Transcript: Chapter 03

Narrator: As Johnson arrived in Washington, the excitement and promise of Roosevelt's New Deal still animated the capital. The New Deal was the perfect climate for the young congressman and his wife, Lady Bird. He had proposed to her the day they met and she became the perfect political wife, rising at midnight to scramble eggs for his friends, running his congressional office, working as his business manager. Lady Bird never stopped serving her husband's ambitions.

Assigned a room in the old House Office Building far from the corridors of power, the freshman congressman didn't hesitate to turn to the president for help. With the support of the White House, Johnson secured loans and millions of dollars in federal grants for farmers, schools, housing for the poor, roads, public libraries; but helping complete the great dam on the lower Colorado River was his greatest achievement and the next step in the education of Lyndon Johnson. In 1938, rural Texans were still living without electricity.

E. Babe Smith, Pedernales Electric Co-op: It was a rather primitive life, you know -- no running water and they had no refrigeration. Every meal had to be started from scratch. They used to say, you know, the man was a gentleman who could provide his wife with a sharp axe, you know, to cut the wood with.

Narrator: "Of all the things I've ever done," Lyndon Johnson later wrote, "nothing has ever given me as much satisfaction as bringing power to the hill country of Texas."

E. Babe Smith: And my daughter -- she was about nine years old -- she just couldn't believe how the house was lit up. She said, "Momma, the house is on fire."

Narrator: The dam was everything a young congressman could have hoped for. The hill country farmers thanked Johnson for the electricity and the men who built the dam thanked him for the government contracts: George and Herman Brown of the Brown and Root Construction Company. Johnson helped the Brown brothers build a billion-dollar construction empire. In turn, the Browns would fund Johnson's political campaigns.

Ronnie Dugger, LBJ Biographer: Judgmentally, what I'd say is that they were a couple of guys who were making a lot of money out of the New Deal and they didn't want to have to pay higher wage rates, so they were against the union. It wasn't a matter of high principle. They wanted to get rich and they did get rich. Well, Lyndon sidled up to them or they sidled up to him and they made book.

I remember asking Johnson once in the White House, "Did you deal with cash?" And he said, "It was all cash." I mean, there were no records, so under those circumstances, there were plenty of politicians who were selling out to business interests. I use a pejorative term. I don't know what other term to use. I mean, in TV you have to use some shorthand. I mean, they were agreeing to be with those people in exchange for money which they used in their campaigns. That's pretty close to selling out, isn't it?

And everything is organized not like his father -- around ideas and ideals -- but like a sun, around himself and his own career; not to say that he is not, therefore doing a lot of good. He brings real electricity to people that don't have it in his own district. Yeah, sure he's really smart.

Narrator: On May 2, 1939, George Brown wrote Johnson a letter. "I hope you know, Lyndon, how I feel in reference to what you have done for me and I'm going to try to show you my appreciation through the years with actions rather than words." Two years later, the Brown brothers made good on their promise.

In 1941, when Johnson made a run for the Senate, he needed all the money the Brown brothers could give him. He was just a young congressman reaching beyond his own small district in a race that was pure Texas politics -- part campaign and part circus. Twenty-nine candidates took the field, but in the end, there was only one man to beat, the governor of Texas, "Pappy" Lee O'Daniel.

Lewis Gould, Historian: Well, Pappy O'Daniel was a man who had come out of nowhere to be governor of Texas in the late 30's. He was a radio personality and that's what made him so popular. He had a band that played for him called The Light Crust Dough Boys and their theme song was "Pass the biscuits, Pappy." And he became known as W. Lee "Pass the biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel. He was conservative, but he didn't really believe in anything except getting elected and being popular.

Mrs. Johnson: He had been on radio for quite a long time with a very popular program of country music.

E. Babe Smith: Every day at noon, he had his Texas network, you know, and he played and he sang. The ladies just worshipped him, you know. You couldn't find anybody who voted for him, but he always won the election, you know.

Homer Dean, LBJ Campaign Supporter: "Now, listen, everybody from near and far, we're The Light Crust Dough Boys." And then, he would sing the [sings] Beautiful, beautiful Texas / where the beautiful blue bonnets grow / We're proud of our forefathers / Who fought at the Alamo / You can live on the plains or the mountains / Or down where the sea breezes blow / And you're still in beautiful Texas / The most beautiful state that we know...

Rep. James Pickle, (D) Texas, LBJ Campaign Worker: And here was Johnson, an unknown young congressman, so to speak, but he also had the aura that he was going somewhere. He was going to do something and you could feel it. And he could have fun, but he was all business of dreaming and daring, imagining, attempting new things.

Robert Dallek: There was nobody who campaigned harder than a Lyndon Johnson. He worked night and day, speaking, walking, driving, just doing everything he conceivably could to get his name before the public and convince them of the fact that he would make a first class senator.

Homer Dean: I believe that you people are fed up on hired hands doing nothing but entertaining you. You are going to send Lyndon Johnson to the Senate next Saturday by the greatest vote you ever sent a senator there.

Mrs. Johnson: We went to every small hamlet, walked up and down the street, shook hands with all the merchants who had lined up all the friends that all your friends could summons, your mother and your kin folks.

Narrator: As the campaign drew to a close, Johnson remained the underdog, but once again, by lifting high the Roosevelt banner, Johnson closed the gap. On election night, he was confident. With 96 percent of the vote counted, he led O'Daniel by 5,000 votes. Congratulations were already pouring in from Washington.

Mrs. Johnson: We had been declared elected by the Texas Election Bureau on Saturday night, when the votes were counted. Banner headlines on Sunday morning, "Johnson elected to Senate."

Rep. James Pickle: The Dallas News, the great Dallas News even ran a story on Sunday morning, "LBJ, Johnson United States Senator." They declared him elected about like they had done with Dewey.

Mrs. Johnson: But the margin by which we were elected began to dwindle. It was about 5,000 to begin with and it began to dwindle.

Narrator: The 33-year-old contender was about to get a lesson in the dark side of politics that he would never forget. In the rough-and-tumble world of Texas elections, stuffing the ballot box was not unusual, especially in South and East Texas and no one understood this more than John Connally, Lyndon Johnson's friend and campaign manager.

John Connally: A lot of those counties had political leaders. Sometimes it was the sheriff, sometimes a county judge. They basically carried the county the way they wanted it to go and this had been historically the case and we had the support of most of those political leaders.

Saturday night about midnight, they call me and say, "We've got the returns. What do you want us to do with them?" I said, "Well, tell me what they are, first, and then report them." The opposition, then -- Governor O'Daniel and his people -- knew exactly how many votes they had to have to take the lead. They kept changing the results and changing the returns and our lead got smaller and smaller and smaller. Finally, Wednesday afternoon, we wound up on the short side of the stick and lost the election by 1,311 votes.

And I'm basically responsible for losing that '41 campaign. We let them know exactly how many votes they had to have. And I did it, no question about it.

Rep. James Pickle: It was a hard pill for Mr. Johnson to swallow because we'd gone out late Saturday to celebrate. I hadn't done that in other campaigns. I always waited till the next day.

Robert Dallek: Lyndon is asked does he want to challenge Pappy's victory because it is a stolen election, but Lyndon knows that his own folks and supporters have done some pretty untoward things as well, including the fact that they violate all campaign finance laws and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. And Johnson says, "No, we can't challenge them." He said, "I'll wait my turn and when my turn comes, I'll fix the ballots next time."

John Connally: And we thought it was the better part of wisdom not to contest it, not indicate that we were guilty of just sour grapes and to go ahead and say, "We'll meet again."