“’…if this goes on much longer, I’m going to have to vote for cloture.’”
Frank Valeo talks about gradually picking up votes for cloture during the long civil rights filibuster, and his job of keeping a running count of senators voting for cloture.
VALEO: As the process wore on, we began to pick up a vote or two. This was being done in several ways. It was being done by the pressure generated by Hubert's allies on the outside, who were constantly around. Mansfield, I guess, did not want to meet with any of the people who were pro-civil rights on this thing. He stayed completely out of that aspect of it; he left it entirely to Hubert to handle. We began to get announcements here and there, “well, if this goes on much longer, I’m going to have to vote for cloture.” It was very clear at this point, that was the only way the legislation was going to be brought. There would be no compromises on the substance of the legislation itself, except for adjustments that were necessary, but that would not be the basis for passing the bill. It would be done by cloture and no other way. And you began to hear people who were shifting or on the fence, or said, "well, give it another week, and we'll see; and then maybe we better go for it." These were reports that kept coming back to us from either Hubert's people or our own policy committee people. And they were adding up and I was keeping a very close tally on what it looked like. I was extremely conservative in my counts. I wanted to be sure we had them.
