Clovis News-Journal from Clovis, New Mexico • Page 9

LBJ Election Steal Tfrrtv. 4, tfffl By JAMES Prett Writer ALtCE, Ten. (AP) A for- met Texas voting official seeking "peace of mind" says he certified enough fictitious bil- lots to steal an election yem ago and launch Lyndon Johnson on a path that led to the presidency. The statement comes from Luis Salas, who was the election judge for Jim County's notorious Box 13, wtrich produced just enough votes in the 1948 Texas Democratic primary runoff to give Johnson nomination, then tantamount to election, to the S. Senate.

"Johnson did not win that election; it was stolen for him. And know exactly how it was done," said Salas, now a lean, white-haired man of then swarthy 210-pound political henchman with absolute sty over vote counts in his South Texas precinct. The controversy over that election has been a subject of tantalizing conjecture for nearly three decades, ever since U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black abruptly halted an investigation, but the principals have been silent. George B.

Parr, the South Texas political boss whom Salas served for a decade, shot himself to death in June 1975. Johnson is dead and so is his opponent. Salas is among few living persons with direct knowledge of the election. Johnson's widow, Lady Bird, was told of Salas' statements and said through a spokeswoman that "she knows no more about the details of the 1948 election other than that charges were made at the time, carried through several courts and finally to a justice at the Supreme Court." The Associated Press interviewed Salas frequently during the past three years, seeking answers to questions that, save for rumors, were left unanswered. Only recently did Salas agree to tell his full version of what happened.

In his soft Spanish accent, Salas said he decided to break his silence in quest of "peace of mind and to reveal to the people the corruption of politics." Salas says now that he lied during an aborted investigation of the election in 1948, when he testified that the vote count was proper and aboveboard. He told The AP that Parr ordered that 200-odd votes be added to Johnson's total from Box 13. Salas said he saw the fraudulent votes added in alphabetical order and then certified them as authentic on orders from Parr. The final statewide count gave Johnson an 87-vote margin in a total tally approaching 1 million and earned him the tongue-in-cheek nickname, "Landslide Lyndon." Here is how Box 13 generated the haze of suspicion Johnson never quite dispelled. In the Texas of the 1940s, the Democratic nominee was the sure winner in any statewide general election.

Any battles were fought in the party, and if they had to be settled in an election, it was the primary that counted. Texas Democrats were split in 1948. Johnson, then 39, a congressman, represented "new" Democrats in his bid for the U.S. Senate. His primary opponent was Coke R.

60 years old, three times Texas governor, never beaten and the candidate of the "old" wing of the party. They called him "Calculating Coke." The vote in the July primary was Stevenson 477,077, Johnson 405,617. But a third candidate, George Petty, siphoned off enough votes to deny Stevenson a majority, forcing a runoff between Stevenson and Johnson, set for Aug. 28, 1948. Salas speaks with wonderment about the bizarre events in South Texas in the 1940s.

"Sometimes I wonder why I didn't get the electric chair," be commented at one point. "It was awful what we did The 'Godfather' book was fiction; what we did was real." "I did plenty wrong, and 1 pent now. I also did plenty of good. Like, say, a man's wife is sick. I would say to him: 'Go to the drugstore and get I would tell the drugstore to give him the medicine and charge the to me.

Parr would pay it. All that kind of stuff, you know. Funerals. I would teU the funeral 'Go ahead and bury them, art charge "It was a way rf life te threaten people. "I carried HIM all tint.

Oh, I tell you, we rjaJiww- pjfce in Atice in than ttrnt years. I would just tall feg'i like thai he sujv the way me. I would ite I go. I would fjgn my tte fjJoJMi off the Alice Mews who was the Just sent in the figures they were given to me on etee- MI days later a county eommitteeman, fttos, came by the office give me the changed figures as approved by the committee. Usually, there's only a few votes difference from the unofficial election night figures; this time there WM a tremendous change." buttose dispatched the new to the Election Bureau in Dallas.

Salas said that in a book he is writing about the entire Box 13 episode, he would name the pwwms who actually wrote down the additional names. Stlas explained that regardless of how the ballots were marked, he called them on election night for whichever candidate he wanted, could have given Stevenson whatever 1 wanted. I should have given him only four votes." Jim Holmgreen, now a mortician in Alice, worked as a poll watcher in Box 13 during the runoff balloting. He said in a recent interview: "I saw more votes stolen for Lyndon Johnson than Johnson won the election by. A ballot would be pulled from the box marked for Stevenson but would be called out for Johnson.

I know because I watched and saw it." Although there had been a writ of mandamus issued stipulating that poll watcnen be permitted full access to the balloting process, it was ignored, Salas told The AP. "I just ordered them to go sit in a corner and keep out of the way." Holmgreen said he tried to look over shoulders to see how the ballots were marked. "A police officer seemed to just grow out of the ground and next thing I knew he took me to the city jail and locked me in a cell, on the orders of Luis Salas," Holmgreen Asked about his testimony in the aborted Alice hearing, Salas said: WW HI tnB mnfoR WMfl tWJC fttOffptM Iht iflftfttigatiAlt. ton, yea they had an efertfon clerks suftfwtnW But I WM if they started to ifflfficate my clerks, I wouldn't lei 'em. would just ten the truth." save the etefM? Damn Host.

But it never lot to that point. Black slopped -If the investigation had been allowed to continue to the end, would they have proven a vote fraud? "Vet, absolutely. Because what they did, they did wrong, mean, became those people didn't vote. And the lawyers knew it right away." In a recent public speech, the chairman of the 19M Texas Democratic Executive Committee that voted in Fort Worth to name Johnson the party's said he was convinced at the time that a fraud had taken place in Jim Wells County. Retired Texas Supreme Court Justice Robert W.

Calvert recalled that he ordered the committee secretary to keep all county chairman election reports unopened in a vault, until the official canvass. The canvass committee counted the county reports and declared Johnson the winner by 97 votes. Calvert said he had reminded them of a 1932 Texas Supreme Court ruling that the canvassing committee was only to count the county returns, certify the reports came from the county chairmen, and declare a winner based on the majority of the vote as reported. "I was convinced that a fraud had been perpetrated in Jim Wells County" Calvert said in his speech. "The 202 names added to the voter signature list were all in the same handwriting and were in the same ink.

Nevertheless, if I had been forced to vote to break a tie, I would have voted for Johnson. My decision would have been based on that 1932 Supreme Court decision." Calvert said he did not actually see the 202 names on the list, however. Parr once indicated that his split with Coke Stevenson the split that brought Lyndon Johnson into Parr's favor came about because of Stevenson's failure to appoint E. James Kazan, a Parr candidate, to the post of district attorney in Webb County, when Stevenson was governor. (iff Wtt the first time we have had an opportunity to vote against mm," Part sitd in an interview.

A Jim Wells County grand Jury that met in looked into the allegations con- eerning Box 13. Several of these grand jurors, contacted recently, said Salat almost was indicted for election fraud. They said the vote was.74, hut nine votes were required. One juror said: "ft (Box 13) was worse than Watergate, because Nixon would have been re-elected anyway. This way, a man became president when he shouldn't have." In the interim, Johnson intensified his campaign.

One of the places he went stumping was the hot, flat, brush country of South Texas, George B. Parr country, where the Mexican- American vote seemed always to come, favoring Parr's candidate, in a bloc. The power had passed to Parr from his father, Archie, a state senator who had sided with Mexican-Americans in a 1912 battle with Anglos over political control in Daval County. The youngest Parr was known as the "Duke of Duval." Salas said he was Parr's right-hand man in Jim Wells County from 1940 to 1950, but quit over Parr's failure to support a fellow Mexican-American who had been charged with murder. He talked about Pair's empire.

"We had the law to ourselves there. It was a lawless son-of-a- bitch. We had iron control. If a man was opposed to us, we'd put him out of business. Parr was the Godfather.

He had life or death control," said Salas. "We could tell any election judge: 'Give us 80 per cent of the vote, the other guy 20 per We had it made in every election. "I carried a gun all the time," said Salas, who once rode with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. "Oh, I tell you, we had real power. Every year, every election year 1942,1944,1946,1948 we used to buy poll taxes.

I would go to the courthouse there, tell the county tax collector: 'Give me three, four books poll That would be about a thousand poll taxes." Until the practice was outlawed, a receipt for payment of the $1.75 per person poll tax had to be shown before a voter wn permitted loetsta Mist, salat said, "I would ten my to every howe and of them, telling him, "Dont worry about the money, I don't pay for it out of my own pocket." The runoff election came on a HT viaii Wells county's tote was wired to the Texas Election Bureau, the unofficial tabulating agency: Johnson Stevenson Votes trickled in from the rest of the state, and over the next few days the lead seesawed back and forth, the outcome uncertain. As the count neared completion, Stevemon had a slight lead. Salas says Johnson's eventual victory, his first in a statewide race, was built on fraudulent votes, added after the polls closed Saturday. Salas told The AP it was done this way: "On the third day, Tuesday, there was a meeting in George Parr's office 10 miles from Alice. Parr, Lyndon Johnson, Ed Lloyd (a Jim Wells County Democratic executive mitteeman), Bruce Ainaworth (an Alice city commissioner) and myself were there.

Stevenson was in the lead with almost all the vote in. "Lyndon Johnson said: 'If I can get 200 more votes, I've got it "Parr said to me in Spanish: 'We need to win this election. I want you to add those 200 I had already turned in my poll and tally sheets to Givens Parr, George's brother. "I told Parr in Spanish: 'I don't give a damn if Johnson "Parr then Mid: 'Well, for sure you're going to certify what we "I told him I would, because I didn't want anybody to think I'm not backing up my party. I said I would be with the party to the end.

After Parr and I talked in Spanish, Parr told Johnson 200 votes would be added. When I left, Johnson knew we were going to take care of the situation." WWUB off the Make your move this month to ht iSSon 8ifln fw 8vef Owrt wail tor higher here, move while irthoti Ml, IWW Paff, ROW ire Ijiias said he saw (wo men add the names to the list of vot- about I o'clock at night, in IBB two towing orders ind he would not identify them. The AP interview then produced this exchange; CMRfMr MM wlUIlgv- 'j; Q. Whae they were doing it you told him? A. Yeah, and be Sihf: 'It's Q.

They should have changed the hs Wwfitini? A. How? Only twogoyst How they going to change ft! The lawyers spotted it right twiy, they iig "las MM he remembers tfie he wnuid am HUMMM i nafned added to the Mil uv wuvm TCI, Buiimme la Hut actually Udd the names? um or mm. Miguel A Yeah And Acero, followed by the flfffH of them doiIt.T*s*iSXltt Miguel Acero. "We also udded Q. Were all 200 names in the same handwriting? Oh, yeah.

They all came from the poll taxes, I mean, from the poll tax sheet. Q. But some were dead? A. No one was dead. They just didn't vote.

Q. So you voted them? A. They voted them. Q. You certified? A.

I certified. So did the Democratic County chairman. 1 kept my word to be loyal to my party. Q. Had some of those names already voted? A.

No, they didn't vote in that election. They added 'em. They made a mistake of doing it alphabetically? Q. They added them alphabetically, as though they had walked in to vote alphabetically? A. Yeah, that's what I told George and he wouldn't listen to me.

I said: 'Look at the you add 10 or 12 names on that letter. Whey don't you change it to the other, Cor or mix 'em George said, "That's all George was stubborn. He would not listen to anybody. But it was stupid. They went to the poll tax list and got those names.

For instance, on the A they got 10 or 12 names. Q. People who had not voted? A. That's right. They went on the the same way, until they our party and we voted him for Johnson.

Cerda was in King' sville (about 25 miles away) on election day. Cerda was mad as heo. Six days after the runoff, on Sept. 3, a second telegram to the election bureau changed scaping "Our't Are Better? Nuntry Stock in Eastern NJ4ei 4 Wttt Texas CONVENIENCE Bama 2 Lb. Jbr Strawberry Preserves I VMWPh.