William A. Blakley

Blakley was born in Miami Station, Missouri, but moved shortly thereafter with his parents to Arapaho, Oklahoma. He worked a ranch hand as a young man, earning the nickname "Cowboy Bill." Blakley served with the United States Army in the First World War; he was admitted to the bar in 1933, and joined a law firm in Dallas, Texas. In following years, his interests expanded into real estate, ranch land, banking, and insurance; by 1957, he was estimated to be worth $300 million.

In 1956, Allan Shivers opted not to run for a fourth term as Governor of Texas; Senator Price Daniel, as a sitting U.S. Senator was elected Governor of Texas. Like Shivers and Daniel, Blakley was an "Eisenhower Democrat" who had supported Dwight Eisenhower over the national Democratic Party candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956.

Blakley, who had gained prominence in Texas politics for his business successes was, at the time, building a $125 million shopping center and a 1,000-room hotel in Dallas. Governor Shivers, who had been considering appointing a Republican candidate to the Senate seat, instead named Blakley to the United States Senate pending a special election for the seat.

Pressured by the Democratic Party in the interests of cooling tensions from the gubernatorial election, Blakley did not seek the remaining term as senator. He hence served for fewer than four months from 15 January to 28 April. Ralph Yarborough succeeded him in the special election, winning with a plurality of the vote when the conservatives divided three ways, with Republican Thad Hutcheson of Houston and Democratic U.S. Representative Martin Dies, Jr., collectively holding 53 percent of the vote.

Thereafter, Texas law was changed to require a runoff between the two leading candidates in a special election if no one had a majority in the first round). Blakley left the Senate saying "I shall go back to my boots and saddle and ride toward the Western sunset."[1]

When the seat came up again the following year in the ordinary election cycle, Blakley ran in the primary against Yarborough as the conservative "Shivercrat" candidate. Blakley ran with the backing of Price Daniel, Yarborough's colleague in the Senate, Lyndon Johnson, and the southern bloc of senators who disagreed with Yarborough's progressive, anti-segregation platform. The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Sam Rayburn (a fellow Texan), backed Yarborough in the election though he had supported naming Blakley to the temporary Senate seat in 1957. Rayburn's support proved critical. Blakley was defeated in the primary, and Yarborough kept his Senate seat by a margin of 680,000 to Blakley's 486,000.

In 1961, upon Lyndon Johnson becoming Vice President of the United States, Blakley was appointed to fill Johnson's vacated Senate seat. Contention again appeared between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic Party for the nomination in the special election that would follow; Blakley maintained that he had vigorously resisted John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier" legislation, which was unpopular with Texas conservatives. Ralph Yarborough, consequently, did not endorse Blakley among the array of 71 candidates who ran without party designation.

Blakley ran a weak second with 191,818 (18.1 percent) votes to Republican John Tower's 327,308 (30.9 percent), with the remaining votes divided among five other major Democratic candidates, including future U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright of Fort Worth, with 171,328 (16.2 percent). In the special election runoff, some Texas liberals refused to vote for a Democratic candidate who seemed as conservative as the Republican nominee,[2] and some Texas conservatives viewed Blakley's conservatism as lukewarm. Blakley, at 62, was older than his Republican opponent, John Tower, 35. Tower won the seat in the special election runoff with 448,217 votes (50.6 percent) to Blakley's 437,872 (49.4 percent), a margin of 10,343. Blakley was the first Democratic senator to lose to a Republican in Texas in more than eighty years.

After Blakley's death, it was reported in an interview that Blakley considered Lyndon Johnson to have been "devious and arrogant ... He would say something nice to your face and when you left the room, he would remark, 'that crazy s.o.b. I could talk easier with John F. Kennedy."[3]

Blakley also claimed that former Governor Allan Shivers, a Conservative Democrat, had urged Blakley not to run against Tower because he favored the Republican candidate in the race.[3]

After losing the Senate election, Blakley left politics and returned to his business interests. He died in Dallas and is buried there in Restland Memorial Park, alongside his wife, the former Villa W. Darnell (28 May 1900 – 24 December 1989), a native of Washita County, Oklahoma, who also died in Dallas. The couple had 5 Children.[4]

A library at the University of Dallas is named after him as a result of his and Braniff founder and President Thomas Elmer Braniff's support of the school through endowments from their Blakley Braniff Foundation. Blakley had contributed 100 million USD to the foundation. Prior to 1961, Blakley was the largest single shareholder of Braniff International Airways.[5]

• "New Course in Texas" from Time magazine, June 2, 1961
• "Harmony in Texas" from Time magazine, July 28, 1957
• Handbook of Texas article on the Democratic Party, from University of Texas
• Braniff Flying Colors Historical Page
• United States Congress. "William A. Blakley (id: B000536)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.