Rayburn’s personal ethics still inspiring
As this long and bitter campaign season comes to a merciful end — we hope — I thought I might resurrect a more innocent time in Texas politics, a time when politics was considered public service and opponents were honorable representatives of a plausible, however misguided, point of view. It’s the story of a young man named Sam, 24 years old and running for the Texas Legislature in 1906. Having worked in politics myself, I’m well aware that Sam’s initial campaign was likely the exception rather than the rule, then and now, but I still find it inspiring at a moment desperate for higher purpose.
Sam Rayburn and his 10 siblings grew up on a 40-acre cotton farm in North Texas, near a Fannin County hamlet called Windom. “I plowed and hoed from sun till sun,” he once recalled. (quoted in the first volume of Robert Caro’s LBJ biography)
Bookish and serious-minded,
Sam decided at the age of 8 or 9 on a career in politics or law. To pay his way through school at tiny East Texas Normal College (now Texas A&M University-Commerce), he got a job sweeping out a nearby elementary school. He also had a second job. As the college’s bellringer, he had to stop what he was doing every 45 minutes and race up the bell tower to signal the end of a class period. He got his diploma after two years and took a job in a one-room school in a tiny rural community near Bonham called Dial. Two years later, he got a better-paying job at the three-teacher school in a Fannin County settlement called Lannius.
In 1905, the Texas Legislature adopted the so-called Terrell Election Law, which meant that candidates for public office no longer would be chosen by powerful, often corrupt party bosses meeting in proverbial smokefilled rooms. Instead, the people would choose, voting in direct primary elections.
The aspiring young lawyer/ politician teaching kids in a rural school saw his chance. Party-boss connections he didn’t have, but that wouldn’t matter. He could run as a candidate for the Texas House of Representatives in the next Democratic primary. He just might win the nomination, tantamount to election in the overwhelmingly Democratic state. As a lawmaker, he’d be making $5 a day for the first 60 days of each biennial session and $2 for each day of the session thereafter. For the young teacher, a legislative salary constituted a raise, maybe even enough for him to enroll in the University of Texas Law School.
In nearby Honey Grove, another Sam — Sam H. Gardner — had made a similar decision. Ten years older than Rayburn and better known around the county, Gardner declared his candidacy.
With a long, hot summer coming on, young Rayburn set in to campaigning, riding from farm to farm astride a little brown cow pony, shaking hands and talking issues with anybody who’d take the time to lean on his hoe and listen to the young man’s views on Prohibition or boll weevil infestations or the declining price of cotton. “Women, who along with blacks and Hispanics were disenfranchised in Texas, got a courteous tip of the candidate’s hat but little of his time,” biographer D.B. Hardeman writes.
As Hardeman tells the story, Rayburn had to spend time trying to convince farmers in their fields or folks downtown on a Saturday that he was old enough to run for public office. Hoping to appear more mature, the short, stocky young man invested in a black wool suit, a string tie and a black broad-brimmed hat. Hardeman writes that his outfit, combined with his naturally grave-looking countenance, made him look like an apprentice undertaker (and a sweaty one at that).
At some point the two Sams decided they could cover more territory and give voters a clearer sense of their respective views if they campaigned together. Sharing a one-horse buggy day after day, they’d pull into a one-horse town, gather a crowd and speechify. Standing above the curious on the back of their buggy, one or the other candidate would start into speaking and then step down for his opponent’s remarks.
As the campaign wore on and the candidates got better acquainted on their long rides through the countryside, they became close friends. “They began praising each other in such lavish terms,” Hardeman writes, “that voters often were puzzled as to why such good friends were competing for the same job.”
In one town, Gardner got sick and had to spend three days in bed. Although the man from Honey Grove seemed to be in the lead at the time, Rayburn refused to take advantage of his opponent’s misfortune. He broke off campaigning and helped nurse him back to health. Once Gardner got to feeling better, the two resumed campaigning, still together.
Election day was Saturday, but it took a while for the ballot boxes from out in the county to be brought into the county clerk’s office in Bonham. It took a while longer for the ballots to be counted by hand. The results would not be announced until the following Tuesday.
Anxious members of the Rayburn clan gathered at the family farm. Sam had arranged for a friend with a fast horse to be at the courthouse when results were announced and then ride the 11 miles out to the farm with the news. During the day, the Rayburns heard rumors that their man was winning big in the Bonham-Windom area, where the family was well known, but that Gardner was running up wide margins in his part of the county. They drank endless cups of coffee. They had dinner (lunch). They wandered around outside, took care of a few chores. They waited.
Along about sundown, they heard the hoofbeats. Barging through the front door seconds later, the friend was shouting, “You won, Sam! You won!”
By 163 votes.
On Jan. 8, 1907, two days after his 25th birthday, the young man from North Texas raised his farm-calloused hand on the floor of the Texas House to take the oath of office as a representative of the people. That winter day in Austin marked the beginning of the longest lawmaking career in American history.
That’s the story I wanted to tell on this election eve, except for this: Elected to Congress in 1912, and serving as House Speaker three times for a total of 17 influential years, Sam Rayburn throughout his career refused not only fees for out-of-town speeches, but also reimbursement for travel expenses. Lobbyists knew that if they even suggested buying him a meal, his eyes would narrow, his billiard ball-smooth head would flush red and he’d turn on his heel and stalk off.
Rayburn had his faults, of course; he also could be ruthless when it came to wielding power. Nevertheless, he believed his whole life long that politics and service were synonymous. And he could not be bought.
Taxpayers couldn’t pick up his tab either. During his 48 years in Congress, Rayburn took exactly one overseas trip. His congressional committee was considering Panama Canal legislation, so he thought he ought to go down and see the canal for himself. He paid his own way.