Lessons on Buying Elections from Lyndon B. Johnson
The Race
In 1941, Lyndon B. Johnson (34), future President of the United States, is a freshman House Representative from Texas when one of the senators from his great state dies.
Now, a Senator (one of two) has a lot more power than a Congressman (one of twenty-one). And for a man like Lyndon Johnson who’s been obsessed with power since he was a tween, a Senate seat was the obvious stepping stone to his dream of the Oval Office. With the seat, he would have a solid base to amass power on the national stage in preparation for a Presidential bid a decade or two down the line.
Three years ago Johnson was a lowly congressional secretary when he decided to run an incredible longshot campaign for Texas’ 10th Congressional District, and through his incredible determination and a lot of money, he had won the seat. He’d been a total nobody in the district and he’d won anyways. And in this Senate race, he again would be a nobody, only known in two of twenty-one districts, but that had hardly stopped him before.
But the situation really was not great for Johnson. In order to clinch the seat, he would have to defeat the very popular State Attorney Gerald Mann, and the nationally famous Martin Dies Jr., who was the Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Before the campaign even started, the odds were grim:
• 33% W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel (The Governor, who would later declare that he would not run)
• 26% Gerald Mann (Attorney General)
• 9% Martin Dies Jr. (Chairman of the HUAC)
• 5% Lyndon B. Johnson (Protagonist)
Raising the stakes further for Johnson, when Texas sent a senator to Washington, it kept him there. The average tenure of a Senator from Texas during this era was eighteen years. In fact we now know that it wouldn’t be until 1953 – twelve years later – that Tom Connally, the other Senator from Texas, would step down. But at the time all Lyndon knew was that if he missed this chance at the Senate seat, there likely wouldn’t be another for a long time. And his rising star would stutter and he’d be forced to spend a decade in relative obscurity and far away from anything like true national power.
So Johnson started campaigning immediately, and he started campaigning hard. And he started by using the tool that worked so well for him last time: money.
Johnson bought out the small weekly newspapers that covered the state. As long as the paper kept reprinting Johnson campaign press releases as if they were news, the Johnson campaign would make $25 ad buys every week. He did this for ten weeks, for hundreds of papers. Nobody knows how many papers were bought like this, but let’s say it was half of Texas’s 400 weekly newspapers: that’s $50,000, the cost of a typical campaign right there, just in newspaper buys. This only accounts for the small weekly newspapers, not the sixty daily papers he bought ads in (on which we don’t have data). He even cut out the middleman and started his own newspaper, just for the campaign.
There was no statewide radio in Texas; instead, there were about sixty stations scattered across the state. If you wanted to send a broadcast to every voter, you cobbled together enough chunks of airtime from enough stations to blanket the whole state, to the tune of $4000 for half an hour. Johnson made these broadcasts regularly.
Johnson had twelve two-man teams roving the state at all times, meeting voters and schmoozing local power brokers. It cost about $100 a week to support a man out on the road, which comes to a total of $24,000 over the course of the campaign on these teams.
And there were many other costs. There were the thousands of billboards of himself he’d had plastered across the state. There were the barbecues where Johnson made sure everyone went home with meat enough to feed their family for days. There were the eighty-two paid typists who sent personalised follow-up letters to anyone Johnson’s roving schmooze teams met.
In this era, a typical political campaign in Texas cost $50,000. An expensive campaign might run up to $80,000. In his first few weeks, Johnson had spent at least a $100 thousand, and probably much more.
A month after the death of the Senator, the polling numbers stood as such:
• 42% for Mann
• 40% for Dies
• 15% for Johnson
But Dies spent all his rallies raging against communist infiltrators and refused to campaign outside his district: he would quickly become irrelevant outside his district. And Johnson’s money started to tell, despite his unpleasant demeanour with voters and his atrocious speeches, he was surging.
Two weeks later a different poll showed Johnson in second at 19%, close behind Mann in first at 27%. And the trend towards Johnson was only accelerating.
Corruption
But how does a politician get this kind of money? Why did Lyndon get so much money but Mann didn’t? Well, it was because Lyndon was corrupt and Mann wasn’t.
Lyndon’s key financial backer was Herman Brown. Johnson had many, many inflows of money, but the largest by far was Herman Brown.
See, years ago Herman Brown was not a rich man, but a small-time Texas construction magnate surviving off petty road-building contracts that barely kept his company afloat. But Johnson made him very rich, and Herman paid for what he received with hundreds of thousands of dollars of political contributions.
See, while Herman’s construction company was quite small at the time, he dreamed big, in fact he wanted to build a megaproject, like a dam. Specifically, the Marshall Ford Dam, and he wanted the Federal Bureau of Reclamation to fund it. An aside: this dam would become part of a quiet war against the Texas public utility companies, since while it was supposed to be a flood control dam it was secretly going to be a hydroelectric dam, so it could be used to break the Texas public utilities’ monopoly on electricity.
So with the backing of the enemies of the public utility companies, they lined everything up just right to get authorisation with the Bureau of Reclamation, and with that pending they hurriedly started construction, with Herman Brown sinking $1.5 million into the project, putting him $500 thousand in debt.
And then one day Herman Brown found out that due to an Act of Congress, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation was forbidden to build dams on land it did not own. And the Federal Bureau of Reclamation did not own the land the Marshall Ford Dam was being built on. And according to Texas state law – state law that was effectively impossible to change because the powerful public utilities were wise to the scheme now and would never allow it – it was illegal to transfer in any way that land to anyone, especially not the Federal government.
The authorisations were dead, the dam was dead, and Herman was in debt for half a million.
Until a fresh congressman by the name of Lyndon B. Johnson used his White House connections and some complex political manoeuvres that we don’t have records of to blackhole any issues of land ownership or any of the many other inconvenient questions and got the dam authorised. And then of course re-authorised to add another $17 million to the budget to make the dam taller.
So because of Lyndon’s intervention Herman Brown had become a very rich man instead of a destitute man. And Lyndon followed this up by forcing the Federal Bureau of Reclamation to approve dozens of “change orders” to inflate the price of the materials and increase how much profit Herman Brown could reap from the project.
And Johnson would do this again for Herman Brown, on an even larger scale. In 1940 as the US was gearing up for war and building military bases across the country, Johnson made sure that any such construction would be done by Herman Brown. He made sure Herman Brown got a $100 million contract for what should have been a $23 million military base.
And Herman knew who his friends were, and would give Johnson anything he asked. Johnson didn’t just have a lot of money, he had more money than he could spend. Any money he could ask for, he would get.
And with this money, he was convincing the people of the State of Texas to vote for him. He was going to win the election.
Pappy
Now I need to tell you about an interesting character, W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel. Pappy was a radio announcer and a flour salesman who had a weekly show in Texas where he would preach about the bible and Hillbilly brand flour. His show had more listeners than any other in the history of Texas radio. It was said by a contemporary reporter that “at twelve-thirty sharp each day a fifteen-minute silence reigned in the State of Texas, broken only by mountain music, and the dulcet voice of W. Lee O’Daniel.” Pappy had the heart of the Texas housewife in the palm of his hand.
And in 1939 (two years before Johnson’s senatorial run) Pappy asked his audience if he should run for Governor. He received 54,446 replies in the positive. The three replies in the negative said he was too good for the job. He announced his candidacy.
The newspapers and political establishment took him for a joke candidate, just a crank taking the opportunity for a brief moment of attention. For Christ’s sake, the guy’d failed to pay his poll tax and wasn’t even eligible to vote!
In Pappy’s first rally he likely set a new record for the largest political rally in Texas at somewhere north of 10,000 people.
The first part of his platform was a $100 million per year statewide pension plan (four times the state budget) that would not be paid for with new taxes (when asked how he would pay for it, he would dodge the question with a song). The second part of his platform was to throw the “professional politicians” out of Austin: “If I am elected Governor of Texas, we will be the Governor of Texas –we meaning the common citizens, of which I am one.” That was his whole platform, besides scripture and songs revering old horses or mothers.
His rallies got bigger – 20,000, 30,000, 40,000. That’s larger than most Trump rallies today 1. They followed him from town to town, “they barricaded the highway to force him to stop and speak to them.” And when he did speak the crowds stood, in sweltering heat or in thunder, hypnotised.
On election day, Pappy swept the vote. Third place in the race got 154,000 votes. Second place was 231,000 votes. Pappy reaped 573,000. More than the eleven other candidates combined. He was the new Governor of Texas.
Two years later, in 1941, Pappy had said he wouldn’t run for the Senate seat. In fact, Johnson had been so worried about a possible Pappy run that before announcing his own candidacy he’d confirmed with Pappy that he didn’t intend to run.
And then six weeks passed, and Pappy changed his mind. Pappy announced he was running for Senator. And Lyndon B. Johnson had a nervous breakdown which required him to spend two weeks in the hospital. The polls showed Pappy at a crushing 33% and Johnson at 9%.
But Johnson recovered from his “pneumonia”, and he came out of the hospital swinging. He decided to go to war.
He used his sway in the Federal Rural Electrification Commission to threaten rural leaders to vote for him. “If your box comes in for Johnson, you’ll get the [electrical] lines.” And if the vote did not come in for Johnson, they would not get the electrical lines. Communities that didn’t vote for Johnson would stay in a gruelling semi-medieval state. And those that did could have washing machines, radios, lighting, water pumps, electric stoves, refrigeration, and even fans.
Fort Worth’s leading figure wanted a number of federal projects. The price of those federal projects was support for Lyndon B. Johnson. Fort Worth voted for Johnson, and Fort Worth got its projects.
But Johnson couldn’t just use political power to get himself elected. He needed to be popular, he needed to match the kinds of rallies Pappy could hold. But Johnson seemed only capable of delivering speeches in a harsh, aggressive monotone and he had no draw. When he stepped up to the stage, the audiences started leaving, and he was barely getting hundreds to attend his rallies.
So he hired famous singers, a six-man band, blackface comedians, dancing girls, a twenty-four man “big band”, and the best master of ceremonies in Texas. He seeded the audience with men to cheer for him. He had giant revolving searchlights shot into the sky before each rally, beckoning the folk to come to the incredible “All-Out Patriotic Revue” that had been advertised in the radio and newspapers. It was simply a dazzling show, more extravagant than anything most of the poor Texas folk had ever seen.
Astonishing even to cynical Texas political observers, he began handing out free money in the form of defense stamps (which could be exchanged for interest-bearing bonds). This was ridiculed across the nation, with Time magazine calling the campaign the “biggest carnival in American politics”.
But it worked, Johnson went from addressing hundreds to thousands, at some point the State Observer in their description of a typical Johnson rally noted 15,000 in attendance.
But Johnson’s most successful tactics were more subtle. The State Legislature was struggling to pass critical appropriations bills and Pappy as Governor had vowed not to leave the State Capitol until the bills were passed and the session adjourned. So Johnson’s powerful lobbyist friends made sure that didn’t happen. The appropriation bills would not be allowed to pass, nor would the session be allowed to adjourn or recess, and Pappy was forced to stay in Austin. In one week alone Johnson’s allies defeated eight separate attempts to get Pappy out of the State Capitol. In fact, the 1941 State Legislature was to stay in session longer than any other in the state’s history.
As late as ten days before election day Pappy was still stuck in Austin. He was one of the greatest campaigners in the history of Texas, but Johnson wouldn’t let him campaign.
Not every vote for Johnson was purchased through such indirect means. In South Texas, there were five counties that might as well have still been in colonial Mexico. They were ruled by a patron or a jefe in a nearly feudalistic arrangement. The Mexicans – who didn’t speak English – didn’t understand anything about America or its governmental institutions, but they were dutiful voters. Because while they may not have understood what a Senator was, they did understand an unshaven pistolero herding them to the ballot box, giving them a pre-marked ballot, and getting a shot of tequila after they did their duty to the Jefe by voting correctly. And the dead would naturally vote the way the Jefes wanted, and so would the Mexican citizens across the border who would be trucked in on election day to cast their vote.
And the votes in these counties went to the highest bidder, and Johnson bid the highest, so they would vote for him.
But outside of these five South Texas counties, across the whole state, Johnson’s tactics and his money were pulling him into the lead. Week by week he inched forward until a week before the election Johnson topped the polls for the first time. And on the last poll before election day Johnson was at 31%, Pappy was at 26%, Mann at 25%, and Dies at 16%.
Nobody knows how much money Johnson spent on this race for the Senate. We strongy suspect much of it violated campaign finance law, but we don’t know for sure because the IRS investigation was squashed before it could get going. There’s one estimate that he spent half a million dollars, which would put him at ten times as much as a typical Texas political campaign of the time. And if he had asked for more, he would have gotten it.
Defeat
And on election day, the returns started coming in, and they were good. Johnson was winning, there were no surprises. The Jefes telephoned Johnson asking, “When do you want us to report the results?” and Johnson told them immediately, and dutifully they came in 90% for Johnson.
Now, Texas is a big state, and many counties are remote and don’t even have a telephone with which to report results. It could take a few days to get the results in, even if the urban and most of the rural population’s votes were counted on election day. By the end of the day, only 96% of the vote was in. But the remaining counties were all strongholds for Martin Dies (the commie-hating HUAC chairmain), unlikely to suddenly swing for Pappy. Johnson was leading by five thousand votes, a lead so substantial that the Dallas News reported that only a miracle could keep LBJ out. Even the Texas Election Commission used this “miracle” terminology to describe the possibility of Johnson losing.
But some of those counties that hadn’t reported in yet weren’t just delayed by their remoteness. They were delayed by the common practice of the county judge taking the ballot box to his home, unlocking it, and measuring and altering the results depending on who was paying him. And until the results were certified, a county judge could say he made an error and adjust the early returns. And among the many measures to prevent the verifications of these altered votes was arranging it so that the ballot box would be broken open in transit to the Election Bureau so that the results would fall out, making verification impossible.
But this was not a real risk to Johnson’s victory, because Johnson knew Pappy hadn’t made any preparations to buy any rural ballot boxes, and would have had trouble doing so even if he tried (since Pappy was against the so-called “professional politicians”).
And so Johnson celebrated. He bragged of his victory to his friends in the White House, and had a big party.
But see Governor Pappy was a religious man, and while he avoided taking any real political positions besides populist promises of pensions, he was serious about alcohol. Alcohol was a scourge, and as Governor, he’d been trying—and succeeding—to fill the Texas Liquor Control Board with crusading prohibitionist preachers. He’d already managed to fill one of the three seats, and with another he could fully control the board. And then he could “have just about ended the liquor and beer business down here”.
So the liquor lobby hated Pappy, but if he was Senator instead of Governor, then he wouldn’t be able to make nominations to the Liquor Control Board. Instead Pappy would be off in Washington, far away from the liquor industry’s interests.
And while Lyndon was making preparations to take up his new Senate seat, the liquor lobby quietly started buying up the rural county judges who controlled the ballot boxes that hadn’t fully reported in yet. And because Johnson had made the rookie mistake of reporting the vote total for his “bought” South Texas counties immediately, they knew exactly how much to change the vote by. If only Johnson had told his Jefes to wait, he could’ve had some votes in his back pocket if he needed them at the last moment. But he didn’t, so there was no reserve.
Late returns started coming into the Election Bureau, with the number dramatically reversed from the previous trend. Counties where the early returns had been strongly for Martin Dies suddenly shifted to heavily favouring Pappy. And other counties, which had submitted “complete” but not official tallies, started changing their totals to take votes away from Johnson and give them to Pappy.
Johnson scrambled to steal the election back, but his Jefes wouldn’t change their results since they’d already sent in “official” returns, and what Johnson strongholds were willing to alter their counts couldn’t do enough. And once they noticed Johnson’s efforts, the liquor lobby reacted by keeping certain counties in reserve to make sure they had the last move.
At noon, two days after the election, Johnson was four thousand votes ahead, and the slide began. Every hour brought bad news. By seven p.m., Johnson’s lead had been cut to a thousand votes. Later in the evening, five counties reported their official results and cut Johnson’s lead down to seventy-seven. And by the morning of the next day, Pappy was ahead by 1,311 votes.
Pappy won the election.
And Johnson lost not because his opponents were strong, but because his opponent’s opponents were strong. They wanted him out of the governorship, out of the state, and in Washington, as a senator, where he couldn’t hurt their interests. So they helped him win.
I read that it was common for students of painting to attempt to make exact copies of a master painter’s work as a form of practice. I’m sorta doing this here, this is a condensed/plagiarized version of a story from the magnificent The Path to Power by Robert A. Caro, which is the first book in a five-book biography of Lyndon B. Johnson.