24. The legacy of George Parr and Landslide Lyndon
George Parr was the kingpin of a political machine which dominated Duval County, Texas, and a large part of neighboring Jim Wells County, in the early to mid-20th century. In 1932 he was convicted of income tax evasion. After serving less than a year in prison, he waited over a decade before soliciting a presidential pardon from Harry Truman. To overcome opposition, he enlisted the help of young Texas congressman Lyndon Johnson. Johnson in turn sought the assistance of prominent Dallas lawyer Tom Clark when the latter became Truman’s Attorney General in 1945. Parr was pardoned in 1946.
When Johnson ran in a Democratic senate primary election in 1948, a runoff with fellow Democrat Coke Stevenson, the initial returns showed the latter had won. Johnson had previously asked Parr and others of his cohorts to delay the returns from Duval and Jim Wells until it was known how many votes would be needed to overcome Stevenson’s lead. When the returns from Parr’s machine did come in, they were just sufficient to give Johnson the edge. Luis Salas, an election judge in Jim Wells County later admitted (1977) that under Parr’s direction he had personally created 202 fraudulent ballots to give Johnson the victory, which led to LBJ eventually becoming President of the United States, forever known as “landslide Lyndon“.
