Safe passage, Mr. Yarborough. (Dem reformer ran for Texas governor three times)

[Heidi]

Yarborough tried to reform Texas Democrats
Donald H. Yarborough, a three-time gubernatorial candidate in the 1960s who led efforts to reform the Texas Democratic Party, died Wednesday of Parkinson's Disease at his Houston home, his daughter Sophie Yarborough DeVise said. He was 83.

Yarborough, whose familiar last name helped the unknown and unrelated Don. B Yarbrough get elected to the Texas Supreme Court in 1976, was a liberal who decried the exclusionary nature of what was then the state's dominant political party.

“He was passionate about those who deserved to have more and be recognized for who they were,” said his wife, Charity. “He just felt like there is a fairness that all of us are entitled to, and it shouldn't be because we were born in a certain time and place. Something about his life made him feel that way.”

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“Winging from town to town in a Cessna, Yarborough assailed Connally as ‘a confessed lobbyist for Eastern oil and gas monopolies, nursed in the smoke-filled room and weaned on the big lie technique,' ” Time wrote. “One such ‘lie,' declared Yarborough, was Connally's press-conference plea at the 1960 Democratic Convention for delegates to vote for Johnson because Jack Kennedy suffered from ‘a death-dealing disease.' Connally, traveling in a train from Texarkana to El Paso, insisted at nearly every stop that Yarborough was the candidate of the Americans for Democratic Action. In Texas, that is about as damaging as calling him a Communist.

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[Ken Burch]

1. A good man who fought what must have been a lonely battle at times.

If Yarborough had been heeded, the Texas Dems might have avoided their great collapse of the 90's(a collapse they STILL haven't recovered from in any significant measure).

[Heidi]

2. Yep, he sounds like he was a credit to both Texas and our party.

Good morning! :hi:

[TexasObserver]

3. Recommend

They went after him viciously, too.