Jake Pickle, RIP

HoustonChronicle.com - Retired U.S. Rep. Jake Pickle dead at 91

Well hell. Jake was one of the good ones. He was also one of the last in the line of LBJ Democrats throughout central Texas. In my hallucinagenic Strayhorn-party-switch scenarios, I had thought it would be ideal if she announced with two Democrats she'd run against beside her: Paul Hobby and Jake Pickle. Perhaps it's a bit ironic that he'd pass away on the day Carole announced her bid for the Guv's mansion. But in any event, it was a touch of class for the ol' grandma to have a moment of silence in Jake's honor.

From the Austin A-S:

Former U.S. Rep. J.J. "Jake" Pickle of Austin, whose folksy humor and awshucks manner masked a shrewd political intelligence and mastery of public policy, died peacefully this morning at his Austin home in Westminster Manor. He was 91.

His wife, Beryl, was with him, a family spokesman said.

...

A statement issued by the family said: "Jake Pickle represented the people of Central Texas with integrity for three decades. He was a grassroots politician who made decisions based on the needs of his constituency, not political gain.

"He was a mentor to many who returned the favor with loyalty and friendship," the statement continued. "In addition to a distinguished career, Jake Pickle was dedicated to his family, who will miss him greatly."

From a special election in 1963 through 1994, when he retired, Pickle represented the 10th Congressional District, which covered much of Central Texas, including Austin and Travis County ? though it continually shrank as the population count increased after each census. It was the same district once represented by President Lyndon Johnson, and during his presidency Johnson did not hesitate to remind Pickle of it.

Pickle's most visible public policy achievement nationally was the key role he played in passing major Social Security reform legislation in 1983. But he also labored for years to bring more research funds to the University of Texas, and he helped secure federal funding to control flooding along Boggy Creek in East Austin.

Pickle was born in Roscoe, just west of Abilene in West Texas. In 1932, in the depths of the Depression, he became a student at the University of Texas and active in campus politics. Also at UT then was John Connally, who eventually became governor and U.S. treasury secretary. Connally and Pickle also found themselves working, directly and indirectly, for a rising Lyndon Johnson.

During World War II Pickle was a Naval officer, serving in the Pacific. He survived unscathed, but a ship he served on, the USS St. Louis, was damaged in a torpedo attack. On another ship, the USS Miami, he survived two more torpedoes.

He returned to Austin after the war and, with other veterans, started a radio station, still known as KVET.

Pickle also got active in Democratic politics as a member of the Johnson camp. The Democratic Party in Texas in the 1950s was continually at war between liberals and the establishment, business-oriented conservatives dominated by Johnson.

In 1963, shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Pickle won a special election for the 10th District to succeed Homer Thornberry, who had resigned to take a judicial post.

On Pickle's first day in Washington as a newly elected congressman, President Johnson sent a limousine to greet him at the airport with a surprise invitation to sleep at the White House. Pickle refused the service, explaining he had already lined up accommodations with a friend.

"I was raised in West Texas. If you accept an invitation, you're gonna do it, you know. So I did it," Pickle explained later.

He earned a reputation as a prodigious worker, a politician with a common touch and one of the true characters in Congress.

Pickle chose to retire after winning 16 elections to the U.S. House, often losing weight during fast-paced campaigns that exhausted volunteers one-third his age. Even political patsies were treated like formidable opponents, and anybody who questioned Pickle's hard-charging style received a terse reminder that the campaign graveyard is full of overconfident politicians.

His home phone number was always listed, and he came home from Washington most weekends to answer calls. The nonstop Braniff flight from Washington to Austin was nicknamed the Pickle Express, and the man who called himself a natural ham worked the aisle like each plane was his personal political rally.

"Other than the long commute to and from Washington and, starting in the 1980s, the increasing partisanship of Congress, there was little I didn't like about being Congressman Pickle," he wrote in his 1997 book, "Jake." "Despite the stress, long hours and the lack of personal and financial privacy, members of Congress are given a truly fabulous perk: the opportunity to get things done."