Friday, Jul. 04, 2008

Ku Klux Klan unstoppable in 1922 Senate election

"Farmer Jim" Ferguson spent July 4, 1922, politicking at patriotic picnics in East Texas, but even the champion campaigner had his work cut out for him if he hoped to beat not one but two Klan-supported candidates in the race for the U.S. Senate.

Revived in Georgia in 1915, the Ku Klux Klan was exported to Texas five years later.

In record time the hooded order became the most powerful force in Lone Star politics. Although membership never exceeded 140,000, a microscopic 3 percent of the state population, the KKK could count on thousands of Texans to follow its lead come Election Day.

Encouraged by the failing health of five-term incumbent Charles Culberson, five different challengers filed for the 1922 Democratic Senate primary.

Leading the list were James E. Ferguson, the impeached former governor who still packed a political punch in the countryside, and two reputed Klansmen: ex-congressman R.L. Henry and railroad commissioner Earle B. Mayfield. While Henry proudly boasted of his KKK affiliation, Mayfield played it close to the vest and stayed shrewdly silent on the subject.

The opening primary featured a strong first-place showing by Mayfield, who drew 30 percent of the vote, with Ferguson making the runoff by edging the incumbent Culberson for second. Gov. Pat Neff condemned both as unfit for the high office, but most prominent Democrats such as Sen. Morris Sheppard chose Mayfield, a prohibitionist, as the lesser of two evils over Farmer Jim, an unabashed "wet."

Unusually nasty name-calling produced a heavy turnout for the next round of balloting on the last Saturday in August 1922. In contrast to brother Klansmen that went down to defeat in three other contests, Mayfield rode an anti-Ferguson backlash to a surprising 50,000-vote victory.

The nomination of the closet Klansman stunned Democratic Party regulars, especially liberals who had failed to take the Mayfield movement seriously. With seven short weeks until the general election in November, disaffected Democrats gathered in Dallas to select their own candidate.

The day before the meeting, Republicans endorsed sight unseen the impending choice of the so-called "Independent Democrats." Still an ineffective minority a half century after Reconstruction, the GOP was ready to rally around a rebel Democrat so long as he was "a clean honorable man who is opposed to the Ku Klux Klan."

Naturally no Democratic office-holder in his right mind was willing to risk his career by going against the party’s official nominee.

The dubious honor fell to George E.B. Peddy, a pugnacious prosecutor from Houston who had celebrated his 30th birthday just in time to qualify for the uphill crusade.

In spite of his youth, Peddy was a well-known public figure. As an undergraduate at the University of Texas, he was elected to the state legislature in 1916.

The next year he guided the successful fight against then-governor Jim Ferguson’s veto of the appropriations bill for his alma mater.

Due to his late start, lack of organization and shortage of campaign funds, Peddy’s chances were slim at best. When he was barred from the ballot, any hope of a miracle upset went up in smoke.

Backed by the bloc vote of the Klan and loyal Democrats, who could not bring themselves to break with the party of their forefathers, Mayfield had a lock on the election. He won, of course, but not by the expected landslide as Peddy received an amazing 130,000 write-in votes.

The battle was not yet over, however. In an unorthodox move that some applauded and others scorned as sour grapes, the loser went over the winner’s head directly to the United States Senate. Peddy requested a full investigation of the election on the grounds that Mayfield conspired to have his name stricken from the ballot, missed miscellaneous filing deadlines, violated campaign spending limits and was in cahoots with the Ku Klux Klan.

The complicated complaint delayed the seating of Mayfield for two years, and during that time Texas had to get by with a single Senator.

Earle Mayfield had one term in Washington and not a full term at that. When he sought reelection to the Senate in 1928, the Klan was in shambles. Public opinion had turned against the masked menace reducing its once formidable ranks to a hard core of no more than 2,500.

Congressman Tom Connally soundly defeated Mayfield for the nomination and remained in the U.S. Senate until his retirement in 1953.

In his political swan song two years later, Mayfield finished an embarrassing seventh in a gubernatorial pack of 11. Having learned his lesson, he quietly withdrew to private life in Tyler, where he died in 1964.

George Peddy fared no better. Waiting 26 years to enter this second and last statewide race, he was the odd man out who forced the 1948 Senate primary into overtime.

— Bartee Haile welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions at haile@pdq.net or P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77549. And don’t forget to visit www.twith.com!