DALLAS (AP) — The tale used to be a blockbuster: A former Texas balloting legitimate used to be at the file detailing how just about 3 a long time previous, votes have been falsified to offer then-congressman Lyndon B. Johnson a win that propelled the longer term president into the U.S. Senate.
The audio recordings from Related Press reporter James W. Mangan’s interviews for the 1977 tale have been posted this week at the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum’s archival web page, Uncover LBJ. After Mangan’s dying in 2015 on the age of 87, his circle of relatives discovered the classified cassette tapes at his San Antonio house and donated them ultimate summer time to the library at the campus of the College at Texas at Austin.
Luis Salas, the previous South Texas election pass judgement on, instructed Mangan for the tale: “Johnson didn’t win that election; It used to be stolen for him. And I do know precisely the way it used to be achieved.”
The tale, which made entrance pages around the nation, pulled again the curtain at the razor-thin victory that had drawn suspicions ever since election officers in rural Jim Wells County introduced the invention of uncounted votes in a poll field referred to as Field 13 within the days after the 1948 Democratic number one Senate runoff. And now, at a time when election fraud is unusual however former President Donald Trump and his allies enlarge baseless allegations blaming it for his 2020 loss, the tapes and tale display what compelling proof of exact fraud looks as if.
Mangan’s son, Peter, stated listening the tapes used to be like getting “a bit of window into historical past.”
On one cassette, he stated, it appears like his father is in his automotive, reciting what he’d simply been instructed.
“You’ll be able to listen automobiles going through and he’s more or less, you’ll inform he’s a bit of excited, as a result of I believe he in any case were given the products,” Peter Mangan stated.
Mark Lawrence, the library’s director, stated the recordings are “deeply attached to probably the most giant mysteries and controversies that’s hung round LBJ for many years.” In a 1984 oral historical past that Salas gave to the library, he stated probably the most causes he in any case made up our minds to speak used to be as a result of he have been moderately in poor health.
Mangan stated in a 2008 AP tale that as he labored to persuade Salas to head at the file, he instructed him: “In the event you die, historical past won’t ever know what took place.”
Lawrence stated a lot is referred to now about Field 13, because of each Mangan’s 1977 tale and analysis achieved later through LBJ biographer Robert Caro, who “necessarily reaffirmed” Mangan’s tale and constructed on it.
“The sorts of irregularities we will be able to see have been at paintings within the 1948 Senate race in Texas have been, I believe it’s truthful to mention, lovely common throughout American historical past and all areas of the rustic to 1 extent or every other however definitely within the South and alongside the Mexican borderlands, as not too long ago because the Nineteen Forties,” Lawrence stated.
Salas instructed Mangan that the robust South Texas political boss George B. Parr — who wielded regulate with favors and coercion — ordered that some 200 votes be added to Field 13. Salas stated he then watched because the fraudulent votes have been added in alphabetical order, with the names coming from individuals who hadn’t voted within the election.
The brand new votes gave Johnson the main victory over then-Gov. Coke Stevenson through an 87-vote margin. Johnson — due to this fact bestowed with the nickname “Landslide Lyndon” — went on to simply defeat the Republican within the normal election, lengthy earlier than the GOP was the dominant drive in Texas politics.
Johnson, elected to the U.S. Space in 1937, had run for U.S. Senate in 1941 and misplaced to then-Gov. Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel in an election extensively permitted through historians to had been corrupt, Lawrence stated.
“The usual tale that will get instructed, and I believe there’s an terrible lot to it, is that after LBJ’s 2d probability comes alongside in 1948, he’s made up our minds to not have the election stolen from him once more,” Lawrence stated.
Lawrence stated the 1948 Senate victory “catapults” Johnson to nationwide consideration. Johnson was then-President John F. Kennedy’s vp and used to be sworn in as president Nov. 22, 1963, after Kennedy used to be assassinated in Dallas. Johnson used to be elected president in 1964. He made up our minds to not run once more in 1968 and died of a center assault in 1973 on the age of 64.
Lawrence stated that whilst the Field 13 incident presentations that “LBJ used to be prepared to do what he needed to do to deal with political energy,” he used to be additionally a person who, “when he had the chance, he used to be extra vulnerable to behave on idea.” Lawrence famous Johnson’s efforts to “be sure that other folks have been ready to vote in truthful and equitable elections.”
In 1965, Johnson signed the Vote casting Rights Act, which outlawed practices designed to disenfranchise Black citizens through banning literary exams and ballot taxes. The act additionally gave the government the authority to take over voter registration in counties with a development of chronic racial discrimination, even if this is not the case after the U.S. Excellent Courtroom struck down the requirement in 2013.
James Mangan retired from AP on Jan. 1, 1989, after a 36-year profession with the corporate that took him to towns around the U.S. and to Europe. With each and every transfer, Peter Mangan stated, his father held directly to the Field 13 tapes.
“He all the time stored those,” he stated, “so I do know they will have to had been vital to him.”