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DON YARBOROUGH |
Don Yarborough, JFK supporter, threat
WASHINGTON - Don Yarborough, a three-time gubernatorial candidate in Texas during the 1960s whose challenge to incumbent Governor John Connally was one reason President Kennedy decided to make a swing through Texas in November 1963, died Tuesday at his home in Houston of complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 83.
Along with the better-known Ralph Yarborough, a political ally but no relation, Mr. Yarborough represented the liberal wing of the state’s Democratic Party. Making his first run for governor in 1962, he campaigned as an all-out supporter of Kennedy and his New Frontier policies and built a coalition of labor, minorities, women, and liberals. He came within 27,000 votes of defeating Connally, the candidate of the state’s business-oriented conservative Democrats.
Running again in 1964, Mr. Yarborough accused the incumbent of being “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,’’ because Connally, who would later become a Republican, did not support Kennedy on civil rights and other progressive issues.
Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan, was concerned that Mr. Yarborough might defeat Connally in 1964 and that his liberal views would drive conservatives into the Republican fold, thus jeopardizing Kennedy’s reelection chances in 1964. Johnson convinced Kennedy that a presidential visit to Texas would help unite the famously fractious party.
When Connally was shot while riding in the car with the president, he became a national hero, and he easily defeated his liberal challenger. After losing another governor’s race in 1968, Mr. Yarborough retired from politics.
Texas voters confused Don Yarborough not only with Ralph Yarborough, a US senator from 1957 to 1970, but also with a political unknown named Don Yarbrough. In 1976, Mr. Yarbrough relied on the familiar-sounding name to get elected to the Texas Supreme Court, but he was indicted on criminal charges a year later.
Donald Howard Yarborough was born in New Orleans, where his father was president of a bank that went bust during the Depression.
Mr. Yarborough served in the US Marine Corps at the close of World War II and was made a company commander at age 19. He received his law degree from the University of Texas at Austin.
After serving with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps during the Korean War, he returned to Houston, where he opened a law firm.
He became president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1956 and in 1960 won its national public-speaking contest. Paul Harvey, the radio commentator, heard a speech by Mr. Yarborough speech and called him a future national leader on his widely syndicated radio show, an endorsement that led to speaking invitations all over Texas.
He first ran for political office in 1960, losing a bid to become the state’s lieutenant governor.
After leaving politics in 1968, Mr. Yarborough moved to Washington and was a lobbyist for a group advocating medical treatment for spinal cord injuries. He maintained that “more people could be helped through science than through politics’’ and supported efforts to cure aging, which he believed was simply a disease like any other. He returned to Houston in 1981.
Mr. Yarborough’s marriages to Trin “Kay K’’ Edwards Yarborough and Gail Brandis Yarborough ended in divorce.
He leaves his wife of 25 years, Charity O’Connell Yarborough of Houston; four children from his first marriage, Inez Vanderburg of Austin, Francey Yarborough of New York, Leverett Yarborough of Bend, Ore., and Sophie de Vise Yarborough of Garrett Park, Md.; a son from his second marriage, Daniel of Los Angeles; and two children from his third marriage, Donald “Patrick’’ and Mollie, both of Houston; and four grandchildren.
Material from The New York Times was used in this obituary. 
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.