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Ralph Yarborough
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Ralph Webster Yarborough (June 8, 1903 – January 27, 1996) was a Texas Democratic politician who served in the United States Senate (1957 to 1971) and was a leader of the progressive or liberal wing of his party in his many races for statewide office. As a U.S. senator, he was a staunch supporter and author of "Great Society" legislation that encompassed Medicare and Medicaid, the War on Poverty, federal support for higher education and veterans. He co-wrote the Endangered Species Act and was the only southern senator to vote for all civil rights bills from 1957 to 1970 (including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965).
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Encyclopedia
Ralph Webster Yarborough (June 8, 1903 – January 27, 1996) was a Texas Democratic politician who served in the United States Senate (1957 to 1971) and was a leader of the progressive or liberal wing of his party in his many races for statewide office. As a U.S. senator, he was a staunch supporter and author of "Great Society" legislation that encompassed Medicare and Medicaid, the War on Poverty, federal support for higher education and veterans. He co-wrote the Endangered Species Act and was the only southern senator to vote for all civil rights bills from 1957 to 1970 (including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965). Yarborough was known as "Smilin' Ralph" Yarborough and used the slogan "Let's put the jam on the lower shelf so the little people can reach it" in his campaigns.
Early life and career
Yarborough was born in Chandler, Texas, as the seventh of Charles Richard Yarborough and Nannie Jane Spear's nine children. He was appointed to West Point in 1919 but dropped out and became a teacher. Yarborough attended Sam Houston State Teachers College and worked his way into the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1927 and practiced law in El Paso, Texas until he was hired as an assistant attorney general in 1931 by the state Attorney General James V. Allred. Yarborough was an expert in Texas land law and specialized in prosecuting major oil companies that violated production limits or failed to pay oil royalties to the Permanent School Fund for drilling on public lands. Yarborough became famous for a million dollar judgment against the Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company for oil royalties, the second largest judgment ever in Texas at the time. After Allred was elected governor, he appointed Yarborough to the bench in 1936, making him the 53rd District judge for Austin's Travis County. Yarborough was confirmed in that office by an election later the same year. Yarborough's first run for state office resulted in a third place finish in the Democratic primary for state attorney general in 1938 against the sitting lieutenant governor. He served in the US Army during World War II after 1943 and achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Political life
Historically, Texas had been a one-party state. Democrats would win every statewide office, nearly all of the congressional delegation, and large majorities in the state legislature. Thus, general elections were formalities, and the real battles took place in the Democratic primaries between the conservative wing (pre-presidency Lyndon Baines Johnson, Governor Allan Shivers, John Connally), and the liberal wing (with which Yarborough identified), which was more in line with the national party.
Running for governor
Ralph Yarborough was urged to run again for state attorney general in 1952, and he planned to do so until he received a personal affront by Governor Allan Shivers who told him not to run. Out of spite, Ralph Yarborough then ran in the primaries for governor in 1952 and 1954 against the conservative Shivers, drawing support from labor unions and liberals. Yarborough denounced the corrupt "Shivercrats" for veterans' fraud in the General Land Office and for endorsing the Republican Eisenhower/Nixon ticket for President instead of Democrat Adlai Stevenson in 1952. Shivers portrayed Yarborough as an integrationist supported by communists and labor unions. The 1954 election was particularly nasty in its race-baiting by Shivers as it was the year that Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and Shivers made the most of the court decision in order to play on voters' racism. In one particularly odious episode, a black man was hired to drive around East Texas in a Cadillac full of Yarborough stickers and to be obnoxious and insult gas station attendants. The man would say he was busy and had to hurry "to work for Mr. Yarborough." Yarborough made it to the primary runoff and came surprisingly close to beating Shivers despite receiving almost no newspaper endorsements, being out-fundraised, and being the target of nasty attacks.
In 1956, Yarborough made it to the primary runoff for governor against U.S. Senator Price Daniel. Texas historian J. Evetts Haley ran in the primary to the political right of both Daniel and Yarborough but polled few votes. After being endorsed by former opponent and former Governor W. Lee O'Daniel, and making aggressive attacks on the Shivers-backed candidate, Yarborough looked to win the runoff, but instead he trailed Daniel by about nine thousand votes. It is believed (by Yarborough, his supporters, and biographer) that the election was stolen because of irregular voting in East Texas and that Yarborough really won the runoff by thirty thousand. Nevertheless, Yarborough's runs for governor had raised his stature and popularity in the state as he had been campaigning for six straight years for office.
Becoming a senator
When Daniel resigned from the Senate in 1957 to become governor, Yarborough ran in the special election to fill the empty seat. With no runoff then required, he needed only a plurality of votes to win. Ironically, his many runs for governor made him the best positioned candidate to become a U.S. Senator. Yarborough won the special election with 38 percent of the vote to join fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson in the Senate.
In office, Ralph Yarborough was a very different kind of Southern senator. He refused to sign the Southern Manifesto opposing integration and supported national Democratic goals of more funding for health care, education, and the environment. Himself a veteran, he worked to expand the G.I. Bill to Cold War veterans.
In 1958, Ralph Yarborough easily defeated conservative William A. Blakley, who was backed by Governor Daniel, in the Democratic primary and cruised on to victory in the general election against Republican Roy Whittenburg. During his first full term, Yarborough worked for the bill, signed by President John F. Kennedy, to designate Padre Island as a national seashore.
Ralph Yarborough rode in the Dallas motorcade where John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Yarborough was in the same convertible as Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, and United States Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood, only two cars away from the presidential limousine. It was Yarborough who famously announced Kennedy's death at Parkland Memorial Hospital by saying: "Excalibur has sunk beneath the waves."
In 1964, Yarborough again won the primary without a runoff and went on to general election victory with 56.2 percent in LBJ's 1964 Democratic landslide. His Republican Party (GOP) opponent was future president George H. W. Bush who attacked Yarborough as a left-wing demagogue and for his vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yarborough denounced Bush as an extremist to the right of that year's GOP nominee for president Barry M. Goldwater and as a rich easterner and a carpetbagger trying to buy a Senate seat. It has since been learned that then Governor Connally was covertly aiding Bush instead of party nominee Yarborough against President Johnson's wishes by teaching voters how to vote split ticket.
Although Yarborough supported Johnson's domestic agenda, he went public with his criticism of Johnson's foreign policy and the Vietnam War after Johnson announced his retirement. Yarborough supported Robert F. Kennedy until his assassination, then supported Eugene McCarthy until his loss in Chicago, and finally backed Hubert Humphrey for President in the pivotal campaign of 1968. In 1969, Senator Yarborough became chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare.
Defeat
In 1970, South Texan businessman and former congressman Lloyd Bentsen, won an upset victory against Yarborough in the Democratic primary when Yarborough was focusing on the general election again against Bush. Bentsen played on voters' fears of societal breakdown and urban riots and made an issue of Yarborough's opposition to the Vietnam War. Bentsen said that Yarborough was a political antique. Said Bentsen, "It would be nice if Ralph Yarborough would vote for his state every once in a while." Bentsen went on to win the general election against George H.W. Bush.
In 1972, Ralph Yarborough made a comeback effort to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator as a challenger of Republican Senator John Tower, who as a young man had once circulated Ralph Yarborough stickers. Yarborough won the first round of the primary and came within 526 votes of winning the primary runoff. Again, Yarborough made accusations of vote fraud from the conservative wing. He lost in the primary runoff to a federal judge, Barefoot Sanders, in an anti-incumbent sweep after the Sharpstown Bank-stock Scandal despite neither being an incumbent nor involved at all with the scandal. Yarborough did not again seek office.
Death
He died in 1996 in Austin, and was buried in the Texas State Cemetery (the Arlington of Texas). Ralph Yarborough left a legacy in the modernization of the state of Texas and achieved political power at a peak of Texas's national power during the Johnson years. Yarborough was combative with the dominant industries of oil and gas, always pushing for petroleum's fair share of the public burden.
Legacy
Yarborough also was one of the last of the New Deal Democrats and liberals in Texas state politics. The window of opportunity for a liberal in Texas to reach such a high office was narrow, between the Great Depression and the Great Society. Yarborough represented this brief political moment, both preceded and followed by conservatives (like "Pappy" O'Daniel and Phil Gramm). Yarborough is remembered as the acknowledged "patron saint of Texas liberals." Yarborough easily makes the list of greatest conservationists from Texas with his success at making into protected parkland Padre Island, the Guadalupe Mountains, and the Big Thicket (the last one after he left the Senate). Supporters and former aides that rose to prominence included Jim Hightower, Ann Richards, and Garry Mauro.
The University of Texas at Austin Press published a biography titled, Ralph W. Yarborough: The People's Senator, by Patrick L. Cox. It features a foreword written by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA).
Yarborough is interred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
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