John Connally

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61^st United States Secretary of Treasury
John Bowden Connally, Jr.

In office February 11, 1971 – June 12, 1972
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	David M. Kennedy
Succeeded by	George Schultz
39th Governor of Texas
In office January 15, 1963 – January 21, 1969
Lieutenant	Preston Smith
Preceded by	Price Daniel
Succeeded by	Preston Smith
55^th United States Secretary of the Navy 8th Secretary under the DoD
In office January 25, 1961 – December 20, 1961
President	John F. Kennedy
Preceded by	William B. Franke
Succeeded by	Fred Korth

Born	February 27, 1917(1917-02-27) Floresville, Texas
Died	June 15, 1993 (aged 76) Houston, Texas
Political party	Democratic turned Republican
Spouse	Idanell Brill "Nellie" Connally (1919-2006)
Children	Kathleen (deceased as teenager), John B., III, Sharon, and Mark Connally

John Bowden Connally, Jr. (February 27, 1917 – June 15, 1993), was a powerful American politician, serving as Governor of Texas, and Secretary of the Navy and Treasury under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, respectively. While Governor, Connally was a passenger in the car in which President Kennedy was assassinated, and was wounded in the shooting.

1 Early years, education, military
2 The Senate primary of 1948
3 From Navy Secretary to Governor
4 Secretary of the Navy
5 Running for governor
6 Secretary of the Treasury
7 Switching parties
8 Running for President
9 The later years
10 Soap opera buff
11 See also
12 External links

[edit] Early years, education, military

Connally was born into a large family in Floresville, the seat of Wilson County located southeast of San Antonio. He was among the few Floresville High School graduates who was able to attend college. He thereafter graduated from The University of Texas School of Law where he was student body president. He had actually been admitted to the bar by examination before he completed his law degree.

He served in the United States Navy during World War II, first as an aide to James V. Forrestal, then as part of the planning staff for the invasion of Africa by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He then transferred to the South Pacific Theater, where he served with distinction. He was a fighter-plane director aboard the aircraft carrier USS Essex and won a Bronze Star for bravery. He was thereafter shifted to another carrier, the USS Bennington, and won a Legion of Merit. He was also involved in the campaigns in the Gilbert, Marshall, Ryukyu, and Philippine islands. He was discharged in 1946 at the rank of lieutenant commander.^[1]

On his release from the Navy, Connally practiced law and return to serve as a key aide to Lyndon Baines Johnson, when LBJ was a still a congressman, He maintained close ties with Johnson until the former president's death in 1973, when shortly thereafter Connally switched parties.

One of Connally's principal clients was the Texas oil tycoon Sid W. Richardson and his nephew partner Perry Bass, both of Fort Worth. Richardson, on his death in 1959, left Connally as the co-executor of the estate. The designation provided Connally with steady income for years afterwards. Even in the 1950s, Richardson was believed to have been worth from $200 million to $1 billion.^[2]

[edit] The Senate primary of 1948

In the 1948 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the retiring W. Lee O'Daniel, Connally was the LBJ campaign manager, as the congressman opposed former Governor Coke R. Stevenson of Junction, the seat of Mason County in central Texas. During the tabulation period, Connally journeyed to Alice, the seat of Jim Wells County in south Texas, and through "political boss" George Parr procured a revision of the totals from Precinct 13. Some 203 names were added to the LBJ tabulation, all signed in blue ink and in the same handwriting. Some of the names were of deceased persons. The list was thereafter burned in a fire. This change in tabulation plunged Johnson into an 87-vote primary runoff majority.^[3]

Connally then persuaded the Temple publisher Frank W. Mayborn to return to Texas from a business trip in Nashville, Tennessee, to cast the decisive vote in the 29-28 decision by the Democratic State Central Committee to certify Johnson as the party nominee by the disputed eighty-seven votes. United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black had deemed that the decision in the Johnson-Stevenson race rested squarely with the central committee.^[4]

[edit] From Navy Secretary to Governor

Portrait of Governor Connally

At the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, Connally led the weakened forces which rallied behind Senator Lyndon Johnson. He claimed that John F. Kennedy, if nominated and elected, would be unable to serve as president for a full term because of Addison's disease and dependence on cortisone. Kennedy, however, had wrapped up the needed delegates for nomination before the convention even opened. Johnson went on to seek the vice presidency on Kennedy's ticket.^[5]

[edit] Secretary of the Navy

In 1961, President Kennedy named Connally, at Johnson's request, as Secretary of the Navy. Connally resigned eleven months later to run for the Texas governorship. At the time, the Navy was one of the largest employers in the world, with more than 600,000 in uniform and 650,000 civilian workers, stationed at 222 bases in the United States and 53 abroad. It had a budget of $14 billion.^[6]

Connally directed the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea on a new kind of "gunboat diplomacy". The USS Forrestal landed in Naples, Italy, and brought gifts to children in an orphanage. Connally ordered gifts also to a hospital in Cannes, France, which treated children with bone diseases, to poor Greek children on the island of Rhodes, and for spastic children in Palermo, Italy. Presents were also sent to Turkish children in Cyrprus and to a camp in Beirut for homeless Arab refugees.^[7]

In the fall of 1961, Connally was cut near his left eye when a midshipman at the University of Texas in Austin thrust his rifle toward the secretary because he thought that Connally had asked to see the weapon. Connally had merely asked the young man his name. The accident required several stitches.^[8]

Connally fought hard to protect the Navy's role in the national space program, having vigorously opposed assigning most space research to the United States Air Force. Time magazine termed Connally's year as Navy secretary "a first-rate appointment". Critics noted, however, that the brevity of Connally's tenure precluded any sustained or comprehensive achievements.^[9]

[edit] Running for governor

Connally announced two weeks before Christmas of 1961 that he was leaving as Navy Secretary to return to Texas to seek the 1962 Democratic gubernatorial nomination even though the incumbent Marion Price Daniel, Sr., was running for a fourth consecutive two-year term. Daniel was in political trouble following the enactment of a two-cent state sales tax in 1961, which had soured many voters on his administration.

Connally ran as a conservative Democrat, having first defeated liberal Don Yarborough of Houston in the primary, and then, in November, having turned back a rare but determined bid by the conservative Republican Jack Cox, also of Houston. Cox had run two years earlier in the Democratic primary against Daniel. Connally received 847,036 ballots (54 percent) to Cox's 715,025 (45.6 percent). In the campaign, Connally questioned how voters could trust Cox because he had switched parties, an action Connally himself would take eleven years later.

Connally served as governor from 1963-1969. In the campaigns of 1964 and 1966, he defeated weak Republican challenges offered by Jack Crichton and T.E. Kennerly and prevailed with margins of 73.8 percent and 72.8 percent, respectively.^[10]

Connally was seriously wounded while riding in President Kennedy's car in Dallas. He was injured five times when a bullet entered through his chest and exited below the right nipple, then having entered the right wrist, having shattered the radius bone, and upon exiting having embedded itself in Connally's left thigh. Connally was hit by the second bullet, which was 4.9 seconds before the fatal head shot to Kennedy.

During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged Johnson to "finish" the engagement by any military means necessary. Johnson, however, was more moderate in his fighting of the war than Connally had advised him.

[edit] Secretary of the Treasury

In 1971, Republican President Nixon appointed the then Democrat Connally as Treasury Secretary. Connally that year famously told a delegation of Europeans worried about exchange rate fluctuations that the dollar is "our currency, but your problem." [1]

Secretary Connally defended a $50 billon increase in the debt ceiling and a $35 to $40 billion budget deficit as an essential "fiscal stimulus" at a time that five million Americans were unemployed. He unveiled announced Nixon's program of raising the price of gold and formally devaluing the dollar -- finally leaving the old gold standard. Prices continued to increase during 1971, and Nixon let wage and price guidelines, which Congress had authorized on a stand-by basis, to be implemented. Connally later shied away from his role in recommending the failed wage and price controls. Connally announced guaranteed loans for the ailing Lockheed aircraft company. He fought a lonely battle too against growing balance-of-payment problems with the nation's trading partners, a situation that grew much more pronounced in the coming decades. H also undertook important foreign diplomatic trips for Nixon through his role as Treasury Secretary.^[11]

Connally stepped down as treasury secretary in 1972 to head "Democrats for Nixon", a group funded by Republicans. Connally's old mentor, Lyndon Johnson, stood loyally behind Democratic presidential nominee George S. McGovern of South Dakota though McGovern had long opposed Johnson's foreign and defense policies. It was the first time that Connally and Johnson were on opposite sides of a general election campaign, though some evidence suggests that Connally was "privately" for Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, instead of the Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois.

In the 1972 U.S. Senate election in Texas, Connally pointedly endorsed the Democrat Harold Barefoot Sanders of Dallas, rather than the Republican incumbent John G. Tower, also of Dallas, whom Connally had considered opposing in 1966, when he instead ran for a third term as governor. Tower, Nixon's choice in the Senate race, won handily over Sanders, but the Republican candidate for governor, Henry Grover of Houston, a victim of intraparty maneuvering, fell short and lost to Democrat Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde in the southern portion of the Texas Hill Country.

Connally's signature, as used on American currency

In January 1973, Lyndon Johnson died of heart disease. He and Connally had been friends since 1938, and Connally took part in eulogizing Johnson during interment services at the LBJ Ranch in Gillespie County, along with the minister who officiated, Billy Graham.

[edit] Switching parties

In May 1973, he joined the Republican Party. When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned that same year, Connally was one of Nixon's possible choices for vice president. However, Nixon ultimately chose Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., the House Minority Leader from Michigan, presumably because he knew that the moderate Ford could be easily confirmed by both houses of Congress whereas Connally would run into liberal Democratic opposition, and the weakened Nixon did not want a fight for the vice-presidential selection.

In 1975, he was accused of pocketing $10,000 for influencing a milk price decision by Texas lawyer Jake Jacobsen. At his trial, he called, as character witnesses, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Barbara Jordan, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, and Billy Graham. Connally was acquitted.

[edit] Running for President

Connally announced in January 1979 that he would seek the Republican nomination for President in 1980. He was considered a great orator and strong leader and was featured on the cover of Time magazine with the heading "Hot on the Trail," but his wheeler dealer image remained a liability. He raised more money than any other candidate, but he was never able to overtake the popular conservative front runner Ronald Reagan. Connally spent his money nationally, while the first George Bush targeted his time and money in early states and won the Iowa caucus, making him the principal alternative to Reagan.

Connally eventually focused on South Carolina, an early primary state where he had the support of popular U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, but he lost there to Reagan 55 to 30 percent (15 percent for Bush) and withdrew from the race. After spending $11 million during the campaign, Connally secured the support of a single delegate, the late Mrs. Ada Mills of Arkansas, who became known as the "$11 million delegate." Connally quickly endorsed Reagan and helped him to win only a narrow primary victory over Bush in Bush's adopted home state of Texas.

It was no secret that Connally and Bush despised each other. Connally said as much in a 1988 60 Minutes interview on CBS. Years earlier, however, Ralph Yarborough supporters had questioned whether Connally, like many of his friends in the oil industry, had indeed voted for Yarborough's general election opponent in 1964, George H.W. Bush.

[edit] The later years

In 1986, Connally filed for bankruptcy as a result of a string of business losses in Houston.[2] In December 1990, Connally and Oscar Wyatt, chairman of the Coastal Oil Corporation, met with President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Hussein had been holding foreigners as hostages (or "guests" as Hussein called them) at strategic military sites in Iraq. After the meeting Hussein agreed to let the hostages go, and they were released.

Connally was known as an immaculate dresser who wore expensive and stylish suits wherever he went. Like Ulysses S. Grant, he was said to cater to very wealthy men. Biographer Charles Ashman relates a story about Connally carrying a cigarette lighter in his pocket and lighting cigarettes as a courtesy only for very wealthy men who might be inclined to contribute to his political causes or retain him as a consultant on lucrative business arrangements.

In one of his last political acts, Connally endorsed then Republican U.S. Representative Jack Fields of Houston in the special election called in May 1993 to fill the vacancy left by U.S. Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen, who left his seat to take the position of Treasury Secretary in the new administration of Bill Clinton. Fields finished fourth in the special election and left Congress thereafter. Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison won the seat, which was once held by Bentsen's and Connally's old intraparty rival, Ralph W. Yarborough of Austin. Connally's daughter had worked for Hutchison while Hutchison was State Treasurer and had left the position amid controversy.

Connally died of pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs which makes breathing difficult and then potentially impossible. John and "Nellie" Connally are interred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.

[edit] Soap opera buff

Connally and his wife, whom he met at UT and married in 1940, admitted to being soap opera addicts. In a Time magazine article, January 12, 1976, the two were quoted as saying that they would not allow anything to interrupt them during their favorite "story", CBS's Love of Life. The couple were also fans of CBS's As the World Turns.^[12]

[edit] See also

List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines

[edit] External links

The Handbook of Texas Online
Historical TV Footage from Dallas TV Station KDFW Exclusive television coverage -- most from the KRLD -TV/KDFW Collection at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse: Nellie Connally (TV Interview with Nellie Connally)
John Connally at Find A Grave Retrieved on 2008-02-07
Photos of John Connally, hosted by the Portal to Texas History

Kelley Shannon, Associated Press, "Connally Dies at 87," September 3, 2006.

Charles Ashman, Connally: The Adventures of Big Bad John, New York: William Morrow Company, 1974.

Preceded by William B. Franke	United States Secretary of the Navy 1961	Succeeded by Fred Korth
Preceded by Price Daniel	Governor of Texas 1963–1969	Succeeded by Preston Smith
Preceded by David M. Kennedy	United States Secretary of the Treasury 1971–1972	Succeeded by George P. Shultz

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