![]() ![]() But a third candidate, George Petty, siphoned off enough votes to deny Stevenson a majority, forcing a runoff between Stevenson and Johnson, set for Aug. The vote in the July primary was Stevenson 477,077, Johnson 405,617. Stevenson - 60 years old, three times Texas governor, never beaten and the candidate of the “old” wing of the party. Johnson, then 39, a congressman, represented “new” Democrats in his bid for the U.S. The final statewide count, including Box 13 votes, gave Johnson an 87-vote margin in a total tally approaching 1 million and earned him the tongue-in-cheek nickname: “Landslide Lyndon.” Salas said he saw the fraudulent votes added in alphabetical order and then certified them as authentic on orders from Parr. ![]() He told the AP that Parr ordered that 200-odd votes be added to Johnson’s total from Box 13. “I was just going along with my party,” he says. Salas says now that he lied during an aborted investigation of the election in 1948, when he testified that the vote count was proper and above board. In his soft Spanish accent, Salas said that he decided to break his silence in quest of “peace of mind and to reveal to the people the corruption of politics.” Only recently did Salas agree to tell his full version of what happened. ![]() The Associated Press interviewed Salas frequently during the past three years, seeking answers to questions that, save for rumors, were left unanswered. Johnson’s widow, Lady Bird, was informed of Salas’ statements and said through a spokeswoman that she “knows no more about the details of the 1948 election other than that charges were made at the time, carried through several courts and finally to a justice at the Supreme Court.” Salas, retired from his railroad telegrapher’s job, is among the few living persons with direct knowledge of the election. Parr, the South Texas political boss whom Salas served for a decade, shot himself to death in June 1975. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black abruptly halted an investigation, but the principals have been silent. The controversy over that runoff election has been a subject of tantalizing conjecture for nearly three decades, ever since U.S. And I know exactly how it was done,” said Salas, now a lean, white-haired 76 then a swarthy 210-pound political henchman with absolute say over vote counts in his Mexican-American, South Texas, precinct. ![]() “Johnson did not win the election It was stolen for him. ![]()
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