the state Republican organization and its chairman, Peter O'Donnell, who according to some
accounts had encouraged Bush to run. By Dplanning to step down as Harris County chairman and devote himself to full-time state-wideecember 5 Bush had further announced that he was
campaigning starting early in 1964. At this point, Bush's foremost strategic concern appears to have
been money--big money. On October 19, the Houston Chronicle carried his comment that ousting
Yarborough would require nearly $2 million "if you want to do it right." Much of this would go to
the Brown and Snyder advertising agency in Houston for television and billboards. In 1963, twas a considerable sum, but Bush's crony C. Fred Chambers, also an oilman, was committed tohis
raising it. During these years Chambers appears to have been one of Bush's closest friends, and he
received the ultimate apotheosis of having one of the Bush family dogs named in his honor. [fn 14]
It is impossible to establish in retrospect how much Bush spent in this campaign. State campaignfinance filings do exist, but they are fragmentary and grossly underestimate the money that was
actually committed.
In terms of the tradeoffs of the campaign, Bush and his handlers were confronted with the following
configuration: there were three competitors for the Republican senatorial nomination. The mostformidable competition came from Jack Cox, the Houston oilman who had run for governor against (^)
Connally in 1962, and whose statewide recognition was much higher than Bush's. Cox would
position himself to the right of Bush and who would receive the endorsement of General Edwin
Walker, who had been forced to resign his infantry command in Germany because of his radical
speeches to the troops. A former Democrat, Cox wHunts of Dallas. Cox campaigned against medicare, federal aid to education, the war on poveas reported to have financial backing from therty,
and the loss of US sovereignty to the UN.
Competing with Cox was Dr. Milton Davis, a thoracic surgeon from Dallas who was expected to be
the weakest candidate but whose positions were perhaps the most distinctive: Morris was for "notreaties with Russia," the repeal of the federal income tax, and the "selling off of excess government (^)
industrial property such as TVA and REA"--what the Reagan-Bush administrations would later call
privatization.
Competing with Bush for the less militant conservatives was Dallas lawyer Robert Morris, whorecommended depriving the US Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction in school prayer cases. [fn (^)
15] In order to avoid a humiliating second-round runoff in the primary, Bush would need to score
an absolute majority the first time around. To do that he would have to first compete with Cox on a
right-wing terrain, and then move to the center after the primary in order to take votes from
Yarborough there.
But there was also primary competition on the Democratic side for Yarborough. This was Gordon
McLendon, the owner of a radio network, the Liberty Broadcasting System, that was loaded with
debt. Liberty Broadcasting's top creditor was Houston banker Roy Cullen, a Bush crony. Roy
Cullen's name appears, for example, along with such died-in -the wool Bushmen as W.S. FarrishIII, James A. Baker III, C. Fred Chambers, Robert Mosbacher, William C. Liedtke, Jr., Joseph R. (^)
Neuhaus, and William B. Cassin in a Bush campaign ad in the Houston Chronicle of late April,
- When McLendon finally went bankrupt, it was found that he owed Roy Cullen more than a
million dollars. So perhaps it is not surprising that McLendon's campaign functioned as an auxiliary
to Bush's own efforts. McLendon specialized in smearing Yarborough wissue, and it was to this that McLendon devoted most of his speaking time and media budget. ith the Billie Sol Estes
Billie Sol Estes in those days was notorious for his conviction for defrauding the US government of
large sums of money in a scam involving the storage of chemicals that turned out not to exist. Billie
Sol was part of the LBJ political milieu. As the Estes scandal developed, a report emerged that he