A crucial moment in Lyndon Johnson’s career was the 1948 election for a United States senator from Texas, which Johnson apparently had lost to former governor Coke Stevenson until, six days after the balloting, Precinct 13—“Box 13”—in Jim Wells County, one of the border counties ruled by Duval County’s George Parr, the notorious “Duke of Duval,” suddenly reported 202 new votes, 200 of them for Johnson, votes which gave him the victory by eighty-seven votes out of almost a million that
