of the State Board of Insurance, passage of an ethics code for lawmakers and other state employees, regulation of lobbyists, an improved structure for state archives, and a long-range water conservation plan. Daniel was re-elected governor in 1958 by a 7-1 margin over the Republican Edwin S. Mayer (1896-1963), a San Angelo sheep and goats owner who was twice a delegate for Dwight D. Eisenhower at the 1952 and 1956 Republican National Conventions. In 1960, Mayer was the only delegate at the national convention who abstained on the nomination of former U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts as Richard Nixon's running mate. In 1960, Daniel won renomination over Jack Cox, an oil equipment executive from Houston. Daniel then prevailed in the general election by a much larger margin than that obtained by John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as the Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees. Daniel received 1,637,755 votes (72.8 percent) to Republican William M. Steger of Tyler, who obtained 612,963 ballots (27.2 percent), but Kennedy and Johnson barely won the Texas electoral votes over Richard Nixon. In 1961, the legislature passed a 2-cent sales tax, which Daniel allowed to become law without his signature so the state would remain solvent. After the passage of the sales tax, Daniel's popularity waned, and he failed at his attempt to be elected to a fourth term in 1962. He lost the Democratic nomination to former Navy Secretary John B. Connally, Jr. Other 1962 Democratic candidates included Highway Commissioner Marshall Formby of Plainview, State Attorney General Will Wilson, a future Republican convert, and Major General Edwin A. Walker, a segregationist who also made anticommunism the centerpiece of his campaign. Connally's most formidable primary opponent was Don Yarborough, a liberal integrationist lawyer from Houston who won 49% of the vote in the Democratic run-off. Connally went on to defeat Cox, who had switched to Republican affiliation, to claim the right to succeed Daniel as governor. Public service in later years President Johnson later appointed Daniel to head the Office of Emergency Preparedness. In 1971, Governor Preston Smith named Daniel to the 9-member Texas Supreme Court, filling a vacancy left by the retirement of Clyde E. Smith. He was re-elected twice in 1972 and 1978, and retired at the end of his second term. After retiring from the Texas Supreme Court, he served as pro-bono legal council for the Alabama-Coushatta Indians.