George Berham Parr - Illegally Helped Lyndon Johnson Win U.S. Senate Seat

Illegally Helped Lyndon Johnson Win U.S. Senate Seat

Parr's most infamous act of political corruption was browbeating election officials in nearby Jim Wells County into ensuring the primary victory of Lyndon B. Johnson in the U.S. senatorial election of 1948. The incident went down in Alice, Texas history as "Box 13." This is a reference to the precinct in which the Parr machine created 203 more votes for Johnson, many from allegedly dead Mexican voters.

Johnson received 99.1% of the votes. Before an official investigation was finished, the votes were burned. Johnson's plurality in the 1948 U.S. Senate election was eighty-seven out of a possible one million votes cast.

Read more about this topic:  George Berham Parr

Famous quotes containing the words helped, lyndon, johnson, win, senate and/or seat:

    “I understood, by dint of digging into my memories, that modesty helped me to shine, humility helped me to triumph and virtue to oppress.”
    —Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    “After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved by the littlest things which God in his wisdom had put upon this Earth.”
    —BarrĂ© Lyndon (1896–1972)

    “Would you sell the colors of your sunset and the fragrance
    Of your flowers, and the passionate wonder of your forest
    For a creed that will not let you dance?”
    —Helene Johnson (b. 1907)

    “Alas, we are the victims of advertisement. Those who taste the joys and sorrows of fame when they have passed forty, know how to look after themselves. They know what is concealed beneath the flowers, and what the gossip, the calumnies, and the praise are worth. But as for those who win fame when they are twenty, they know nothing, and are caught up in the whirlpool.”
    —Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)

    “As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past—to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority’s whims and the minority’s rights.”
    —Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    “Time is indeed the theatre and seat of illusion: nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a century and dwarfs an age to an hour.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)