He was a segregationist who advocated in favor of Jim Crow laws, for example opposing equal education for black people, and against anti-lynching legislation.

In the House, Connally was a staunch Wilsonian Democrat who campaigned in favor of the League of Nations, and the World Court.

In the Senate, he chaired the Committee on Foreign Relations from 1941, giving strong support to President Franklin Roosevelt's anti-German and anti-Japanese policies.

He worked with Republican Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg to ensure bipartisan support for an internationalist policy, including the new United Nations.

[5] In 1916, he made his first foray into national politics by running for the vacant House seat for the 11th Congressional District of Texas.

Connally opposed it partly on libera grounds, arguing “Let some reactionary administration come to power,” I warned, “and it would immediately say: ‘The Democrats stacked the court, and now we have as much right to restack as they had.

Mr. Connally was the first to move for the recommendation to the General Assembly to accept the applications of Afghanistan, Iceland, and Sweden, after they had been approved by the Security Council.

[17] On October 20, 1951, when General Mark Wayne Clark, an Episcopalian whose mother was Jewish,[18][19] was nominated by President Harry Truman to be the U.S. emissary to the Holy See, Connally protested against the decision on the basis that Clark was alleged to have caused a large number of needless deaths at the Battle of Rapido River.

[21] Connally's first wife was Cincinnati Conservatory-trained vocalist Louise Clarkson of Marlin, Texas, who died in her husband's Senate office of a sudden heart attack in 1935.