Oral History Interview - Bill Cunningham - February 29, 2008
Interview with William “Bill” Cunningham
Interviewer: Barbara Thibodeaux
Date of Interview: February 29, 2008
Location: San Marcos, Texas
_____________________
Interviewee: William “Bill” Cunningham – A 1973 journalism graduate, Bill was the first SWT student to be elected to the San Marcos City Council. Mr. Cunningham is a public relations consultant in San Marcos, Texas, has served as former chairman of the Texas State University System Board of Regents, and currently serves as chair of the Texas State LBJ Birthday Centennial Steering Committee’s Community Subcommittee.
THIBODEAUX: This recording is part of the LBJ Centennial Celebration Oral History Project sponsored by Texas State University. Today is February 29, 2008. My name is Barbara Thibodeaux. I am interviewing Bill Cunningham at San Marcos, Texas.
Mr. Cunningham, even though you have agreed to the terms and conditions of the release pertaining to this interview in writing, will you also verbally acknowledge your acceptance with a yes or a no?
CUNNINGHAM: Yes.
THIBODEAUX: Thank you very much.
In what capacity did you serve—or do you serve the Pedernales Electric Cooperative?
CUNNINGHAM: I have provided public relations consulting services to them since 1983.
THIBODEAUX: Can you give us a background of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative?
CUNNINGHAM: Well, of course, the cooperative was formed during the New Deal era when the Rural Electrification Administration came in under President Roosevelt to bring power to the areas that were not served by investor-owned utilities or city utilities. There were certain criteria that had to be met in terms of the total number of members you had to have signed up in order to qualify for the low interest loans that would allow cooperatives to build the infrastructure to bring power into rural areas.
That was one of President Johnson’s—Congressman Johnson’s key issues because he had grown up in the Texas Hill Country, had seen the effect of working without electricity on, I think, particularly women who, you know, worked with the dishes and the laundry and all the household chores, and then on the families without having lights and power for radios or anything. It was a very isolated area of the country. It was not very conducive to easy agricultural production, very rocky, and it was a hardscrabble land, and it was a hard life that people led and he wanted to make it better. So he had made that one of his key issues in working with the Roosevelt administration and he’d created the Lower Colorado River Authority to build the dams, which would create power, and then also he wanted to set up a cooperative that would serve his Hill Country with power.
Actually, what was then the Pedernales territory still had trouble meeting the criteria because of the scarce number of people in the Hill Country, a certain financial reluctance to invest, but I think Johnson used a good deal of his political capital with President Roosevelt to gain concessions from the Rural Electrification Administration, which was the agency created by the Roosevelt administration to bring power to rural areas. As a result, PEC was formed and President Johnson—that was one of his biggest achievements as a congressman, and as a senator he continued to lobby for improvements to the point of regularly attending PEC board meetings even while he was in the U.S. Senate right up until the time he became vice president of the United States.
THIBODEAUX: You mentioned Mr. Smith as President Johnson’s point man.
CUNNINGHAM: Well, there was a gentleman from Burnet County named—this is his actual name, the initial E.—E. Babe Smith. He was a rancher and was a political ally of President Johnson’s, was a very glib fellow, and President Johnson basically anointed E. Babe as the man that would go out and sign up the people to meet the criteria of having enough people to form a cooperative. And Babe Smith managed to get that done, and as I say, with some legislative assistance from President Johnson—or from Congressman Johnson, and then went on to serve as president of the board of the electric coop—of the PEC from its inception until sometime about 1980, I believe, he stepped down and still regularly attended meetings as a board member emeritus. He retired to San Marcos from his home in the Hill Country and became quite a good friend of mine here.
THIBODEAUX: So did he do a lot of stumping with Congressman Johnson trying to convince people to sign up?
CUNNINGHAM: Well, the stumping and a lot of other—it was just one-on-one going to—oh, like going to area schoolhouses and having the schoolteachers organize meetings of citizens where he would come in and then make the sales pitch, so that a lot of it were things he had to do on his own. It was just a sales job on the wonders of electricity that could be had if people were willing to ante up the minimal fee to become a member of the cooperative. And he was met with a great deal of skepticism because those were hard times.
THIBODEAUX: But I remember reading somewhere that once PEC got started that they really didn’t raise their rates for almost, like, forty years.
CUNNINGHAM: Well, as I say, Johnson had created the Lower Colorado River Authority to dam the Highland Lakes, so you had hydropower, which was very cheap power. I mean, you had your power source readily available there, and it wasn’t until the Hill Country began to grow some that LCRA had to begin to look for other sources of power other than just hydropower, and they began to have to look at steam-fired units, coal units. And of course, that meant higher rates, and of course, I guess it was in the 1970s there were some dramatic increases as a result of a change in oil prices by Valero Oil Company, which was Oscar Wyatt. Some contracts were broken and rates were raised, and there was a good deal of political controversy about that, but by then, of course, LCRA had a good many wholesale customers, not just Pedernales but Bluebonnet Electric, you know, and the city of San Marcos and city governments such as Fredericksburg and Seguin and New Braunfels and such, all of whom experienced what was then rate shock, I mean, nothing compared to what we’re going under now. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: But PEC was one of the largest cooperatives going back to, like, 1940?
CUNNINGHAM: Well, I don’t know if it was one of the largest. It began to grow with the development around the Highland Lakes, the retirement communities. It began to grow, I guess, probably in the ‘70s, and then of course, as Austin began to boom, those suburban communities such as Cedar Park and Leander that used to just be basically very, very small towns had become just extensions of the city of Austin. We’re seeing it here in Hays County. Buda is now pretty much an extension of Austin, and Kyle is getting there, and also San Antonio is growing and PEC serves in Kendall and Comal counties, so you’re getting growth there, so it is now the largest electric cooperative in the nation, which is ironic, you know, when you consider its history that it barely met the criteria for qualifying for federal assistance in the Rural Electrification pilot program.
As a matter of fact, one of the stories you may have read, or has been widely quoted, is that Johnson even told President Roosevelt that if they would go on and sign it up, he would guarantee that people in the Hill Country would breed enough to qualify for the membership met ratios. (Thibodeaux laughs) And of course, it wasn’t all just breeding, it was just growth from these major metropolitan centers and also from the retirement areas.
THIBODEAUX: (laughs) I have not heard that story. I’m sorry for laughing. (Both laugh) That is very funny. I remember reading that they had such a hard time signing up and meeting the criteria that a lot of times on just the maps they were fudging the distance between the homes.
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. That was supposedly one of his quotes. He said, “I know those people, and I guarantee you they’ll breed enough that there’ll be enough people there to qualify.” (Both laugh)
THIBODEAUX: Well, time proved that.
If we could move on to your father and the San Antonio Express. What was his role or what position did he have with the Express?
CUNNINGHAM: Well, he was the South Texas editor of the Express. I mean, he had many different roles over the years, but that was his role that he eventually rose to, which covered the news happenings in a lot of the agriculture business, which at that time was very big in South Texas.
THIBODEAUX: What time period was he with the Express?
CUNNINGHAM: Oh, he went to work there in the early ‘50s and I guess retired probably sometime in the ‘90s.
THIBODEAUX: While he worked for the San Antonio Express, did he have any type of professional association with Johnson?
CUNNINGHAM: Well, he had met Johnson on several occasions because, as I say, in his role he would attend a lot of activities in these smaller cities outside San Antonio and South Texas and in the Hill Country, and Johnson would frequently be there, and was good friends with probably a lot of Johnson’s key supporters in those communities where he’d go to the business leaders he dealt with.
THIBODEAUX: Did he have any impressions of Johnson that he ever expressed?
CUNNINGHAM: He was a strong Johnson supporter. He was a very, very strong Johnson supporter. I mean, I think he was probably like a lot of people, he thought Johnson was a bit of a rogue, but he was our rogue, and so I grew up in a Lyndon Johnson family.
And we recall—I remember on November 21, 1963 getting out of school and going to see the motorcade in San Antonio where President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson passed by within a few blocks of my junior high school. And then the next day Vice President Johnson became president, and of course, we were all riveted to the TV that whole weekend and were greatly mollified, I think, by the way President Johnson handled that transition of power because people that weren’t alive that day just don’t know what to think of him. I guess they can relate to 9/11, but that was such a shocking day in history and we didn’t know if war was coming, the world was coming to an end, whatever, and then seeing Lyndon Johnson really kind of step up to the plate and reassure the nation, I think everybody in Texas was—the people that we knew were proud of him because of the way he handled that transition.
THIBODEAUX: That was a defining moment.
You’d mentioned that your father knew quite a few of Mr. Johnson’s associates. Can you remember any in particular?
CUNNINGHAM: Well, I remember one of his really good friends was Dan Quill, who was the postmaster of San Antonio, and those were in the days when postmasters were political appointees. The story goes that Dan Quill was the man that on Johnson’s wedding day—when Johnson was getting married at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, which is the old-line Episcopal church in downtown San Antonio—that Johnson had neglected to get a wedding ring for Lady Bird. So he sent Dan Quill over to Woolworth’s on Houston Street to buy a ring. But Dan Quill was probably one of Johnson’s leading political associates in San Antonio.
Of course, we were good friends too with Henry B. Gonazlez, who was a congressman of that era.
THIBODEAUX: That leads me to a question I’ve been kind of curious about. Just maybe through that association or just your being in the area, do you have any opinion or ideas about how Johnson related with the Mexican American community?
CUNNINGHAM: I think he related very strong. I think some of it dated back to his days of school teaching in Cotulla. I think he obviously always had the South Texas vote. Sometimes he even had some of the South Texas vote of people—South Texans who were no longer living, according to some of the stories that are going around. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: They were just very dedicated democrats (Both laugh) come back from the grave to vote.
CUNNINGHAM: As T. R. Fehrenbach says in the book, Lone Star, about the ’48 election, that Johnson did not defraud Coke Stevenson, he out-frauded Coke Stevenson because that’s the way politics were back then. I guarantee you Lyndon Johnson was probably not the only one in that election who probably had some questionable votes cast on his behalf. He just happened to be the one who had the box that came in last. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: So do you think he actively courted the Mexican American vote?
CUNNINGHAM: Oh, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I think he courted them. I know he courted Henry B. Gonzalez and, yeah, I think he felt a strong kinship with the Mexican American community. You know, one of the good things about Johnson from those teaching years is that he did have that commitment to education and wanted to see people get above their raising. So he was always strong in the San Antonio Mexican American precincts and throughout South Texas. That was always considered one of his great strengths electorally was in South Texas. Then of course, East Texas had been yellow dog democrat country.
THIBODEAUX: Do you think—this really is another opinion question—that he was able to deliver for the Mexican American community before he became president?
CUNNINGHAM: I’m not really familiar with what votes he may have had that delivered that. I know obviously after he became president, the Higher Education Bill and all the education bills—although the primary focus on that time was the civil rights movement in the South. Those were all things that benefited the Hispanic community in Texas too and made education more accessible and voting more accessible because there was some real voting discrimination in certain areas of South Texas. I mean, there were numerous communities where the population would be 70, 80 percent Hispanic, but the ruling bodies of the city would be 100 percent Anglo.
THIBODEAUX: And that was something Johnson was very aware of.
CUNNINGHAM: I think so. Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: Moving on to your going to Texas State, which then was Southwest Texas State—
CUNNINGHAM: It was Southwest Texas State College when I enrolled. And then I believe the next year it became Southwest Texas State University.
THIBODEAUX: I have such a hard time following what years it changed names.
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. Because that was in the late ‘60s that it became the university and then it did not change again until it became Texas State University of San Marcos.
THIBODEAUX: So when did you join the staff of the Star?
CUNNINGHAM: I joined actually before I attended my first class. I had gone to some orientation and they sent me over to keep stats at a football game, so I mean, I was on the University Star from day one of my freshman year. And by the spring semester I was the sports editor of the University Star and then served in that capacity my junior year—I mean, my sophomore year, but I also began branching out and covering other university events other than just sports.
THIBODEAUX: Were you the political writer or editor?
CUNNINGHAM: Well, I was the managing editor my junior year and the managing editor’s—part of the responsibility of the managing editor was to be in charge of the editorial viewpoint of the newspaper. And so I was in charge of that.
THIBODEAUX: I did talk to Terry Collier, and he told me about when he was there. Did you follow directly after him or were there some people in between?
CUNNINGHAM: Terry Collier was editor when I was sports editor, yeah. And so, yeah, then that next year after he graduated I was managing editor.
THIBODEAUX: So when you were sports and maybe reporter at large?
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. Did general assignments reporting.
THIBODEAUX: I know you covered some of the McCrocklin—
CUNNINGHAM: I had lobbied very hard that the McCrocklin—the circumstances about Dr. McCrocklin should be covered in the university newspaper because as a journalist, it just didn’t look right to me that a story that’s going around statewide involving the president of our university and our newspaper was ignoring it. And I thought we ought to at least acknowledge it. So Terry asked me to start covering it, and we had to be very careful in our coverage.
I like to think my coverage was very balanced. I had very mixed feelings because I knew Dr. McCrocklin. He was one of the reasons I came to this school. He was a friend of my father’s. He was another one of the Johnson political associates, and I really liked him as a person. So I think the story—but I thought that the story did merit coverage. So I tried to cover the story, so I made a big point of not only interviewing those people on campus who were very supportive of President McCrocklin but the critics and presenting both sides.
Those were back in the days when you really—I had been raised in a newspaper family and I believed in balanced journalism and presenting both sides and not taking a side. And we never really did take a side. As a matter of fact, I’m very proud of the fact that I had people on both sides of the issue tell me that they thought the coverage was well-balanced. I think obviously some of his supporters would just as soon there not have been any coverage, but that was the reality. You have to cover a story that’s happening that involves your campus. And then of course, when he resigned, that kind of brought that chapter to an end.
THIBODEAUX: I know the San Antonio Express covered that story also off and on. Was there any interaction with you and reporters from the San Antonio Express?
CUNNINGHAM: No, not really. I just covered it strictly on campus and just, you know, either attending the different forums that, say, the critics would have that would show what they said were evidence. There was even a demonstration on campus about it and covered that and interviewed people who were supporters of President McCrocklin, but, no, I didn’t really have any interaction with any other journalist.
THIBODEAUX: So do you think that Dr.—or Mr. McCrocklin’s association with Johnson indirectly led to his downfall just in the sense that it received national coverage?
CUNNINGHAM: I think that probably focused some attention on him. There was also a story that I’d heard that there was some speculation that his elevation to the federal position might eventually lead him to be a candidate for the presidency of the University of Texas in Austin and that there were people in Austin who did not want that to happen and that may have been the genesis of the story breaking more. If it had just been Southwest Texas State University and he had just been Jim McCrocklin, president of Southwest Texas State University, I don’t know that it would’ve merited that kind of coverage. So there is probably something to both those viewpoints. I mean, the fact that he did have a high federal position and then evidently there was some widespread speculation about his future and the possibility of being at the state’s flagship university.
THIBODEAUX: This is an opinion question again. I read a comment that part of the controversy arose because of politics, and that was never explained. Do you think that related to campus politics, or do you think there may have been a broader picture?
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah, there was some campus politics involved, I think. As I say, McCrocklin was a political ally of Lyndon Johnson. I think there were probably some more liberal college professors on the faculty at that time that were not particular fans of Lyndon Johnson. So I’m sure there were politics involved, but then you’re getting into kind of like Claude Raines in Casablanca. I’m shocked to learn there’re politics going on on the university campus. (Thibodeaux laughs) Shocked! (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: I like that. It seemed to have happened to both Mr. McCrocklin and Mr. Hardesty. It was kind of coincidental there.
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: So how did the Star change from, let’s say, under Mr. Collier to when you took over as managing editor?
CUNNINGHAM: I wasn’t the editor. I was the managing editor.
THIBODEAUX: Managing editor, I’m sorry.
CUNNINGHAM: The editorial content, I think, became what I considered more topical, what my critics considered more radical because by then the war was a burning issue, and we began covering antiwar activities on campus and even took an editorial stance supporting the Vietnam War moratorium and did a full-page photo montage of protest of the war. There was great sensitivity on this campus about the war because it was President Johnson’s alma mater. I think the administration did not want to be embarrassed by having it publicized that the depths of opposition to the war in Vietnam had reached the level where it was even prevalent on the university campus of his alma mater.
Then after the students were ejected for having a demonstration, there was an even bigger demonstration objecting to the suppression of their freedom of assembly. There was a massive demonstration that night, and again, we covered that, and again, we took a very strong editorial stand berating the administration for not allowing college students the basic rights of free speech and free assembly.
THIBODEAUX: So did those type of protests move off campus to just San Marcos area?
CUNNINGHAM: No, they were primarily on campus.
THIBODEAUX: The proximity to UT, did that have any influence on what happened in San Marcos?
CUNNINGHAM: I think it—obviously, it did. Those were in the days when you could get on I-35 and you could be in Austin in twenty minutes. So we would organize—after I got dismissed from the University Star, I just went ahead and became active in the antiwar movement and was frequently in Austin for antiwar activities. So, yeah, there was some cross-pollination going on.
THIBODEAUX: So because of the suppression at Southwest Texas, did that prompt a lot of students, like you, just to go to Austin and join their movement?
CUNNINGHAM: Well, no, no. They’d have bigger demonstrations there. It’d just be one more demonstration to go to. (laughs) We continued to organize on campus and right up, I guess—you know, had demonstrations after Kent State. So it was kind of an ongoing deal on campus here, and it was local students. It wasn’t outside agitators from UT Austin coming in. So if there was going to be a huge rally in Austin, we’d send carfuls up there to participate too.
THIBODEAUX: Was there a more conservative—like, a student body here than in—
CUNNINGHAM: Oh, I think the student body—there’s still a fairly conservative student body, but you could also see some subtle changes. You could see fraternity boys letting their hair grow long, and you could see football players wearing sandals and sorority girls attending antiwar demonstrations. So it definitely had spread throughout the campus community. The percentages I have no idea because I’m sure there were still a great many students who participated in little other than their studies. That’s the nature of the university campus. There’s always quite a few students who don’t get involved in things other than their studies.
THIBODEAUX: But you do mention that there was quite a bit of participation in the—was it the Vietnam moratorium?
CUNNINGHAM: Right. Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: And that was a walkout, correct?
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. There was a one-day—there was scheduled to be a one-day stay-out-of-class-and-protest-the-war. I don’t know how huge it was on this campus, but it was well-publicized and probably wouldn’t have been as big an issue if the university administration at the time hadn’t made it an issue (laughs) by kicking people out for participating.
THIBODEAUX: A risk that caused—did it cause a rift between you and your father at the time?
CUNNINGHAM: Well, a little bit of a rift, but actually, he had begun to question things too. He didn’t like me having long hair, I’ll say that. But he didn’t really disagree with my politics that much because I think by then a lot of people were starting to question where the Vietnam War was going.
THIBODEAUX: Did you ever see Johnson on campus?
CUNNINGHAM: I never ever saw Johnson on campus. As I say, it’s really curious concerning the effect he had on my later life because so many of the people I have been involved with in organizations were political allies or parts of the Johnson organization, and yet here I was a guy who had been one of the leading antiwar organizers at Johnson’s alma mater. And now, I’m working for Jake Pickle, who was one of Johnson’s right-hand men. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: I didn’t know that. Can you tell me a little bit about him?
CUNNINGHAM: About Jake Pickle?
THIBODEAUX: Yes.
CUNNINGHAM: While I was still a student—and as a result of my participation in the movement—I was approached by a group of antiwar leaders in 1972, which was the year that the voting age was lowered to eighteen, and then secretary of state Bob Bullock ruled that college students could vote in the town in which they attended college and didn’t have to go home and vote. And they wanted me to run for city council. So I thought that sounded like fun and kind of a lark, the kind of thing a stupid college kid would do for fun. So I ran and then I won. So I had to serve, and I got to know Mr. Pickle because he was a congressman for this area. Then after I graduated I went to work for the State Agriculture Department for the Agricultural Commission. I came back here as a newspaperman and then became a grants writer for the county.
In 1980 Mr. Pickle was facing what he thought was going to be his most serious republican opposition since his election back in the ‘60s. He came to me and asked me to be his organizer for the rural areas of the Tenth Congressional District, which would have been that area outside of Austin, fourteen different counties, nearly 50 percent of the vote. It was back when Austin was still small, and so I worked for him and then later founded my public relations agency and continued to serve as a political consultant to Jake Pickle. Of course, he had been with Johnson throughout Johnson’s career and was one of the major influences on my life. So there again, I heard many a Johnson story from Jake Pickle.
THIBODEAUX: Any you would like to share?
CUNNINGHAM: One of his favorites was the one about how when Johnson was campaigning in 1948, one of his big campaign gimmicks was flying into town in a helicopter because helicopters were—you know, that was something—a real crowd attracter. And Pickle was what he called—what Pickle called himself and what he always dubbed me was a wood and water man. It was a biblical passage about blessed be the hewer of the wood and the carrier of the water, and Pickle used that to describe the political person who would go out and do all the organizing beforehand and stuff, so Jack Pickle was Lyndon Johnson’s wood and water man.
So he would go into these towns and he would put up the posters and tell everybody about Lyndon Johnson was going to fly into town on Saturday morning in a helicopter and land on the courthouse square, and they’d draw a huge crowd. The helicopter would come in and circle the courthouse two or three times and Johnson would lean out and be waving at the crowd and waving his Stetson. And as the helicopter came down, Johnson would throw his Stetson into the crowd, and Pickle would always hesitate a minute and say, “And my job was to get that Stetson back.” (Both laugh)
THIBODEAUX: That is funny.
CUNNINGHAM: He talked about after his election to Congress, his first invitation to the White House as a congressman was—he drove over there and they let him in, of course they had him on the pass list, and went in to have dinner with the Johnsons and while he was having dinner the Secret Service came running in and said, Is your car a such-and-such, whatever kind of car he drove, and Mr. Pickle said, “Yeah.” And the Secret Service said, “Well, it’s on fire.” (laughs) It had overheated.
And Pickle would talk about during his first term was when the Civil Rights Act was passed. And obviously Johnson lobbied him very hard to vote for the Civil Rights Act, which he did vote for because he had his loyalty to Lyndon Johnson and he knew that it was going to mean that he’d face serious political repercussions in 1964 Texas. Having cast that vote he was going to serve as a one-term congressman for voting for the Civil Rights Act. But he said that night—in the middle of the night the phone rang and it was Lyndon Johnson calling to say, “Jake, I want to let you know I’ve never been prouder of you in whole life than I am today because you were the only white Texan that voted for the Civil Rights Act.” I believe he was only one of, I think, four white congressmen from the old Confederacy that voted for the Civil Rights Act. Gillis Long of Louisiana was one, and I forget who the other two or three were. And he was convinced that that was going to get him beat, and then he ended up serving until 1990-something. From then on, he later referred to that as the vote he was proudest of. But it was one that was not going to be a popular vote and one that he knew he might have to pay the price for, but he did it. So, yeah, he had many a Johnson story.
THIBODEAUX: I remember reading that President Johnson used his father kind of as leverage sometimes—Mr. Pickle’s father—and always invited him to the White House frequently.
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. Yeah. Mr. Pickle was from Big Spring and that’s where his father was from. He ran a funeral home there. Pickle was a child of the Great Depression, so he was very tight-fisted and when he took—when he was first elected to Congress, he decided that one of the things he was going to do, he took his father down to—what was the name of that store—the Joseph’s on Congress Avenue and was going to buy him a Stetson. He knew his father would object to the price tag on it, so Pickle told the owner, he said, You just quote him such-and-such a price, and I’ll buy it, and then I’ll pay you full price, but you just quote him a low price. So Pickle took his father in there, (laughs) and the merchant quoted the price of the hat, and the father said, “That’s so cheap, I think I’ll take two of them.” (Both laugh) And as I say, Mr. Pickle was just kind of—I can imagine the look on his face because he was the type who still—when we were out driving around the Tenth Congressional District, we had some supporters who would stop and I would climb their fig trees and pick figs so that—no, it was some kind of preserves he made. And he kept beehives out at his place in Niederwald and we would go out there and raid the honey so that Mr. Pickle could have honey. So he had a real Depression era philosophy about him of you get what you can off of nature and don’t go to the grocery store.
THIBODEAUX: That reminds me of Sam—is it Sam Fore?
CUNNINGHAM: Um hmm.
THIBODEAUX: Do you know anything about his relationship with President Johnson?
CUNNINGHAM: Oh, I know he was closer to President Johnson. He was mainly John Connally’s political mentor in Floresville. And John Connally, of course, was very, very close to Johnson. As a matter of fact, he was Johnson’s secretary of the navy when he left the administration to return to Texas and become governor. So Sam Fore would’ve been another one who was very close with Johnson and it was Connally in particular though, since he had mentored him.
THIBODEAUX: Was it John Connally that was a part of the democrats for Nixon?
CUNNINGHAM: Yes. He later served Richard Nixon as secretary of the treasury.
THIBODEAUX: Oh. Bad memory on my part.
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. Then he ran for president one year as a republican and got one delegate.
THIBODEAUX: So do you think there was a rift with Johnson—
CUNNINGHAM: He ran the most expensive—he had the most expensive cost per delegate of any candidate up until Rudy Guilliani. (laughs)
THIBODEAUX: And he didn’t do very well, did he?
CUNNINGHAM: No.
THIBODEAUX: I remember him running but—
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah. Like I say, he ended up with one delegate and dropped out. There are some people that say if he’d stayed a democrat he might’ve gotten elected president. I don’t know given the more liberal slant the Democratic Party took after ’68 whether or not Connally would’ve been able to have come back to the Democratic Party or—it’d would’ve been a hard row, I suspect.
THIBODEAUX: Did Johnson remain a—was he part of the Democratic Party—an influence in the Democratic Party in Texas? Considering he was in Washington so much, did he really have that much to do with party politics in Texas?
CUNNINGHAM: Oh, yeah, I think he still did. Particularly through people like Connally, who’d worked for him, and Pickle. Those were back in the days when the Texas delegation had enormous clout in Congress by right of seniority. You had Bob Poage from Waco was chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, George Mahan from Lubbock was chairman of Armed Services, Wright Patman from Texarkana was chairman of House Banking, and there may have been one or two other congressman. I think Tiger Teague from College State was chairman of Veterans Affairs Committee, and those were all—well, maybe with the exception of Wright Patman, who was a real maverick and a populist of the old school—were Johnson type people. So, yeah, Johnson had his surrogates in positions of power throughout the state. He may not have monitored everything, but he had people who had grown up under him serving in positions of power throughout.
THIBODEAUX: One final question that I have, at Texas State this year, of course, there is a lot of, I guess, discussion, the common experience things or civic responsibility and LBJ’s legacy. So what do you think is probably his greatest legacy here in Central Texas?
CUNNINGHAM: I think the whole education focus that he put on education that he learned here. When you look at the growth, you know, not only of Texas State but the University of Texas and the branches in San Antonio, and I would say an emphasis on growing educational opportunities. Now, the state of Texas itself has not been as good about funding those, but the fact that these universities have all risen to a lot more prominence than they otherwise would’ve had is probably his greatest legacy here.
THIBODEAUX: Have I missed anything? Any other stories you have to share?
CUNNINGHAM: No, that’s about it. If not, I’ll catch you at one of our committee meetings. (Both laugh)
THIBODEAUX: That sounds like a good idea. I’ll just carry my recorder with me.
CUNNINGHAM: Yeah.
THIBODEAUX: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Cunningham. I appreciate it.
(End of interview)