From Jefferson to El Paso, from Beaumont to Dalhart, the Tom Merriman jingles dominated the air waves on radio and television. For those readers who are not fortunate enough to live in the Lone Star State that is the author’s clever way of telling folks that Gordon’s media buys criss-crossed the entire state. The jingle lyrics said “The move is to McLendon and McLendon’s on the move!”

This was in the early 1960s, and our leader had decided to stick his toe in the political pool to test the waters in his run, not for City or County Commissioner, but for a biggie. He was running for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate! Mercy!

Those of us who worked closely with him on a day to day basis in the Home Office were stunned. We were strangers to politics but accepted his decision and went to work on his behalf. My counterpart, Mitch Lewis, who was Vice President for Advertising and Public Relations, was assigned to the campaign full time. I wish that Mitch were still around to flesh out this chapter.

Some may wonder why this man who had every creature comfort would want to leap off into an arena where compromise was the order of the day. I think the answer was ego, plain and simple. By this time in the early 60s, his track record as a radio broadcaster was the stuff legends are made of. Top 40 in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Shreveport were old hat. KABL with it’s beautiful music format in San Francisco was doing well while XTRA (over Los Angeles) was still serving as the prototype for future all-news stations. I think his fertile brain was becoming stultified, and he longed for a new and exciting challenge.

I don’t know what authors influenced Gordon in his earlier years, but I do know that they contributed mightily to his vocabulary. His favorite author of this particular era was Ayn Rand who wrote Fountainhead and such mind benders as Atlas Shrugged. On the flyleaf of Fountainhead the author makes the statement (and I have pondered it for years) that “The ego is the fountainhead of all human progress”. Aside from Ms.Rand being an atheist I felt, as did Gordon, that her philosophy of Objectivism had a lot of merit. She was a champion of conservatism, particularly in the business sector, and Gordon found that especially toothsome. He was a laissez-faire capitalist if there ever was one and a vocal supporter of the free enterprise system. I think this philosophy was the keystone of his political approach particularly so when you consider his opponent, the incumbent liberal Senator Ralph Yarborough!

Now if you are a candidate, and you own the Number One stations in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio it stands to reason that you would use these stations (at no charge, of course) to broadcast your own radio spots. This, Gordon did. Lord, you could hardly listen to our stations without hearing a McLendon political spot which seemed to be heard every 15 minutes or so. And this kind of broadcast saturation went on for weeks. In addition to the radio spots, Gordon and Mitch also bought air time on a number of television stations across the state. Together, they had written and produced the TV spots at local Dallas studios or at the ranch, Cielo. It wasn’t long before the entire Lone Star State knew of his candidacy, and a ground swell of support began to grow. To the best of my memory, I believe he hired some professionals to organize statistical areas such as Precincts to bring the campaign down to a one-on-one level.

Some might find it surprising that Gordon was a Democrat. But upon closer inspection he would reveal himself to be more of a Southern Democrat or even a Jeffersonian Democrat. As you might surmise, his political views were extremely conservative and in direct contrast to those of Senator Yarborough. A serious student of politics would enjoy thumbing through the McLendon archives at the School of Mass Communications at Texas Tech to hear and see the radio and TV spots directed against Yarborough. Space does not permit me to go into these in any depth in this column. Yarborough’s self-dubbed moniker was “Smilin’ Ralph”. And sure enough, in the print media he always wore a toothy smile which Gordon made fun of. I think we all like smiling faces, but this smile seemed so false, so phony, so “political” if you will…

So things were rocking along quite well for this political newcomer. He was campaigning all over the state via an exhausting schedule. Then came the Bomb!

Ralph Yarborough’s people approached the McLendon Stations and requested equal time and after a bit of wrangling among lawyers, sure enough the Senator was granted equal time at no cost to him. And did he unload a spot schedule on our stations! For sure, the shoe was now on the other foot with Yarborough spots every 15 minutes. As I recall, this was about 4 weeks before the election. I cannot, to this day, understand why Gordon allowed this situation to exist. Surely he was aware of such things as the Fairness Doctrine, etc. All licensees know that while they may own a pile of hardware, they do not own the airwaves. The airwaves are owned by the public and governed by the FCC. Licensees are simply the caretakers of the airwaves with the FCC’s permission. And part of that permission is abiding by the Commission’s rules.

No one will ever know if Yarbrough’s last minute advertising saturation turned the trick or not, but sure enough, he did win the contest, and Gordon was left to pick up the pieces and pay his bills. However, he did take some comfort in the fact that he had amassed more votes than any other political newcomer in the history of Texas politics.

After he returned to the office and got back into the usual routine of things, he and I had lunch one day, and with his typical self-deprecating humor he told me this story that I have remembered over the years. He said that somewhere up in the Texas panhandle there was a county in which he received absolutely no votes. He said that one day he was going to visit that county seat. He said he would find that coffee shop where all the good ol’boys hung out every morning. He said he would sit there and drink coffee and inevitably, some guy would approach him and say, “Hey Mister, aren’t you Gordon McLendon?” Gordon would say, “Yes, I am!” Whereupon the man would then say, “I thought so. I voted for you in the election!” And then Gordon said to me, “At that point I’d stand up and hit him smack in the mouth!”