The Story of Election Thievery

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Throughout the course of the current presidential campaign, President Trump has expressed concern about the threat of Democrats stealing the election. His concerns are well founded. This is the story of how Democrats have been stealing elections all over the country – including here in Missouri – for 150 years.

It has taken considerable time to bring you this story, but for me it’s been worth the effort and I hope you find it enlightening.

This story starts with William M. “Boss” Tweed, the head of the Democratic Party in New York during the late 1860s and early 1870s. It would have been difficult to bring you much of the details of Tweed, except that I still had one of my old college history books that went into much more detail than today’s college texts. The book used in my class devoted six pages to Tweed and machine politics in New York. The more recent versions allotted one page or less. 

How times have changed since my textbook came out in 1959, my freshman year in college. That year Tweed was described as a Democrat. The more recent college texts seem to have overlooked the fact Tweed was a Democrat. He was indeed a Democrat, succeeding in electing not only New York City officials, but also the governor of the state.

All of the textbooks reflected that Tweed’s power rested on his control of immigrant voting. Once he got total control, he went a little wacky – somewhat reminiscent of Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff. He built a courthouse in New York that was originally estimated to cost $250,000, but ended up running $13 million. 

Tweed made his personal fortune by requiring contractors to add a percentage to their contracts with the city and give this money to the boss. Originally, Tweed extracted 10%, but this was to grow to 66% and finally 85%. It is estimated Tweed “plundered” between $45 million and $100 million, enough at that time to buy a good part of the state of Missouri.

Several of the books pointed out that Tweed was the subject of cartoonist Thomas Nast in Harper’s magazine. One of the new books stated that the New York Times frequently editorialized against Tweed. (It’s difficult to imagine the Times coming out against a Democrat, isn’t it?) The editorials didn’t trouble Tweed as much as the cartoons. Many of the immigrants he controlled couldn’t read the editorials, but they could “look at the damn pictures,” Tweed said, and he offered Nast money to go abroad to study art.

The Tweed story shows how difficult it is to stop corruption. Where do the good guys get the facts they need to bring criminality to a halt. In Tweed’s case – as in the Pendergast case and a 1982 case from Chicago, both of which I will get to later – disgruntled insiders brought down the machine. The Tweed insider gave the city’s financial books to a reporter and such an uproar ensued that Tweed lost his power in the 1871 elections. In 1873 he was tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. In 1875 he escaped from prison, was later captured and died “friendless and penniless” shortly thereafter.

The corruption didn’t stop with Tweed’s topple from power. He was succeeded by Richard Croker, and as my old textbook states, “…the whole cycle of corruption and reform was to be repeated.” Croker was to rule until 1901.

In my 1959 textbook, the authors stated: “Lesser thieves plundered other cities almost as thoroughly. In Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, politicians perfected the fine art of ‘boodling’” – the kickback described above. 

Edward “Boss” Butler was the head of the Democratic Party in St. Louis from around 1876 until 1904, when he was convicted of bribery. Butler controlled city finances and gave lucrative contracts for kickbacks to a preferred group of prominent businessmen referred to as the Big Cinch. 

Joseph W. “Holy Joe” Folk was elected city attorney in 1902 and quickly moved to prosecute Butler and his business cronies and in 1904 got a conviction against Butler in a case heard in Columbia on a change of venue. The conviction was later overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court, but Folk’s campaign against Butler and the Big Cinch proved to be popular with voters and Folk was elected governor in 1904.

While I could find not a single mention of Butler in history texts at my disposal, he is mentioned in a number of relatively brief Internet articles. The most interesting thing I could find came from a story by Ken Zimmerman Jr., who wrote: “In the November 20, 1904 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Butler asserted that St. Louis was a Republican town. He further states that Joe Brown was the only truly elected Democratic mayor over the past twenty-five years. According to Butler, every other election had been stolen by the Democratic machine.” 

Butler came to power in St. Louis shortly after Tweed was toppled in New York. Butler used better judgment than Tweed and didn’t bring attention to himself and as a result succeeded in holding on to the strings of power for more than a quarter of a century.

On Missouri’s west side, Tom Pendergast was more colorful and more powerful than Butler. He controlled the Democratic Party in Kansas City and Jackson County from 1925 until 1939. Not only did Pendergast’s followers – at least those who were among the living – vote early and vote often, Pendergast controlled the votes of at least 60,000 cemetery residents, and some claim as many as 80,000. He was obviously a force to be reckoned with.  

I know of no history textbooks that have the Pendergast story, but there are numerous stories about him on the Internet. 

Under Pendergast Kansas City became a wide-open city, with every sort of vice imaginable. Elections in Kansas City were unimaginable. In the 1934 election the machine came under federal scrutiny when thousands of fraudulent ballots were cast, four were murdered at polling places and 11 voters shot. Can you believe Democrats have the gall to accuse Republicans of voter intimidation?

In the 1936 election more votes were cast than the number of registered voters. This led to federal judge Albert J. Reeves naming a grand jury. U.S. Attorney Maurice Milligan prosecuted those who were indicted and obtained 259 convictions.

Pendergast’s most famous protégé was Harry S Truman, who was elected to a Jackson County office with Pendergast’s support and was later elected and then reelected as U.S. Senator from Missouri, with margins provided by the Pendergast machine.

I’ve always been troubled by Truman’s connections with Pendergast. We got lucky with Truman. He turned out to be a good president. If vote stealing this year leads to the election of Joe Biden, the results will be ugly. 

In 1951 the Communist governments of North Korea and China sent troops to invade South Korea. Just six years after the end of World War II, Truman had to put American soldiers in harm’s way to stop the march of Communism. There is no Harry Truman anti-Communist blood flowing through the veins of Joe Biden. China would be delighted to see him as our president.

There is nothing to challenge about the stories I’ve presented up to this point. Boss Tweed existed and did all the things I told you about. The same goes for Boss Butler of St. Louis and Boss Pendergast of Kansas City. Political bosses steal votes, get their candidates elected and change the course of history. 

Joe Biden recently said he is the face of the Democratic Party. That’s partially true, but so are Boss Tweed, Boss Butler and Boss Pendergast. Corruption has been an intimate part of the Democratic Party since the outset of the party and still is.

So far, I’ve talked about three bosses. I’m now going to talk about two specific election contests. One was the 1948 Democratic primary race in Texas between Lyndon Johnson, who was to become president in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson. The two men were running for that state’s U.S. Senate seat. As will be clearly shown, Johnson stole that election.

The second race I’m going to tell you about is the 1982 gubernatorial race in Illinois between incumbent Republican James Thompson and Democrat Adlai Stevenson Jr., the U.S. Senator from Illinois. These two contests are crucial because they not only show how willing Democrats are to steal votes, either from fellow Democrats or from Republicans, but they also show why President Trump is fully justified in opposing Democratic vote stealing and what remedy he should seek.

In 2007 I summarized the 1948 Texas election in three columns I wrote in August and September of that year. Those columns appeared in the Unterrified Democrat and are set out on the U.D. website.

The basis of those columns is a book written by Robert A. Caro, one of America’s preeminent historians. The book – Means of Ascent – is Volume 2 of Caro’s multi-volume set of the life of Lyndon Johnson. There will eventually be five volumes, but only four have been released to date. 

You won’t understand Democrats and how they have changed the course of history in this country until you read Volume 2. I fully understand there is little chance of getting people to invest in reading the entire book, but I hope some of you will read my summary and this will help you understand what Trump is up against.

The protagonists in that 1948 race were exact opposites. Coke Stevenson, the remarkably popular former governor of Texas, was as honorable as a human can be. Caro devoted dozens of pages to explain just what made him tick. Johnson, on the other hand, was shown to be one of the most rudderless people to have ever lived. It was easy to catch Johnson in a lie. The trick was to catch him in the truth. To win, Johnson had to destroy a living legend and also steal tens of thousands of votes. He effectively did both. Note that this was a contest between Democrats.  

In making Johnson look evil and Stevenson look virtuous, Caro was not showing favoritism in any way. He is an old-fashioned liberal, which means he tells the truth and the whole truth. If you want an enjoyable experience and you want to see why liberals of old were likeable and admirable characters, read Caro’s book.

In my first column in 2007, I explained the qualities Caro found in Stevenson. In the second column I explained the qualities Caro found in Johnson and how Johnson stole the election. In the third column I explained how Stevenson filed a lawsuit in federal court to prevent Johnson from completing his theft of the election. Please read those columns on the U.D. website.

Stevenson’s federal lawsuit (covered in my third column from 2007) was presided over by Judge T. Whitfield Davidson, a Democrat appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt. When Johnson and Stevenson first appeared in court, Johnson was very confident the judge would throw out the case due to lack of jurisdiction. Johnson and his attorneys were shocked when the judge ruled he would hear the case.  

The next day 13 witnesses testified as to how the poll list in a precinct in south Texas had been changed and 201 names added days after the election and people who were dead or out of town that day were listed as having voted.  Later in the day the judge made a statement that shook Johnson and his attorneys even more.  If Stevenson’s “allegations be true, then the complainant has been wronged,” the judge said.  “He has had a seat in the Senate of the United States taken away from him…[If] enough ballots were stuffed to have changed the result…manifestly, that is a wrong.”

The judge went on to comment that Johnson had not presented “one word of evidence,” and had prevented anyone else from presenting it because of the injunction in state court.  He went on to add: “Whenever I steal, whenever I misappropriate, whenever I stuff a ballot box, we are taking from a man that which is his.  We are not only taking from him that which is his, but we are depriving other voters of their right to choose, by offsetting the vote they cast.”

What Judge Davidson said 72 years ago was true then and is true today. Not only was Gov. Stevenson cheated, but all of his supporters were also cheated. If Democrats steal enough votes in strategic states next month, not only is Donald Trump going to be cheated, but millions of his supporters are also going to be cheated.

In spite of the damning evidence that had been introduced in Judge Davidson’s court, one U.S. Supreme Court judge, Hugo Black, was called on to stop the hearing and he did so. I challenge you to find any report of this is a textbook. I also challenge you to find a report in a textbook that says Black and Johnson in the early 1940s were members of a small group of young up-and-coming Democrats who “got together often” socially. Democrats never, never recuse. That’s strictly for Republicans. For their long-time close relationship, look at Page 12 of Caro’s book. 

One last thought on the 1948 election: Caro’s book – all four volumes -- can be found in our local library, where the folks at the library are more than happy to let you check out any one of the volumes, or all four, and you can take them home to read at your leisure. In St. Louis County, the largest county in the state with a population of 996,000, the library will not let you leave the library with Volume 2. You may look at it only in the reference section. You can take 1, 3 or 4 home with you. An individual or group at that library does not want you to think poorly of Democrats. They especially do not want you to consider the possibility that the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in 1960 stole the election. If Johnson was able to steal tens of thousands of votes in 1948 to get elected to the U.S. Senate, isn’t it likely 12 years later he stole enough votes to tip the scales of that election in Texas? If it happened – and I think it did – then Richard Nixon is not the villain the left says he is.

Let’s look at the 1982 Illinois case involving the contest between Republican incumbent Governor Jim Thompson and his Democratic challenger, Sen. Adlai Stevenson Jr. The report of this case was made by the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. There is a link to the report on the U.D. web page, or you can search for it, using Bing or Google, “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire: 100,000 stolen votes in Chicago.”

This report is a must-read for people who want good government. In comparison to Caro’s book, it’s brief, but it shows in considerable detail how Democrats steal votes in Chicago and how the knowledge of how to steal votes has been passed down over the years. Vote stealing is not a new thing in Chicago, it’s a tradition that’s been handed down like a family heirloom.

There is one thing I would point out at this time: Democrats are experienced at stealing votes. Most Republicans would not know how to go about stealing votes. Do we Republicans understand enough about voter fraud that we can defend against it?

I’m not going to go into the facts in much detail. You can do that. The Republican candidate narrowly won, even though he had a huge lead in the polls going into the election. An estimated 100,000 votes were stolen, 31,000 people voted twice, thousands of ghost votes were cast, an estimated 80,000 illegal aliens were registered to vote, one straight Democrat ballot was run through the voting machine at least 198 times, 65 people were indicted by a grand jury and all were convicted except one who died and another who was ruled incompetent to stand trial.

It should be noted that the Heritage Foundation story says “the federal investigation was really sparked by a party worker from Chicago's 39th Ward who was upset by his precinct captain's broken promise to award him a city job for his participation in the voter fraud.” Had this not occurred, this story may well have gone relatively unnoticed and unreported.  It’s not easy to ferret out voter fraud. 

Many liberal think tanks and other organizations say that reports of voter fraud seldom “pan out.” Most of the media make the same claim. Those claims are just patently false. 

The most important part of this report are the findings and recommendations of the grand jury.

The grand jury found there was no bipartisan election system, in part because there were not enough Republicans to provide a counterbalance and also because Democrats often filled Republican spots with Democrats masquerading as Republicans.

What is bipartisan about the Post Office? Realize fully well that almost all of our mail in Missouri is sorted in the state’s larger cities, where for the most part the Democrats have control. What is to prevent a postal employee from dumping a tray of ballots from Osage County? Not a thing. An example of this has already occurred recently in another state. When you consider Hillary only got 13% of the votes in Osage County four years ago, a lot of Trump votes would be destroyed if Osage County ballots get trashed.  

I would strongly urge all voters to vote in person, when possible, or if you vote an absentee ballot, make sure it gets returned to the office of the county clerk.

The most important recommendation of the Chicago grand jury was that all voters should be required to provide a thumb print when registering and when voting. While this recommendation has not been adopted in the U.S., it has become the law in Mexico and helped reduce voter fraud, the report said. Note that this recommendation was made by a grand jury comprised of people from the Chicago area. I think most people want a fair election, but our Democratic politicians and their media friends have the clout to prevent this from happening. 

There is a price to pay for not having fair elections: A corrupt one-party system has severely damaged Chicago and the state of Illinois. Governments in Illinois have been unable to pay their bills in a timely manner for years – and this was before Covid. Illinois pensions are in real trouble – and were before Covid. Voters and businesses are leaving the state, and this will increase the problems.

Pelosi and Schumer are working frantically to get billions into Illinois, California, New York and other blue states to prop them up. Many blue states were in trouble long before Covid came along. The rest of the country should not have to bail them out. State workers in Missouri are among the lowest paid in the nation. It would be grossly unfair to expect them to come to the aid of their much higher-paid counterparts in some of the blue states. 

Should we be concerned about voter fraud that has taken place in the past? Absolutely. The man who wrote the story on the Chicago election, is still digging. He recently reported there were more than 144,000 cases of potential voter fraud in the 2016 and 2018 election. He also learned that there are 28 million mail-in ballots unaccounted for in the past four elections, 2012 through 2018; 349,000 dead people on the rolls in 41 states, with over half of that number being in five states, with two of those five states being battleground states; there are thousands of people registered in two states, who voted in both states in recent elections; and thousands registered at two addresses in the same state, who voted from both addresses.

The media are pressing Trump to commit to vacating the White House if he loses. They don’t ask Biden that question. Hillary has advised Biden to never concede. The Democrats fully intend to steal this election. 

What’s going to happen on Nov. 3? I think Trump will win if it’s an honest election. I hope for the best, but fear the worst. What if we have numerous examples of the 1982 Chicago election or the Lyndon Johnson election taking place all over the country? 

If the races are close – Trump not only needs to fight for his job, he also needs to protect Congressional Republicans – and it appears there are many fraudulent ballots floating around, I think Trump will have no choice but to take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1964 reapportionment cases, the U.S. Supreme Court said “one person, one vote” was the law of the land and required all states to draw their legislative districts with roughly the same populations. Is it fair for Democrats to be able to vote more often than Republicans? If Trump can prove that Democrats have voted early and voted often, such as the 31,000 that voted twice in Chicago, why should that election stand? Because the Supreme Court is so important to the final outcome of the November election , it is imperative the Senate approve the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett.

If there is good evidence of vote stealing, Trump should not throw in the towel. He should ask the Supreme Court to throw out the election and order a new one. And he should also ask the court to let him serve until the new election has been held and certified. Why should the Democrats be allowed to benefit from their vote stealing? If there is enough evidence to justify a new election, Trump should stay in office. The Court should be asked to require one other thing in the new election. Voters should be identified by a finger print or facial recognition technology. The Constitution requires “one person, one vote” – that clearly prohibits Democrats voting numerous times, while Republicans vote only once. One hundred fifty years of vote stealing is enough. 

 

For the Record 082007

If you could pick the next president of the United States, who would you choose?

What qualities would you want that individual to have?  You would certainly want this person to be long on brains, honesty and guts.

What else?  We want our president to have great leadership ability, don’t we?  We want him or her to have a vision for our nation and its people and to be able to communicate that vision.  We want him or her to be self-confident and to make us feel confident in our futures.  And don’t we want this person to have a great respect for the law, not just the letter of the law but also the spirit of the law?

How about this quality?  Fairness.  Can we have a good president who doesn’t treat everyone fairly?  

You can probably think of a number of other qualities you would like a leader to possess.  I have one in mind.  When I was growing up more than half a century ago, one of the finest compliments that could be paid to anyone was to describe him or her as “self-made.”

A “self-made” man who “wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth” and who “didn’t let his success go to his head” was held up as an example of someone we should admire.

A man with all of these qualities and more was born in the Texas Hill Country in 1888.  His name was Coke Stevenson.  

Because of his family’s poverty, Coke went to work on neighboring ranches building fences and digging irrigation ditches at the age of 10 for a dollar a week.  He had a total of 22 months of formal education.  By the age of 14 he knew he wanted to be a rancher.  At the age of 16 he used his savings to buy a wagon and six horses to haul freight 70 miles to and from the nearest town with a railroad.  There were no roads and there were seven streams to cross.  When it rained, mud made it almost impossible to travel.  On one occasion his wagon became stuck so badly it took him 11 days to get it out.  His business flourished because his customers knew he was dependable.

At nights after Coke took care of his horses, he would read and taught himself bookkeeping.  When he was 18 he took a janitor’s job at a bank in the hopes he could work his way up.  When he was 20 he was named cashier.  While working as cashier he began studying law and five years later was admitted to the practice of law and a year after that bought the ranch of his dreams.

It was also while working at the bank that he married his wife Fay, who was to become immensely popular in her own right and who encouraged Coke to run for office.  They were very close and shared a love for the ranch.

Coke’s first public office came when neighbors asked him to take the county attorney’s job to put a stop to cattle rustling.  He took the job on condition he could quit when the rustlers were caught; they were caught and convicted and he did quit, only to take another job, this time as county judge (commissioner) to head up a road-building campaign.  He agreed to the job with the understanding he would not take a second two-year term.  He saw that the roads were built and stepped down after the end of his term.

For the next eight years Coke practiced law and built a reputation as one of the best lawyers in Texas.  “Sincerity” was his hallmark.  Juries believed him and so did his opponents.  His success gave him an opportunity to start a new bank, which he did, but the owners of the old bank insisted that he continue to represent them, because they knew he was so honest he would never do anything improper.

With all of the time Coke spent practicing law and looking after his investments, he managed to spend a lot of time at his ranch, which he eventually built from 500 to 6,000 acres.  Most of the work he did himself, including building the house, building fence and working the cattle.

With all of this work, Coke did an enormous amount of reading.  He got up most mornings at 4 o’clock, and read until daylight while drinking strong coffee.  His reading convinced him government had the potential to render great injustice and strip people of their freedom and he became politically very conservative.  He disliked debt personally and did not want government to go into debt.  He spent his own money efficiently and expected the same of government.

In 1928 the state representative’s seat became vacant and fellow ranchers asked Coke to run.  The only other candidate was a free-spender and that convinced Coke to run and he won the race.  When he took office in 1929 he quickly became a leader.  He saw waste in state government and proposed an office of State Auditor, which was created.  Prisons were in a mess.  He visited every prison in the state, slept in cells with the convicts and made reform proposals that were adopted.  Prisons were improved at a fraction of the cost of the governor’s proposals.

Coke Stevenson hated debt. The highway lobby—the oil companies and road-builders—wanted a $300,000,000 highway bond issue to be passed.  Coke argued pay-as-you-go would be cheaper than paying interest on the debt.  A two-thirds majority was needed for approval—100 of the 150 House members.  With all the pressure they could apply, the lobbyists could only muster 99 votes.  They never made it to 100.  Coke Stevenson’s stature continued to grow.

After four years in the House, Coke was elected Speaker.  Once, while there was what was described as a “rukus” on the floor, someone asked him why he did nothing to quiet it down.  “As long as they’re not voting,” he replied, “they’re not passing any laws.  And as long as they’re not passing any laws, they’re not hurting anybody.”

In 1935 after two years as Speaker and a total of six years in the House, Coke decided not to seek reelection and return to his Hill Country ranch.  The Texas governor then was a New Dealer and was proposing to push through a host of New Deal reforms.  Coke originally supported the New Deal but thought the worst of the Depression was over and wanted government to return to its former role and therefore opposed the reforms.  

Even knowing this, Coke was still going to step down, but then he learned the governor was using federal money to buy support for the governor’s choice for Speaker.  Because of this he ran again and was reelected Speaker, the only man in Texas history to succeed himself as Speaker.  Two years later more than 100 members of the House asked him to serve a third term.  He turned them down, although he did serve a final two-year term in the House as a Representative without any leadership position.  He did this to support legislation that would benefit his Hill Country district.  After this he planned to go back to his ranch.

This plan never materialized because Coke was drawn into the race for lieutenant governor because the leading candidate was proposing a unicameral (one-house) legislature for Texas, an idea that Coke strongly opposed.  He felt that with two houses of the legislature it was easier to defeat bad legislation.  During the campaign Coke refused to issue a platform or make campaign promises.  He had no loudspeaker and none of the customary signs or bumper stickers. He would go into small towns and talk to small groups of people.  His message was that he had brought economy to government and that government should do only what the people couldn’t do for themselves.

There was more to the story.  Coke Stevenson had a magical appeal to the people of Texas.  As one person put it, “That face was so tough, but with a faint smile and that little sparkle always in his eye.  The way he carried himself: erect, that big chin up.  The strong, silent type—that was him.  Coke Stevenson going into the Courthouse was John Wayne walking into the saloon. Here’s The Man.  Here’s our leader.”

Coke won that race by 46,000 votes.

While Coke was running for lieutenant governor, a man named Pappy Daniel was running for governor and getting elected by a huge margin.  Daniel had a flour company (Hillbilly Flour) and was well-known before the race.  He was always accompanied by his band, the Hillbilly Boys.  He was a great campaigner but as governor he was a buffoon.  The state deficit soared to $34,000,000.  Coke Stevenson, as lieutenant governor, was given credit for keeping the state government afloat.

Coke was elected to his first term as lieutenant governor by 46,000 votes.  In 1940, campaigning in his own way, he received 797,000 votes to 113,000 for one opponent and 160,000 for another.  He outpolled Daniel, who was running for reelection and was still very popular, by 100,000 votes.

In 1941 Daniel ran for the U.S. Senate and was elected and Coke became Governor on Aug. 2 of that year.  His wife Fay had to be carried to the inauguration and died shortly after that.  A year later he ran for Governor in his own right and received 68.5 percent of the vote, the highest percentage ever recorded in Texas in a contested Democratic primary.

In 1944 Coke ran again.  One of his opponents, the state attorney general, ran harsh attacks against him.  Coke never responded.  His eight opponents received a total of 15 percent of the vote.  Coke received 85 percent, breaking his old record.       

When Coke Stevenson stepped down in 1946—refusing to consider running for a third term—even newspapers that had opposed his policies spoke highly of his time in office.

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If you find this fine man’s life half as inspiring as I do, then I’ve done my job.  Everything in the above segment came from “Means of Ascent,” the second volume of Robert A. Caro’s three-volume biography of the life of Lyndon Johnson.  Coke’s public life did not end in 1946.  He went on to run for the U.S. Senate in 1948 and literally had the seat stolen from him by Lyndon Johnson and his cronies.  Why would Caro devote 34 pages to describe Coke Stevenson’s life?  I can’t answer that.  But I’m delighted he did, because this demonstrates how low Democrats will stoop to win an election.  It’s one thing to steal votes from a Republican the Democrats have vilified—Richard Nixon or George Bush or Newt Gingrich, for example.

But how can the Democrats justify stealing an election from a fellow Democrat?  They can’t and that’s why Caro’s book is such an embarrassment to Democrats.  Please read it.  Until you do, you are uninformed.  It’s available at the library and it’s also available in paperback for $20.

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It will probably take at least two weeks to explain how Lyndon Johnson and significant elements of the Democratic Party, including a U.S. Supreme Court judge, stole the election.  Caro devoted 400 pages to the task.  To condense Caro’s work into something short enough people will take the time to read is going to be difficult.  Please stay tuned and let’s see what turns out.

 

 

For the Record 08/29/07

In 1948 Lyndon Johnson was miserable.  He was a woefully weak individual who needed the power of public office to bring him some degree of relief from the monsters of insecurity that plagued him.  

He had had some clout with President Roosevelt and used this to advance his career, but President Truman had seen how he used people and wanted little to do with him.  Without access to the White House, Johnson could see that he was losing power in Washington.

To get his career back on track Johnson needed to move up from Congressman to Senator.  There was one little problem…one obstacle in his way.

That problem was Coke Stevenson, the extremely popular former governor of Texas who had only four years before this received 85 percent of the vote in the race for governor.  How does an opponent defeat a living legend like Coke Stevenson who was the personification of everything good in a public official?

The answer to that question is easy.  You tell lies about Stevenson.  You tell lies about the man and you lie about his record.  You raise unprecedented amounts of money and use it to repeat the lies in the media.  Brown & Root, a construction company that Johnson helped get lucrative federal contracts, gave lavishly.  You use this money to hire people to go into rural areas to spread lies and rumors among people who are illiterate or nearly so. You use this money to buy votes in areas dominated by Mexican-American leaders and black leaders who can deliver the votes of people who are for the most part illiterate.  And if buying votes isn’t enough, you just steal however many you need to win.  And of course, you do all of this with the help of a friendly press.

Once again, I urge you to read Robert Caro’s “Means of Ascent.”  This is the second volume of Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson.  Everything I told you last week and will tell you this week and in future weeks comes from that book.  The thing that is so fascinating about the book is Caro’s use of quotes from Johnson’s closest assistants.

One of Johnson’s top aides was John Connally, who was later elected governor of Texas and was riding in the car with John F. Kennedy when Kennedy was assassinated.  Connally described the significance of the Stevenson-Johnson race.  He told Caro, “This [the 1948 senatorial campaign] was the beginning of modern politics.”  Quoting Connally and others Caro explains how this campaign ushered in polling to an extent that was unheard of.  Three or four polls per campaign was the maximum in the past.  Johnson wanted that many per week.

Johnson did not care about the issues, Connally explained.  In all of his campaigns Johnson tested issues until he found one which “touched” voters.  That was the term Connally used and Johnson found several issues that “touched.”

One issue was labor legislation.  In 1947 Congress, with a great deal of bipartisan support, passed the Taft-Hartley Act over President Truman’s veto.  Corruption in the ranks of labor led to the passage of this legislation and few were more unpopular in this country than “corrupt labor bosses.”  Johnson was able to convince many voters that Stevenson was the tool of these bosses and was taking their money, when in fact Johnson got huge amounts of labor money and Stevenson received little or none.  All of this was accomplished with the help of an accommodating press that saw no problem with allowing Johnson to spread these lies about a conservative.

“I’m not going to sling any mud,” Johnson said in one speech, but in fact that’s all he did.  He referred to Stevenson as an “old man” and lied about his age.  He referred to him as “big-bellied” when Stevenson could outwork almost anyone.  He referred to him as a “stooge” of labor, an “isolationist” and an “appeaser,” when none of these were true.

What is sad is that Coke Stevenson did not try to refute any of this, in part because he had been attacked in other campaigns and had always won, but also in part because he did not understand the power of the media.  He also did not understand that the media was in Johnson’s corner.

In Texas in 1948 there was a primary election on July 24.  If any candidate got a majority, he would be the Democratic nominee and would be elected in the fall because there were no Republicans in Texas in those days.  Johnson’s job was to keep Stevenson from getting a majority and then there would be a runoff on Aug. 28.  Actually, one poll showed Johnson running ahead and Johnson was devastated that he did not beat Stevenson, but when the votes were counted for the July 24 election, Stevenson was 71,000 votes ahead.

As bad as the attacks on Stevenson had been prior to July 24, they got worse between then and Aug. 28 and the tactics got dirtier.  Johnson knew his career would be ended if he did not win.  His supporters, the folks from Brown & Root, had almost been indicted for past political activities and knew they would be indicted if Johnson didn’t win this election because they had “multiplied their illegalities,” as Caro describes it.  Connally talked of handling “inordinate amounts of cash.”  Money was flown into all parts of Texas by Brown & Root planes.

There were the usual arrangements for the buying of votes.  Huge sums of money were given to leaders in the Mexican-American and black communities.  But “missionaries’ were also hired.  These were people who went into the rural communities to hang out at stores and other public places to spread lies, called “whispers.”  Local Democratic leaders who had supported Stevenson for years were bought for $1,000 a pop.  (Who is worse here, the guy who offered the bribe or the one who took it?)  Federal employees by the thousands supported Johnson.

Johnson, who wasn’t going to sling any mud, called Stevenson “just another crooked Texas governor,” who “sold pardons.”  He called him a “caveman,” and a “Neanderthal.”  When Stevenson failed to respond to Johnson’s false and vicious attacks, he was “dodging.”  Nothing hurt more than the charge he had a “secret deal” with the labor bosses.  Even Stevenson’s long-time supporters who should have known better started to fall for the lies.

Paul Bolton, a Johnson speech writer explained how it all went down.  “Repeat the same thing over and over and over—jumping on Coke Stevenson’s having secret dealings with labor.  You knew it was a damned lie [but] you just repeated it and repeated it and repeated it.  Repetition—that was the thing.”

That folks is the way of the Democrats.  The Coke Stevensons of the Democratic Party are gone.  The Democratic Party of today is the party of Lyndon Johnson.   Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin and the rest of the Washington Democrats are line-bred descendants of Lyndon Johnson.  There is no place today in the Democratic Party for an honorable man like Coke Stevenson.    

If the lies weren’t effective enough, you could bring in reporters from Washington, D.C., to do a hatchet job on Stevenson.  That happened.  Reporters from Texas who didn’t write stories to suit Johnson got fired.

Even with all of this, Johnson, with only 10 days left before the Aug. 28 runoff, was trailing in his private polls by seven points and could not close the gap.  

One of Johnson’s campaign chiefs explained that at this point campaigning was not going to get it done.  Johnson needed ethnic blocks and even more money was flown into the Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio to make sure more votes were delivered than ever before.

The area that was particularly corrupt was the Rio Grande Valley.  Robert Caro described the inhabitants of the Valley.  “These Mexican-American inhabitants were largely illiterate; the Valley as a whole had one of the lowest illiteracy rates, if not the lowest, in the entire United States.”

It was these people who were herded to the polls and told how to vote.  In some counties the ballots were not even counted, the boss just put down the totals he wanted to report.  Mexicans were trucked in from across the border in Mexico to cast ballots.  An election in the Valley was a thing of beauty for Democrats. 

Fifty-nine years later these same people are still being exploited by Democrats, not only in elections, but in jury trials.  The trial lawyers in this country—remember the trial lawyers give 90 percent of their political donations to Democrats—love to take cases to the Valley, where they can use illiterate jurors to pluck corporations of money in the same way Coke Stevenson was plucked of votes in 1948.

So what happened in the election?  The people voted on Aug. 28, 1948, and a majority—granted it was a small majority—voted for Coke Stevenson.  Six days after the election, after numerous recounts and canvasses, Stevenson still held a slim lead.  Then at 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 3, six days after the election, 200 more votes for Johnson were “found” in one of these Valley counties.

What occurred here was blatant vote stealing.  The list of names of voters who had cast ballots in that precinct had originally been turned in as 765.  Needing more votes that number got changed to 965 and the names of 200 voters were added to the list.  These last 200 names were written in blue ink, whereas the first 765 were written in black.  

A different author, a Texas Democrat who later was to run for governor, in a 1964 book said the last 200 names were all written in the same hand and were in alphabetical order.

Make no mistake.  These votes were stolen.  The Mexican-American enforcer who saw that people voted the right way, Luis Salas, gave Caro an interview and explained exactly how the votes were stolen.

Even though the votes were stolen, the election still could have gone Stevenson’s way, if the Democratic state committee had done its job.  However, Johnson was able to buy a majority of his party apparatus and hold on to his stolen election.  This is another lovely scene, as is the involvement of a U.S. Supreme Court judge.  But that’s for next week.

 

For the Record 09/05/07

By Ralph Voss

Last week I told you how Lyndon Johnson waged the 1948 Texas Democratic senatorial primary election and how his conduct and that of his supporters was always beyond outrageous. I told you how even after stealing tens of thousands of votes he was behind and six days after the election stole 200 more votes to put his vote total ahead of Coke Stevenson’s.

Stevenson decided to challenge the vote, but first sent a team of investigators into the Valley counties to examine the election results.  They were run out at gunpoint.  

With that Stevenson decided to go to the Valley himself, along with a number of supporters, including law enforcement and legal personnel.  Stevenson went into the office of Tom Donald, the secretary of Jim Wells County’s Democratic Executive Committee and demanded to see the tally sheet and poll list.  Donald, who worked at the bank owned by the political boss of the county, refused to allow Stevenson to do so.  Finally, Donald relented and allowed the sheet and list to be viewed by Stevenson and two attorneys, but when they started to make notes, Donald took them back.

The attorneys had enough time to look at the list to determine the last 201 names (200 of whom were listed as voting for Johnson) were added to the list in alphabetical order, but more importantly the list showed that the original total had been 765 votes, but had been changed to 965 by changing the 7 to a 9.  The attorneys also remembered names and checked with the man who appeared to be the last voter before the 201 names were added and that man was certain he was the last voter.   Other names on the list of 201 were contacted and said they did not vote.  A number of the people listed were dead for years.

Armed with this evidence Stevenson attempted to get the county Democratic committee to make a new certification, showing that Johnson had not received those last 200 votes, Johnson got a judge from 200 miles away to issue a restraining order keeping the local officials from doing so.  

A meeting of the state Democratic committee was scheduled for a few days later and the plan was to stall the certification long enough that the state committee did not have the true results to vote on.  That part of the plan worked, but was not the only reason Johnson forces prevailed at the state meeting.  

The Johnson people made a deal with supporters of Harry Truman, who was running for reelection that year.  The Truman people wanted their representatives to hold certain committee seats, instead of the people who had actually won those seats in the primary.  The Johnson supporters agreed to vote to seat the Truman committee members if the Truman forces would vote with them to deny Stevenson’s challenge of the Jim Wells County vote.  The Johnson-Truman forces prevailed.

Stevenson did not give up.  His next move was to file suit in federal court, alleging his civil rights and those of people who voted for him had been denied by Johnson’s misconduct.  The first hearing on the case was Sept. 21.  The Johnson team went into court extremely confident that the judge, T. Whitfield Davidson, would rule that there was no jurisdiction and would not intervene in the case.  By lunch the Johnson lawyers were stunned to have the judge suggest to Stevenson and Johnson that they arrange to have the Democratic state committee put both men’s names on the November ballot and let the voters decide the issue.  Stevenson agreed immediately, but Johnson said, “No comment.”

When shortly thereafter Johnson met with his legal team, which unanimously urged him to accept the judge’s advice, he went into a rage.  “This is a free country,” Johnson said.  “I won it fair and square, and you want me to trade it away.”  Author Robert Caro, in his book “Means of Ascent,” refers to Johnson’s “utter inability to comprehend the questions of morality or ethics raised by his actions…”

The next day 13 witnesses testified as to how the poll list had been changed and the 201 names added and people who were dead or out of town that day were listed as having voted.  Later in the day the judge made a statement that shook Johnson and his attorneys even more.  If Stevenson’s “allegations be true, then the complainant has been wronged,” the judge said.  “He has had a seat in the Senate of the United States taken away from him…[If] enough ballots were stuffed to have changed the result…manifestly, that is a wrong.”

The judge went on to comment that Johnson had not presented “one word of evidence,” and had prevented anyone else from presenting it because of the injunction in state court.  He went on to add: “Whenever I steal, whenever I misappropriate, whenever I stuff a ballot box, we are taking from a man that which is his.  We are not only taking from him that which is his, but we are depriving other voters of their right to choose, by offsetting the vote they cast.”

At the end of the day the judge ruled that the case on the facts would proceed, but he did give the Johnson team the right to appeal his decision, while the underlying case would move forward.  This turned out to be crucial.

Johnson’s huge team of Texas lawyers could not decide what course of action to take.  Johnson called in Abe Fortas, the famous Washington, D.C., attorney, who in 1965 was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by Johnson.  Fortas suggested a quick appeal so that the case would end up before U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.  Johnson followed Fortas’ advice.

On Tuesday, Sept. 28, Judge Davidson was taking evidence in his Texas courtroom, while Justice Black was hearing the arguments of the attorneys for Johnson and Stevenson.  Johnson’s attorneys were stalling in the Texas case so that Black could rule in their favor before Judge Davidson got to the infamous ballot box from Jim Wells County.  

Unfortunately for Coke Stevenson and unfortunately for the concepts of justice and fair play, Hugo Black ruled for Johnson, stopped the trial in front of Judge Davidson and sent Johnson on his way to the Senate.  The Jim Wells ballot box was never opened in court.

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Remember that liberals love to gripe about the full U.S. Supreme Court stealing the 2000 election from Al Gore.  In that case, seven of nine justices found that the recount in Florida was unconstitutional.  I challenge you to find in any history textbook any mention of one Supreme Court judge making Lyndon Johnson the winner of an election that everyone—including his own brain trust—admits that he stole.