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Electorate 2, Atkinson 0
By Jim Atkinson |

I want to state here and now that we pundits got blitzed November 5. I don’t care what you say, the John Whittington’s are not supposed to be elected county judge and the Alan Steelman’s are not supposed to be re-upped in a Democratic district in a Democratic year. If the voters were going to do something like that the least they could have done was tell us.



I visited the other day with Phil Nicolaides, the one-man political think-tank who helped engineer the Whittington victory, and he claims that as early as August, the voters were telling us what they were going to do. As evidence he produced a several page document with “Confidential” stamped all over it in 14 different places. It’s all in here, said Phil.



It is a private poll, commissioned by the Whittington folks back in August, to measure the vulnerability of Ster-rett. Phil is right; it’s all in here. The first couple of items show it. Sterrett held a whopping 71 per cent name identification with voters, Whittington a measly 16 per cent. But in the “candidate preference” column, Sterrett-even in August – registered only 44 per cent or so, to a surprisingly high 30 or so per cent for Whittington. Verdict: A lot of folks who knew Sterrett weren’t going to vote for him for various and sundry reasons. Verdict: A lot of people who didn’t know Whittington intended to vote for him because they didn’t want to vote for Sterrett. It’s a whole new Conventional Wisdom. To heck with “the issues” and “the climate” and all that. The private poll can give you a solid reading three months prior to election day. (It’s hardly fair. Phil and I had a bet prior to the election. I depended on my wits, and lost. Phil depended on his poll, and won. Now I owe him a bottle of Scotch.)

Elsewhere, the poll showed Ster-rett’s soft spots to be age, eccentric conservatism and over-extending his welcome in office. Main point me and a lot of other pundits missed: The fact that the bail bond scandal was not tied to Sterrett in a direct way did not matter; it was sort of residual dissatisfaction with Sterrett that did him in. When you see an unknown Republican like Whittington running 27 per cent in the black community in a whitewash Democratic year, something clearly is up.

So John Whittington wins by a landslide. No question about it. Coun-tywide and all that. But I can’t help thinking of the ending of the film, The Candidate, where a surprisingly successful young candidate, Robert Red-ford, turns to his campaign manager on victorious election night and says with a chuckle, “What do we do now?”

Several of my more astute Republican armchair analysts have some suggestions. Number one, hire a tough, savvy administrative assistant to keep the Democratic vultures off Whittington’s back.

Number two, locate a soft spot in that three-man Democratic coalition on the court. The current target is newly-elected Commissioner David Pickett, a young conservative who received Sterrett’s blessing when the little judge got fed up with Mel Price. Pickett is said to be at least talking. Number two target is Jim Tyson, who even under Sterrett tended to leave the fold now and then.

Number three, find an issue -any issue – to prove to the folks that he’s “arrived” at the courthouse and means business. Leading the list at this point is the elimination of Sheriff Clarence Jones. Jones is vulnerable and, without a doubt, expendable. Whittington could make some points if he forced Jones to resign and appointed his own sheriff. (See page 90.)

A new problem which has cropped up since the election is Whittington’s sole Republican cohort, newly-elected Commissioner Jim Jackson. Jackson’s loyalty to Whittington is crucial. It’s also, at this point, a bit uncertain. He’s been throwing around rhetoric like, “I want to be my own man” and reportedly is already being worked over by Democratic Commissioner Roy Orr and company.

One thing is certain. Whittington’s first term will be no picnic. Winner or not, he has never shown himself to be particularly tough-minded. That courthouse is a nest of vipers, and it’s still solidly and tenaciously Democratic. The Don is dead, but the family lives on. There are still a lot of Republicans who feel the party blew its Golden Opportunity to make real inroads at the courthouse by not running a GOP slate, some part of which might have ridden in on Whittington’s coattails and provided him with some kind of power base. As it is, he is an orphan in the wilderness, and he can only hope the GOP can lend him a hand in some of the 1976 commissioners’ and judges’ races.



There is much less to say about the Steelman reelection. I’m hearing a lot of bold and brazen talk from Republicans about how the predominantly Democratic 5th District is now “ours.” It’s true that Steelman did win against all odds -mainly, a shock wave of anti-Republicanism nationwide and the cruel districting scalpel of Dan Weiser and the court. But if you look at the turnout (50,000) and Steelman’s margin of victory (2,000 or so), it is hard to see much basis for optimism.

It was, in numbers, not an impressive win. McKool, of course, carried “his” blocs -black and union votes -easily, though the turnout in each was poor. The two split the bulk of the district, the blue collar and middle to lower-middle income white sects in Mesquite, Garland and East Dallas. Steelman, in turn, carried “his” few Republican to semi-Republican precincts and managed to drum impressively high turnouts. That produced his small margin of victory. A credit to the Steelman organization, to be sure, but nothing indicative of the much-touted conversion of conservative Democrats in the 5th to Republicanism.

All of which means the district is no more his today than it was the day he was elected in 1972. Even as a two-term incumbent in 1976, he will be vulnerable. In fact, there is already talk of possible Democratic challengers in ’76, primarily State Rep. Jim Mattox, a maverick liberal whose district covers old East Dallas and part of South Dallas, and Democratic operative Buzz Crutcher, a former Lloyd Bentsen campaign strategist and a current John Schoellkopf confidant.

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