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Caro’s Way - Columbia Journalism Review

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It was the most contested election in the history of Texas. On August 28, 1948, Lyndon B. Johnson, a ruthless young Texas congressman, squared off against former Governor Coke Stevenson in a brutally competitive runoff for the U.S. Senate. In the chaotic days following the election, Stevenson appeared to be victorious. STEVENSON’S MARGIN FIRM, blared The Dallas Morning News five days after the polls closed. But election officials received an amended return from Jim Wells County, a backward region in south Texas, which showed two hundred additional votes for Johnson. Those votes put Johnson ahead of Stevenson, and eventually guaranteed his victory by eighty-seven votes. Pundits would later refer to “the eighty-seven votes that changed history”- votes that came from Precinct 13 in Alice, Texas. The election judge for Precinct 13 was a burly, belligerent pistolero named Luis Salas, a top lieutenant to the “boss of bosses” in Jim Wells County and a political ally of Lyndon Johnson. Salas s

Caro’s Way - Columbia Journalism Review --> b fiftieth anniversary --> b Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter . It was the most contested election in the history of Texas. On August 28, 1948, Lyndon B. Johnson, a ruthless young Texas congressman, squared off against former Governor Coke Stevenson in a brutally competitive runoff for the U.S. Senate. In the chaotic days following the election, Stevenson appeared to be victorious. STEVENSON’S MARGIN FIRM, blared The Dallas Morning News five days after the polls closed. But election officials received an amended return from Jim Wells

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