Spring Cleaning in Texas

There are two things a man should never be forced to see: how the meat packers make sausage and how Texas politicians make their daily bread.

That hill-country heehaw is no longer a laughing matter. After a series of messy political scandals, restive Texans turned out last week for the state primary in record numbers and shook the conservative Democratic establishment from top to bottom. When the spring cleaning was over, the discard pile included Governor Preston Smith, Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, 78 state legislators and scores of other veteran local officeholders.

Bright, blue-eyed Ben Barnes, 34, was the most astonishing casualty. Once marked as presidential timber by Lyndon Baines Johnson, and a "golden boy" protege of Treasury Secretary John Connally, Barnes nonetheless was hurt by revelations of high-level wheeling and dealing in the state capital. The most sensational was the implication of Governor Smith and former Texas House Speaker Gus Mutscher, among others, in a stock-fraud case (TIME, Feb. 15, 1971). Barnes was not directly involved, but after subsequent investigations exposed flagrant cases of nepotism (one legislator had five relatives on various payrolls) and misuse of state funds (another bought a pickup truck partly with $1,200 in state-purchased postage stamps), the disenchanted voters were in no mood for quibbling. "They threw the rascals out," moaned Barnes, "and me with them."

That paved the way for Frances ("Sissy") Farenthold, 46, a feisty Corpus Christi lawyer and state legislator, to make her bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Entering the race just three months before the primary, she finished a surprising second and will face Rancher-Banker Dolph Briscoe, 48, in a June 3 runoff. Unlike Briscoe, a conservative Democrat who has not been politically active since an unsuccessful try for Governor in 1968, Sissy has been on the ramparts. During her two terms in the legislature, she was known as "the den mother of the Dirty Thirty," a coalition of reform-minded legislators who fought against the heavyhanded leadership of Speaker Mutscher. At first glance her candidacy seems hardly promising: a liberal in conservative country, a Catholic in the Baptist heartland--and an advocate of busing, liberalized abortion and marijuana laws, a state tax on corporate profits, elimination of the Texas Rangers and greater representation for blacks and Chicanos.

Given the climate for change, however, few political observers are ready to write off the chances of a candidate like sassy Sissy. "The mood for real political reform in Texas is as strong as it has ever been," admits one veteran Democratic leader, "and where it will all end is not yet clear."

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