George Peddy

George Edwin Bailey Peddy (August 22, 1892 - June 13, 1951) was a Texas lawyer and politician who ran in 1922 as a combination Independent Democrat/Republican write-in candidate for the United States Senate. He was defeated by the official Democratic nominee, Earle Bradford Mayfield, an outgoing member of the Texas Railroad Commission. Mayfield, a native of Overton in East Texas, carried the backing of the Ku Klux Klan.^[2]

Background

Peddy was born on a farm near Tenaha in Shelby County in East Texas, the seventh son of William Henry Peddy and the former Laura Gertrude Chambers. His father died soon after Peddy's birth, and Peddy worked as a young man to help support his mother. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Texas in Austin. In 1920, he graduated from the University of Texas School of Law.^[3]

Political career

Peddy was the UT student body president in 1917 as well as the District 8 state representative from Shelby County. He opposed Governor James E. Ferguson's policies regarding UT funding and procedures but, like Ferguson, was a strong opponent of the KKK. During World War I, Peddy accepted a commission as a captain in the United States Army.^[3] While in training at Camp Funston in Kansas, he obtained leave to attend the impeachment proceedings against Governor Ferguson, which resulted in conviction in the Texas State Senate, removal from office, and the accession of Lieutenant Governor William P. Hobby to the governorship. Peddy resigned his House seat on September 10, 1917, to complete his military duties.^[4]

With his law degree in hand, Peddy and two former classmates established a law practice in Houston. For two years he was the assistant district attorney in Harris County. Peddy was then appointed as the assistant United States attorney assigned to prosecute mail fraud cases.^[3]

Because the KKK was backing Mayfield for the U.S. Senate, a group known as the "Independent Democrats" met in Dallas on September 16, 1922 to nominate Peddy to run in the general election scheduled for November 7. The long-term incumbent senator, Charles A. Culberson, had been eliminated in the primary in which Peddy had supported Ferguson against Mayfield because of the Klan question. Democrat party regulars managed to keep Peddy's name off the general election ballot, and Mayfield was hence unopposed. Mayfield's critics said that his ties to the KKK disqualified him from being a Democrat. Mayfield was a proponent of prohibition, whereas Ferguson favored legal sales of alcoholic beverages, which at the time was illegal anywhere in the nation under the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The KKK in Texas also supported prohibition. The Republican leadership endorsed Peddy, but it was too late to place a candidate for senator on the GOP line.^[3] Among those working to elect Peddy to the Senate by encouraging the write-in against Mayfield and raising campaign funds were two Republican industrialists from Wichita Falls in North Texas, Frank Kell and Kell's son-in-law, Orville Bullington, later the state party chairman.^[5]

Peddy polled 130,744 (33 percent) write-in votes, compared to Mayfield's 264,260 ballots (67 percent) . Thereafter, Peddy challenged Mayfield's election before the Senate itself on grounds largely that Peddy had been kept off the ballot because of filing deadlines. The challenge succeeded only in delaying Mayfield's seating by nine months.^[6] Mayfield was unseated for a second term in the Democrat runoff primary in 1928 by Tom Connally.

From 1925 to 1942, Peddy practiced with the prominent Houston firm Vinson & Elkins.^[3]

Later years

During World War II, Peddy, then in his early fifties, volunteered for further military service and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served as a staff officer for the Third Army from the Invasion of Normandy until the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. Peddy was then named as the deputy military governor of Frankfurt, Germany. He was awarded both the Bronze Star Medal and the French Croix de Guerre.^[3]

In 1948, Peddy entered the Democratic primary for United States senator from Texas to succeed the retiring W. Lee O'Daniel and polled nearly 20 percent of the vote, sufficient to force his two major opponents, former Governor Coke Stevenson and U.S. Representative Lyndon B. Johnson into a runoff election in which Johnson prevailed by eighty-seven disputed ballots in Jim Wells County in South Texas. Peddy ran on a strongly states' rights and anti-communist platform.^[3]

In 1921, Peddy married the former Gertrude Irwin; they reared two of her nephews. Peddy died shortly before his 59th birthday while serving as the chairman of the Texas Cancer Crusade in Houston. He is interred at Ramah Cemetery in Tenaha.^[3]

References