In tiny San Diego , seat of Duval
County in the heart of the south Texas triangle, a team of sheriffs,
marshals, and Texas Rangers was closing in on its man. Then it spied
the fugitive's 1969 Chrysler Imperial at the edge of a quiet pasture,
and the search was over. Slumped over the steering wheel, a bullet in
his brain, was George B. Parr, 74, the “Duke of Duval,” an
affable, unimposing man who for decades reigned as one of America's
most autarchic political bosses, the man who reputedly put Lyndon
Johnson in the U.S. Senate. Beside him lay a .45, but no note. The story of the Duval duchy began in 1911 when three Mexican Americans
were gunned down in San Diego by a gang of Anglos opposed to the town's
incorporation under Chicano control. Ethnic conflict reached a high
pitch. Alone among the area's “Americans” to champion the
Mexicans' po sition was George's father Archie Parr, a small-time
rancher. For years thereafter, the Mexicans — who still make up 90% of
the population of Duval and surrounding counties — honored Parr as
their cacique. Parr saw to it that roads were built, local government
jobs were manufactured, and bail money was available to miscreants. In
return, Parr's political vassals, many of them ill-educated and poor,
voted the way he said. Missing Ballots. George Parr inherited — and expanded — Archie's
godfatherly political role. He grew rich when oil was discovered on
Parr land, branched out into banking, beer distribution and other
business interests, and built himself a walled Spanish-style manor that
boasted a private race track. He tripped in the mid-1930s, when he served nine months in federal
prison for income tax evasion. Yet despite his lust for wealth, Parr
felt affection for the local people and won many friends. His influence
was so strong that when a Parr nominee already on the ballot disobeyed
the boss a few weeks before the election, Parr managed to beat him with
a write-in candidate. Parr's star was never higher than in 1948, when Coke Stevenson—a former
Texas Governor and onetime Parr favorite fallen from grace—was pitted
against young Congressman Lyndon Johnson in a tight Democratic
senatorial primary. Six days after the election, it looked as if
Stevenson had won by 113 votes of the almost 1 million cast. But then
one precinct of Parr-bossed Jim Wells County reported that it had
discovered 202 ballots that had not been counted before—and 201 of
them were for Johnson. Recriminations flew, but the Democratic state
executive committee upheld L.B.J.'s nomination—and soon thereafter the
last-minute ballots mysteriously disappeared. Johnson went on to win
the general election. A few years later, the law began to catch up with Parr. A Jim Wells
County jury convicted Parr of threatening a local restaurant owner with
a gun, and he was fined $100. He was again discovered to be behind in
his taxes—this time more than $1 million—and went into bankruptcy. He
was also convicted of using the mails to defraud a school district of
$220,000 by issuing checks to nonexistent people.
