with Tower, Rogers Morton, and Congressman Bob Wilson of Califronia. The Boosters
along were estimated to be good for about $1 million in funding for GOP candidates in
- [fn 29]
By December of 1969 it was clear to all that Bush would get almost all of the cash in the
Texas GOP coffers, and that Eggers, the party's candidate for governor, would get short
shrift indeed. On December 29 the Houston Chronicle front page opined: "GOP Money
To Back Bush, Not Eggers." The Democratic Senate candidate would later accuse
Nixon's crowd of "trying to buy" the Senate election for Bush: "Washington has been
shovelling so much money into the George Bush campaign that now other Republican
candidates around the country are demanding an accounting," said Bush's opponent. [fn
31]
But that opponent was Lloyd Bentsen, not Ralph Yarborough. All calculations about the
1970 Senate race had been upset when, at a relatively late hour, Bentsen, urged on by
John Connally, announced his candidacy in the Democratic primary. Yarborough, busy
with his work as Chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, started his campaigning late.
Bentsen's pitch was to attack anti-war protesters and radicals, portraying Yarborough as
being a ringleader of the extremists.
Yarborough had lost some of his vim over the years since 1964, and had veered into
support for more ecological legislation and even for some of the anti-human "population
planning" measures that Bush and his circles had been proposing. But he fought back
gamely against Bentsen. When Bentsen boasted of having done a lot for the Chicanos of
the Rio Grande Valley, Yarborough countered: "What has Lloyd Bentsen ever done for
the valley? The valley is not for sale. You can't buy people. I never heard of him doing
anything for migrant labor. All I ever heard about was his father working these wetbacks.
All I ever heard was them exploiting wetbacks," said Yarborough. When Bentsen boasted
of his record of experience, Yarborough counter-attacked: "The only experience that my
opponents have had is in representing the financial interest of big business. They have
both shown marked insensitivity to the needs of the average citizen of our state."
But, on May 2, Bentsen defeated Yarborough, and an era came to an end in Texas
politics. Bush's 10 to 1 win in his own primary over his old rival from 1964, Robert
Morris, was scant consolation. Whereas it had been clear how Bush would have run
against Yarborough, it was not at all clear how he could differentiate himself from
Bentsen. Indeed, to many people the two seemed to be twins: each was a plutocrat oilman
from Houston, each one was aggressively Anglo-Saxon, each one had been in the House
of Representatives, each one flaunted a record as a World War II airman. In fact, all
Bentsen needed to do for the rest of the race was to appear plausible and polite, and let
the overwhelming Democratic advantage in registered voters, especially in the yellow-
dog Democrat rural areas, do his work for him. This Bentsen posture was punctuated
from time to time by appeals to conservatives who thought that Bush was too liberal for
their tastes.