after a pro-Goldwater meeting at which Bush had boasted that he was "100% for the draft
Goldwater move."
A few weeks after ousting Peper, Bush contributed one of his first public political
statements as an op ed in the Houston Chronicle of 28 July 1963. Concerning he recent
organizational problems, he whined that the county organization was "afflicted with some
dry-martini critics who talk and don't work." Then, in conformity with his family doctrine
and his own dominant obsession, Bush turned to the issue of race. As a conservative, he
had to lament that fact that "Negroes" "think that conservatism means segregation."
Nothing could be further from the truth. This was rather the result of slanderous
propaganda which Republican public relations men had not sufficiently refuted: "First,
they attempt to present us as racists. The Republican party of Harris County is not a racist
party. We have not presented our story to the Negroes in the county. Our failure to attract
the Negro voter has not been because of a racist philosophy; rather, it has been a product
of our not having had the organization to tackle all parts of the country." What then was
the GOP line on the race question? "We believe in the basic premiss that the individual
Negro surrenders the very dignity and freedom he is struggling for when he accept money
for his vote or when he goes along with the block vote dictates of some Democratic boss
who couldn't care less about the quality of the candidates he is pushing." So the GOP
would try to separate the black voter from the Democrats. Bush conceded: "We have a
tough row to hoe here."
After these pronouncements on race, Bush then want on to the trade union front.
Yarborough's labor backing was exceedingly strong, and Bush lost no time in assailing
the state AFL-CIO and its Committee on Political Education (COPE) for gearing up to
help Yarborough in his race. For Bush this meant that the AFL-CIO was not supporting
the "two -party system." "A strong pitch is being made to dun the [union] membership to
help elect Yarborough"-- he charged -- "long before Yarborough's opponent is even
known."
Bush also spoke out during this period on foreign affairs, He demanded that President
Kennedy "muster the courage" to undertake a new attack on Cuba. [fn 13]
Before announcing his bid for the senate, Bush decided to take out what would appear in
retrospect to be a very important insurance policy for his future political career. On April
22, Bush, with the support of Republican state chairman Peter O'Donnell, filed a suit in
federal court calling for the reapportionment of the Congressional districts in the Houston
area. The suit argued that the urban voters of Harris County were being partially
disenfranchised by a system that favored rural voters and demanded as a remedy that a
new Congressional district be drawn in the area. "This is not a partisan matter,"
commented the civic-minded Bush. "This is something of concern to all Harris County
citizens." Bush would later win this suit, and that would lead to a court-ordered
redistricting which would create the Seventh Congressional District, primarily out of
those precincts which Bush had managed to carry in the 1964 Senate race. Was this the
invisible hand of Skull and Bones? This would also mean that there would be no