While building a reputation as aconservative Republican statesman on Capitol Hill, Colorado’s able, lucid Gene Millikin had sadly neglected the first principle of the politicians’ trade. Only a few Colorado voters knew their junior Senator personally; his political fences were sagging with disrepair. By last week the fact stood out like Gene Millikin’s huge bald dome on a sunny day: one of the strongest Republicans in Senate councils was in for the battle of his political life.
Jubilant Democrats, to whom Millikin ranks only slightly below Ohio’s Robert Taft on the list of targets for 1950, were sure they could beat him with either of two candidates. One was Colorado Governor William Lee Knous (rhymes with mouse), a lanky, homespun former mining-camp lawyer. If Knous entered the race, the conservative, Republican-tinged Denver Post reported last week (and if the results of a statewide poll held true), 65% of Colorado’s voters would vote for a change; only 27% wanted to keep Gene Millikin on. Even if Knous could be sidetracked with a federal judgeship, the Democrats had another odds-on favorite: Denver’s Congressman John Albert Carroll, a husky, 48-year-old ex-policeman who walks a straight Fair Deal line. He led Millikin by a decisive margin in an earlier poll.
Not overly concerned by the pollsters findings, Millikin stoutly predicted that “any Republican candidate for the Senate in Colorado will win … in 1950.” But he was worried enough to take a tip from Ohio’s Taft. Last week Gene Millikin was off on a two-week tour, renewing old friendships and cultivating new votes in his home state.
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