Coke R. Stevenson

The Coke R. Stevenson Memorial Center meeting hall is located off Interstate 10 in Junction, Texas.

Coke Robert Stevenson (March 20, 1888 – June 28, 1975) was an American politician who served as the 35th governor of Texas from 1941 to 1947. He was the first Texan politician to hold the state's three highest offices (Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, lieutenant governor, and governor).

Early life Stevenson was born in a log cabin in Mason County, the son of Robert Milton Stevenson and Virginia (Hurley) Stevenson. Although some works indicate that Stevenson was named after former Texas Governor Richard Coke, contemporary news accounts indicate he was named after Methodist Bishop Thomas Coke. Stevenson had three brothers – Bascom, Pierce, and Asbury – and their parents named each of the Stevenson sons after a prominent Methodist bishop. Stevenson's father was a surveyor and school teacher who later opened a store in Junction.

As a teenager, Stevenson went into business hauling freight with a six-horse wagon on a seventy-five mile trip between Junction and Brady, a trip that took a week to complete.

Early career In 1913, Stevenson organized and became president of the First National Bank in Junction.

In 1918, a group of community leaders whose priority was the construction of adequate roads in Kimble County drafted Stevenson to run for Kimble County Judge, the chief executive position in Texas counties. Stevenson was reluctant to run, but eventually assented on the condition that the group would do all the campaigning for him and that he would not be asked to run for a second term. All but one candidate against Stevenson dropped out prior to election day and he was elected by a five to one margin, with the exact count being 757 to 155 votes. In both the 1942 and 1944 gubernatorial elections Stevenson won a higher percentage in the Democratic primaries than any other candidate in Texan history. Although Stevenson was urged to run for a third term, he declined, citing the tradition of previous governors to limit their tenure to two terms.

When Stevenson left the governorship in January 1947, he was the longest-serving governor in the history of Texas and had presided over a broad and deep economic recovery during the years of World War II. With the top two finishers advancing to a runoff election, Peddy and several minor candidates were eliminated from contention.

In the hotly contested runoff between Stevenson and Johnson, Johnson won by only 87 votes out of 988,295 cast – one of the closest results in a senatorial election in U.S. history. (As there was only a weak Republican Party in Texas at the time, winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to election.)

Stevenson challenged the result on the grounds of ballot stuffing alleged to have occurred in a single precinct, which involved 202 disputed votes from Jim Wells County (200 for Johnson, 2 for Stevenson). He ordered the injunction stayed, and his ruling was upheld by the full Supreme Court.

Retirement from politics After the loss to Johnson, Stevenson retired to Junction. Disenchanted with the Democratic Party, he supported Republican Jack Porter against Johnson in the general election and continued to support Republicans for the rest of his life, including John G. Tower for the Senate and Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater for the presidency. Marguerite had been married to Gordon Marshall Heap, who died in action during World War II. He was buried at the Stevenson Family Ranch in Telegraph.

In the April 26, 1990, issue of The New York Review of Books, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills criticized Caro's characterization of the former Texas governor as anti-corrupt and claimed that in his gubernatorial campaigns, Stevenson had also likely forged a significant number of votes in the very same corrupt counties which aided Johnson in 1948. In one Texas gubernatorial primary, Stevenson obtained 3,310 votes in the notorious Duval County while five of his rivals split the remaining 17.

Caro responded to these criticisms in The New York Times Book Review of February 2, 1991, asserting that rumors of vote stealing on Stevenson's part were believed primarily by younger members of Johnson's circle who had hardly served during Stevenson's tenure, and that "most of the politicians outside that circle who were old enough to be Stevenson's contemporaries said he had never stolen votes." This essay also appeared as an afterword to the paperback edition of Means of Ascent.