Two days after election day last week, after one of the hottest political campaigns in the history of Texas, nobody knew who had won the late Morris Sheppard's seat in the U.S. Senate. Lanky, 32-year-old Representative Lyndon Johnson, endorsed by President Roosevelt, started out with a seemingly secure 13,500-vote lead in a field of 25 candidates. But as the count piled up, folksy Governor Wilbert Lee ("Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy") O'Daniel slowly ate into Lyndon Johnson's vanishing plurality.
As the last returns trickled in this week, from backwoods counties where Lee O'Daniel is strongest,...
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