THE SENATE: The Mixture As Before

Even if Richard Nixon had won by a landslide, the Democrats could not have lost control of the Senate in 1961. To win a Senate majority, the Republicans would have been obliged to take 28 of the 34 seats at stake this year, including several in the South. So far as the Senate was concerned, the people did not think it was time for a change.

What the voters wanted was the mixture as before. It was a good year for senatorial incumbents. The only sitting candidate turned out was Delaware’s J. Allen Frear Jr., a conservative Democrat. In half a dozen states, voters split their tickets with careful intent to return the familiar faces, whether Republican or Democratic. The South predictably held firm for its ten Democratic senatorial candidates. The Republicans seemed likely to increase their Senate strength slightly, but only a handful of noteworthy newcomers will be mingling with the old pros (see box) in the new Senate. Among the winners:

¶ In Colorado, Republican Incumbent Gordon Allott rode Nixon’s coattails to a second-term victory over Trumanish Democrat (and lieutenant governor) Robert Lee Knous.

¶ In the first Senate race between two women in U.S. history, Margaret Chase Smith, Maine’s ranking vote-collector, easily defeated Lucia Marie Cormier, ex-schoolteacher and Democratic leader of the state legislature. Majestically ignoring Democrat Cormier after paying her one ladylike compliment early in the campaign, Republican Smith relied on the record she has embroidered since 1940, stitched an impressive 5-3 majority.

¶ In Delaware, Republican Governor J. Caleb Boggs pulled off one of the rare upsets of the 1960 Senate races by unseating conservative Democrat J. Allen Frear Jr., 57, a veteran of two undistinguished Senate terms. The only top-of-the-ticket Republican to win in Delaware, Boggs has long wooed Delaware’s labor vote by urging establishment of a state department of labor, as a result probably came away with more union votes than Businessman Frear.

¶ Idaho Republican Henry Dworshak, locally renowned for his firm stand against foreign aid, defeated Democrat Robert McLaughlin, a lawyer from Mountain Home.

¶ In Illinois, white-thatched New Deal Democrat Paul Douglas, 68, bettered his 1954 majority, overwhelmed Republican Lawyer Samuel Witwer to win his third term in the Senate.

¶ In New Mexico, despite a presidential vote that seesawed back and forth, Democrat Clinton P. Anderson, 65, onetime Secretary of Agriculture under Harry Truman, handily beat out conservative Republican William Colwes to win his third term in the Senate.

¶ Incumbent John Sherman Cooper, Kentucky’s courtly Mr. Republican, won a thunderous victory over Democrat Keen Johnson, who came out of the business world (vice president of Reynolds Metals) to run on a record logged during a single term as state Governor 17 years ago.

¶ Running on a record as flat as the prairies. Kansas’ Incumbent Andrew Schoeppel beat Democratic Challenger Frank Theis, 69, to win a third term.

¶ In Massachusetts, riding out a Kennedy landslide. Republican Leverett Saltonstall fended off Springfield’s youthful (35) Mayor Thomas J. O’Connor Jr. to win his third full Senate term. Campaigning in his usual low-key style (”I’m gonna be dahn brief”), the durable “Salty” unashamedly clung to Democrat Kennedy’s coattails with a campaign film featuring shots of himself and Kennedy working together in the Senate.

¶ In Minnesota, after the worst scare of his 17-year political career, Fair Dealing Democrat Hubert Humphrey won a third Senate term by trouncing Minneapolis Mayor P. (for Paul) Kenneth Peterson, 45. After watching his once-commanding lead in the polls whittled almost to the vanishing point, Humphrey recouped in the last days of the campaign by delivering as many as 86 speeches in one week.

¶ Deriding Republican complacency (“No time to brag my Daddy is stronger than your Daddy”), Democratic Incumbent Edward V. Long sailed to a predictable victory in Missouri over Republican Lon Hocker, 50, a St. Louis lawyer.

¶ Nebraska Republican Carl T. Curtis, 55, a consistent opponent of Eisenhower’s modern Republicanism, won a second term at the expense of little-known Lawyer Robert Conrad, 38.

¶ New Hampshire’s Styles Bridges, 62, the backroom dean of Capitol Hill conservatism, beat out Democrat Herbert Hill, a mild-mannered Dartmouth professor, for a fifth term.

¶ New Jersey’s liberal Republican Clifford P. Case wooed party conservatives, won independents of both parties by pointing to his own first-term record for independence in Washington. This smooth combination scuttled Democratic Contender Thorn Lord, 54, a reluctant, shy candidate whose egghead appeal sailed over the heads of most Jerseyites.

¶ In three historically Democratic states, the party incumbents bucked local Nixon tides. But Tennessee’s homespun Estes Kefauver, Oklahoma’s oil-rich Robert S. Kerr and Virginia’s crack filibusterer, Willis Robertson, all easily knocked down Republican straw men to return to Capitol Hill.

¶ In heavily Catholic (58%) Rhode Island, Democrat Claiborne Pell, an Episcopalian, ran well ahead of Jack Kennedy to beat out his Catholic opponent, Raoul C. Archambault Jr.. by a record margin for the seat of retiring Democrat Theodore Francis Green, 93.

¶ Easy and early winner in hard-pressed West Virginia: welfare-promising Democratic Incumbent Jennings Randolph, 58. When handsome young (38 ) Cecil H. Underwood, the state’s first Republican Governor in 24 years, chose to stay loyal to Ike’s two vetoes of aid-to-depressed-area bills (“I am proud to defend the Eisenhower record”), he chose certain disaster.

¶ In Oregon, Maurine Neuberger, widow of Senator Richard Neuberger, became the first woman Democrat elected to the Senate since Arkansas’ Hattie Caraway made it in 1932. Mrs. Neuberger ran well ahead of Jack Kennedy, easily defeated Republican Publisher Elmo Smith, 51.

¶ In pivotal Michigan, with the aid of a massive Detroit vote, Democratic Stalwart Patrick McNamara sailed into a second Senate term despite a free-swinging, free-spending campaign by Multimillionaire Republican Right-Winger Alvin M. Bentley. 42.

¶ In Wyoming, bidding for the job of retiring Democrat Joseph C. O’Mahoney, 76. Republican Keith Thomson, 41, ran comfortably in front of his O’Mahoney-endorsed opponent, Raymond B. Whitaker, also 41, picked up a Senate seat for his party.

¶ In pro-Nixon Iowa, Republican State Senator Jack Miller gave the lie to advance predictions of widespread ticket splitting by his surprise victory over popular Democratic Governor Herschel Loveless, 49. Hanging firmly onto the Nixon coattails, Newcomer Miller cinched the seat vacated by retiring Republican Senator Thomas Martin with an aggressive campaign in which he used the time-honored device of dramatizing Loveless’ refusal to argue the issues with him by staging debates with an empty chair.

¶ By the slenderest of margins, South Dakotans handed Republican Karl Mundt, 60, a political prize they have not bestowed in 30 years: a third term in the Senate. Mundt encountered stern competition from onetime History Professor (Dakota Wesleyan University) and two-time Congressman George McGovern, 38, who banked on rural discontent this year to unseat Mundt.