( Princeton, 1990), pp. 29 ff.
6. For Yarborough's Senate achievements up to 1964, see Ronnie Dugger, "The Substance of the Senate
Contest," in The Texas Observer, Sept. 18, 1964.
7. Bush and Gold, Looking Forward, p. 77 ff.
8. See Harry Hurt III, Texas Rich (New York), p. 191.