Roundup Time

Texas had enough candidates, issues, mudslinging and free watermelon to stock half a dozen southern Democratic primaries. But the voters who worked the polls in record numbers last week seemed vaguely dissatisfied. The trouble was that the main event, the 14-man fight for the gubernatorial nomination, had produced no first-rate political showman. If there is anything a Texan abhors it is to have his candidates turn out less flamboyant than the issues they hawk.

Apparently resigned by poll time last week, Texas picked cool, careful State Railroad Commissioner Beauford Jester, 53, the top middle-of-the-road candidate, as its No 1 Democratic gubernatorial contender. Lawyer Jester had run a "friendship" campaign, refrained from shouting and stomping. The lesser evil for oil-and-cattle-rich voters, he had breezed through without one appearance with a hillbilly band.

The runner-up was the pre-primary favorite, earnest Dr. Homer Price Rainey, ousted president of the University of Texas.* After a discreet radio campaign that degenerated into fang and claw stumping, 50-year-old Baptist Dr. Rainey had clapped a Stetson on his bald head and begun calling names in the best southwestern tradition. He had done very well for a professor suspected by Texans of having read John Dos Passos' U.S.A. But, even with the silent support of the C.I.O.-P.A.C. and Texas' more than 50,000 voting Negroes, Homer Rainey would have to do a lot better in the Aug. 24 runoff election.

*After many months of thinking it over, the American Association of University Professors decided last week that Texas University should be "censured" for tossing Dr. Rainey out.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.