Texans had to admit that the U.S. Senate race between pipe-smoking ex-Governor Coke Stevenson and fast-talking Congressman Lyndon Johnson was closeeven for Texas. Ten days after the election it was still impossible to tell who had won.
The two contestants had been neck & neck during most of their runoff campaign. Big (6 ft. 3 in.), black-haired Lyndon Johnson was the more dramatic of the two. At 40, he was a seasoned and ambitious man. He had been a janitor, a schoolteacher, a secretary, a New Deal youth administrator (he liked to say that Franklin Roosevelt had "been like a daddy" to...