Who is pappy odaniel

Before the boy was five years old his mother remarried and went to live on a farm in Reno County, Kansas. At eighteen he became a stenographer and bookkeeper for a flour-milling company in Anthony, Kansas. Later he worked for a larger milling company in Kingman, rose to the post of sales manager, and eventually went into the milling business for himself.

He moved to Kansas City in , and then to New Orleans in He took over the company's radio advertising in and began writing songs and discussing religious subjects on the air. He hired a group of musicians and called them the Light Crust Doughboys. He organized his own flour company in At the behest of radio fans, he filed for governor May 1, During the Democratic primary campaign in one-party Texas he stressed the Ten Commandments, the virtues of his own Hillbilly Flour, and the need for old-age pensions, tax cuts, and industrialization.

Continuing his pose as a hillbilly, he acted under the professional direction of public-relations men. Accompanied by his band, the Hillbilly Boys, and the Bible, he attracted huge audiences, especially in rural areas. In the primary he smashed the other candidates and eliminated the usual necessity of a runoff. He had pledged to block any sales tax, abolish capital punishment, liquidate the poll tax which he had not paid and raise old-age pensions, but he reneged on all these promises.

He unveiled a tax plan, secretly written by manufacturing lobbyists, that amounted to a multiple sales tax, but the legislature voted it down. Solons laughed at the vaudevillian atmosphere of the O'Daniel administration, but most of his legislative opponents were defeated for reelection. He also established his own band, the Hillbilly Boys. At the behest of radio fans, he filed for governor on May 1, During the Democratic primary campaign in one-party Texas, he stressed the Ten Commandments, the virtues of his own Hillbilly Flour, and the need for old-age pensions, tax cuts, and industrialization.

While posing as a hillbilly, he acted under the professional direction of public-relations men. Accompanied by his band, the Hillbilly Boys, and the Bible, he attracted huge audiences, especially in rural areas. In the primary he smashed the other candidates and eliminated the usual necessity of a runoff.

He had pledged to block any sales tax, abolish capital punishment, liquidate the poll tax which he had not paid and raise old-age pensions; but he reneged on all these promises. He unveiled a tax plan, secretly written by manufacturing lobbyists, that amounted to a multiple sales tax, but the legislature voted it down.

Solons laughed at the vaudevillian atmosphere of the O'Daniel administration, but most of his legislative opponents were defeated in their bids for reelection. O'Daniel won again in , after divulging that he had wired President Franklin Roosevelt that he had confidential information about a fifth column in Texas. No one ever found the traitors. The governor and several Texas business leaders began attacking organized labor in the spring of , but most of the provisions of the ensuing O'Daniel Anti-Violence Act were eventually discarded by the courts.

O'Daniel began packing the University of Texas Board of Regents with people who wanted to limit academic freedom and ferret out alleged subversion on campus. These regents, along with those selected by his successor, Coke Stevenson , eventually fired University of Texas president Homer Rainey and provoked a nine-year censure of UT by the American Association of University Professors.

As governor, O'Daniel enjoyed little success in putting across his agenda. He was unable to engage in normal political deal-making with legislators, vetoed bills that he probably did not understand, and was overridden in twelve out of fifty-seven vetoes—a record. But he was able largely to negate his ignorance, his isolation, and his political handicaps with masterful radio showmanship.

O'Daniel ran for the Senate in a special election in He ushered in an era of censorship and limits on academic freedom at the University of Texas by his appointments to the Board of Regents. But despite his obvious shortcomings as a leader, he remained very popular due to his masterful radio showmanship.

In , O'Daniel won election to the United States Senate in one of the most controversial elections in Texas history, edging out Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson by only a handful of votes. O'Daniel was ineffective in the Senate and was shunned by his more serious colleagues. With his popularity finally on the wane, he did not seek reelection in In later years, O'Daniel was active in business and made two comeback attempts at the governorship, basing his campaigns on crude appeals to anti-communist and anti-civil rights feeling.