WHAT DO YOU KNOW...about Governor"Pappy" 0'Daniel?

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WHAT DO YOU KOW about Governor “Pappy” O’Daniel? Wilbert Lee O’Daniel (1890-1969) was a businessman, politician, musician and showman. As a boy in Kansas he lived with his mother and step-father after the death of his biological father. He completed a two year business college (1908) and went to work for a flour mill (later owned his own mill). With his wife and three children, he left Kansas moving to New Orleans and then to Ft. Worth.________ In Texas (1925) he wrote songs and discussed religion on his popular radio show called The Light Crust Boys. His western swing band was named The Hillbilly Boys. Mixing music, flour and the bible, this rather attractive man acquired a huge rural audience encouraging him to run for governor in the one party state of Texas (Democrat in 1939). He had promised no capital punishment, no sales tax, no poll tax and a raise in old age pensions. On all this, he reneged.________ As governor he vetoed a record 57 bills, he likely didn’t understand. Twelve vetoes were overridden. Before his term was over he had attacked organized labor, packed the Texas University’s Board of Regents that fired U.T. President Homer Rainey and received a censure from the American Association of University Professors.________ Despite the Vaudevillian atmosphere, W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel was reelected in 1941. Office holders were allowed to run in special elections without first resigning. In a large field that included young congressman Lyndon Johnson, he pretended to support popular President Franklin Roosevelt and won the vacated U.S. Senate seat. His squeaky win was enabled by rural and elderly voters and political bosses who knew exactly how many votes it would take. It was believed that he would be less harmful for Texas in the United States Senate than leaving him as Texas governor. “You never found anyone who had voted for Pappy but he always won.”(*)________ The new senator from Texas worked against President Roosevelt’s run for his 4th term, embarrassing the Texas Democratic Party and dropping Senator Pappy O’Daniel’s approval ranking to 7 percent. Claiming a conspiracy of politically controlled newspapers and Communist labor leaders, he withdrew from launching another campaign and returned to ranching and real estate in Texas._________ Failing two gubernatorial primary comeback attempts, he died in 1969. Recognition of his music and Hillbilly Band gave him a posthumous induction into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2015. (*) a quote in a Texas Monthly article: Texas History 101, Feb 2006, plus references from other sources. Carole Sikes 2/2021

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