The liberal Democrats I knew—the Texas Observer types such as Ronnie Dugger, seemed to prefer Tower because they hated the Tory Democrats, who were of course, pro-business. Back in 1956 I met the GOP senatorial candidate—Thad Hutcheson was his name, I am not sure. He was reallya nice man, a Houston businesman, I think. He was just doing it because someone had to. One thing I remember us Young Republicans: that he had met Richard Nixon, and his wife had commented at the time, that Sh thought until she met Nixon that he (Hutcheson) was the most social awkward politicians she had ever known. No gift at all for small talk. Pat, she liked.
Heh, you’re an old school Texas Republican ! Yeah, you were talking about the 1957 special when Price Daniel stepped down to become Governor (and, of course, Dollar Bill Blakley was also appointed to that interim term, the only man to have served in both seats — but in ‘57, he agreed not to run in the special election).
I was looking it up to refresh my memory, it was really a three-man race between Republican Thad Hutcheson, Tory Dem Congressman Martin Dies, Jr. and liberal Ralph Yarborough. Unfortunately, as you’ll remember, because the libs were largely able to get behind Yarborough, the rest of the Conservative opposition was badly divided, and he won by a 38% plurality to Dies’s 30% and Hutcheson’s 23%. That ‘57 to ‘61 period was the last time TX had two liberal Democrat Senators (Ralph & LBJ).
Re: Nixon, it may have been that he was uncomfortable making small talk with women. I heard he supposedly would chew your ear off about sports if you were a guy. It’s too bad he had the 1960 race stolen from him, I think this country would’ve been drastically different today (for the better) had it not been.