The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1)

by Robert A. Caro

Roeser’s terse letter to the young Congressman he had never met was a significant document in the political fund-raising history of the United States (and, it was to prove in later years, in the larger history of the country as well). Sam Rayburn had, on his trip to Texas in October, 1940, cut off the Democratic National Committee, and other traditional party recipients of campaign contributions, from the money of the newly rich Texas independent oilmen. These men had been seeking a channel through which their money could flow to the seat of national power 2,000 miles away, to far-off Washington. After Sam Rayburn’s trip to Dallas in October, 1940, they had their channel, a brand-new channel which, ten days before, had not even existed. Sam Rayburn had cut them the channel. A new source of political money, potentially vast, had been tapped in America, and Lyndon Johnson had been put in charge of it. He was the conduit for their cash.