Texas Oil Tex
| 🛢️ | |
| Era | The Fifties |
|---|---|
| Age | 60-68 |
| Home | Midland, TX |
| Demographic | Sunbelt, white, oil money |
| Lean | business_conservative |
| Race | white |
Tex is an independent oil operator in his sixties in Midland, Texas, made rich by the Permian Basin oil boom and generous to conservative causes. He funds the Republican Party's right wing from within a state where most voters still register as Democrats.
Who they stand for
The Permian Basin oil boom of the late 1940s made Midland a city of independent oil operators. These operators were the era's main source of political oil money. H. L. Hunt and Clint Murchison financed Joseph McCarthy, the Facts Forum and the Republican right, while the larger oil companies remained loyal to the Eastern business establishment. These operators had two federal concerns, the 27.5 per cent oil depletion tax allowance that Congress had granted in 1926 and the ownership of offshore oil deposits, known as the tidelands, which the Supreme Court had awarded to the federal government in 1947. Governor Allan Shivers led Texas Democrats to support Eisenhower in 1952 over the tidelands question, and Eisenhower signed the Submerged Lands Act returning them to the states in 1953. Texas then voted Republican for president for the first time since 1928, twice in a row. Texas had passed a right-to-work law in 1947, so for Tex the open shop was already settled law. Banker Prescott is an Eastern business conservative with an opposite temperament to Tex's. Prescott wants the country managed by government, while Tex wants it left alone, and the two men split over Senator McCarthy and over tariffs.
Playing to them
Tex responds well to a president who cuts the income tax, leaves the oil depletion allowance untouched, keeps control of the tidelands with the states, and treats federal regulators with suspicion. He will not forgive a tax on oil, a federal claim on the offshore oil fields, price controls on natural gas at the wellhead, or any move toward a closed union shop. He judges a president who is friendly toward Moscow just as harshly as one who is hostile to business. Being loudly anti-Communist counts strongly in a president's favour with Tex, so a president who publicly breaks with Senator McCarthy loses Tex's support while gaining the support of Banker Prescott, Junior Exec Chip and Faculty Eleanor. Winning Tex's support on labour and tax policy loses the support of Steel City Stan, Cannery Carl and Cannery Rosa. Winning his support with states' rights arguments alarms South Side Marcus and Barrio Tomás, because both of them know what the phrase 'states' rights' has meant in Texas.
Where they live
The five states where Texas Oil Tex makes up the largest share of the electorate in the fifties:
- Texas
- Oklahoma
- Florida
- Connecticut
- California