the vote and go on to win the general election against his Republican challenger with 90% of the vote. 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 pressured to run for a third term, Stevenson 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. His tenure was primarily marked by his return of fiscal solvency to the Texas state government. In 1941, Stevenson inherited a General Fund deficit of over $30 million dollars. By the time he left office in 1947 Stevenson had not only eliminated this debt, but had built a cash balance in the General Fund of over $35 million dollars. 1948 Senate election In 1948, Stevenson was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in the regular election. He led the Democratic primary with 39.7% to 33.7% against Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson of Austin. A third candidate was George Peddy of Houston, originally from Shelby County in East Texas, who had been a write-in candidate for the Senate in 1922 but was defeated by Democratic nominee Earle Bradford Mayfield. 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). The Democratic State Central Committee sustained Johnson's apparent victory by a 29–28 vote. Stevenson was granted an injunction by the federal district court, which barred Johnson from the general election ballot. However, Supreme Court Associate Justice Hugo Black, sitting as a circuit justice, ruled that the federal district court lacked jurisdiction, and that the question was for the Central Committee to decide. He ordered the