John Connally - Governor of Texas

Governor of Texas

Connally served as governor from 1963–1969. In the campaigns of 1964 and 1966, Connally defeated weak Republican challenges offered by Jack Crichton, a Dallas oil industrialist, and Thomas Everton Kennerly, Sr. (1903–2000), of Houston, respectively. He prevailed with margins of 73.8 percent and 72.8 percent, respectively, giving him greater influence with the nearly all-Democratic legislature.

Connally was governor during a time of great expansion of higher education in Texas. He signed into law the creation of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. He appointed regents who backed the entry of women into previously all-male Texas A&M University in College Station, having been prompted to take such action by State Senator William T. "Bill" Moore of Bryan, who in 1953 had first proposed the admission of women to the institution.

In 1965, Connally appointed Speaker Byron M. Tunnell to the Texas Railroad Commission, upon the retirement of 32-year veteran Ernest O. Thompson, a former mayor of Amarillo. This appointment enabled the future Connally business associate Ben Barnes of De Leon in Comanche County to succeed Tunnell and become the youngest Speaker in Texas history.

On August 1, 1966, Charles Joseph Whitman, perched from the University of Texas Tower in Austin, fired at people on the grounds and the surrounding community for more than ninety minutes. Governor Connally assembled a commission which determined that Whitman had been suffering from a glioblastoma brain tumor, amphetamine abuse, and family troubles. All of the preceding issues contributed to the killing of sixteen on the campus and the wounding of many others. Whitman also killed his wife and mother in the early morning hours of August 1. He was killed by Houston McCoy, a former officer of the Austin Police Department.

As governor, Connally promoted HemisFair '68, the world's fair held in San Antonio, he believed would net the state an additional $12 million in direct taxes. A permanent Institute of Texan Cultures museum was an outgrowth of the fair. It was designed to be "a dramatic showcase, not only to Texans, but to all the world, of the host of diverse peoples from many lands whose blood and dreams built our state."

During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged LBJ to "finish" the engagement by any military means necessary. Johnson, however, was more moderate in his conduct of the war than the hawkish Connally advised.

There was some talk of Connally being selected as Hubert Humphrey's running mate in 1968, but the liberal Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine was instead chosen. Connally endorsed Humphrey and greeted the nominee at the Fort Worth airport and even reconciled for a month with intraparty rival Ralph Yarborough. Ashman, however, claims that Connally was "privately helping Nixon, recruiting a number of influential Texans, members of both parties, to work for the Republican candidate." Ben Barnes recounts a story that Connally shouted at Hubert Humphrey in a private meeting at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and accused the vice president of being disloyal to President Johnson by trying to soft-pedal Johnson's position regarding Vietnam. Barnes said that the "tongue-lashing" Connally gave Humphrey was "an epic... He orally spanked that man as hard as I've ever seen anyone chastised. He either strengthened Hubert's backbone, or gave him some, or scared him half to death."

Connally was succeeded as governor by Lieutenant Governor Preston Smith, a theater owner from Lubbock, who twice defeated the Republican attorney Paul Eggers in 1968 and 1970. Eggers, a friend and later associate of Republican Senator John G. Tower, served as general counsel in the Treasury Department from 1969–1970, before Connally joined the Nixon Cabinet.