The choice before the Democrats of Texas seemed simple enough. In a runoff primary for Governor they could select John Connally, 45, an avowed conservative. Or they could choose Don Yarborough, 36, a Houston lawyer who is about as liberal as Texans get. But in its final days the fight got so nasty that the selection no longer seemed simple.
Winging from town to town in a Cessna, Yarborough assailed Connally as ''a confessed lobbyist for Eastern oil and gas monopolies, nursed in the smoke-filled room and weaned on the big lie technique." One such "lie," declared Yarborough, was Connally's press-conference plea at the 1960 Democratic Convention for delegates to vote for Johnson because Jack Kennedy suffered from "a death-dealing disease." Conflicting religious rumors about Connally were widespread: 1) he had quit as President Kennedy's Navy Secretary because he is anti-Catholic; 2) he is a Catholic himself. (Connally is a lifelong Methodist.)
Connally, traveling in a train, rolled across the 863 miles from Texarkana to El Paso, insisting at nearly every stop that Yarborough was the candidate of the Americans for Democratic Action. In Texas, that is about as damaging as calling him a Communist. Some Connally supporters did, in fact, place an ad that posed this choice: "Connally Go Ahead Versus C.I.O. Red." Neither did Connally's backers discourage the notion that Don Yarborough is kin to Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough, who has been linked to Billie Sol Estes. (Don and Ralph are not related.)
Apparently the less tarnished, Connally emerged the winner. His political mentor, Lyndon Johnson, thus tightened his grip on the Texas Democratic organization. In November Connally will learn just how much the fratricidal name calling has hurt him: he will face conservative Republican Jack Cox, 40, a onetime Democrat who switched to the G.O.P. and is trying to persuade Texas to do the same.