The House: New Faces

After all the hueing and crying, there will only be 67 new faces among the 435 of the 88th Congress. And only one truly big-name Congressman failed to win reelection.

The big casualty was ten-term Minnesota Republican Walter Judd. Perhaps the most respected G.O.P. foreign policy voice in the House, Judd fell victim to the cold arithmetic of the gerrymander. His Minneapolis district had been enlarged to take in all of Minneapolis, rather than just his old Republican wards. In a record off-year vote, Judd led in his old district by 10,860 votes. But in the added wards, he trailed by 16,997. The man who beat him was State Senator Don Eraser, 38, a New Frontier liberal in the tradition of Senator Hubert Humphrey, who campaigned for him, and ex-Governor Orville Freeman, his former law partner.

In California, three archconservatives lost, partly because of redistricting. Gordon McDonough, an 18-year veteran, found that a Democratic voting advantage of some 47,000 in his new downtown Los Angeles district was too much to overcome: he lost by nearly 17,000 votes to Los Angeles Councilman Edward Royhal, a liberal who plugged medicare. In a swirl of libel suits, the bitter campaign of Republican Edgar Hiestand and Los Angeles Councilman Everett Burkhalter centered around Hiestand’s membership in the John Birch Society. Hiestand lost. Another Bircher, smooth-talking Republican John Rousselot, also found the society plus a new district a politically fatal combination, succumbed to Assemblyman Ronald Brooks Cameron.

Six to One. There were seven races in which Democratic and Republican incumbents faced one another because of redrawn district lines. In only one of them did a Republican lose. He was Pennsylvania’s Ivor Fenton, a 24-year veteran, dean of the state’s G.O.P. delegation. At 73, Fenton simply was not as articulate or as agile on the stump as Democrat George Rhodes, 64, a liberal who will be starting his 15th year in the House. The six Democrats sidelined by Republican incumbents were Massachusetts’ Thomas Lane, North Carolina’s Paul Kitchin, Kansas’ J. Floyd Breeding, Illinois’ Peter F. Mack Jr., West Virginia’s Cleveland Bailey and New York’s Alfred Santangelo.

Lane, who served a four-month prison term in 1956 for income tax evasion, campaigned on the theme “President Kennedy needs Congressman Lane.” He was outtalked and outworked by hustling Bradford Morse, a Republican who often votes like a Democrat. Kitchin ran up against popular Charles R. Jonas, who cultivates his constituents the year round with cookbooks, letters and palm squeezing. Lone Republican in North Carolina’s delegation in the 87th Congress, Jonas will have company in the 88th: Republican James Broyhill ousted incumbent Democratic Congressman Hugh Alexander.

Breeding’s defeat in a huge new Kansas district could be laid mainly to the fact that he championed Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman’s farm policies. He was also hurt by a campaign visit from Harry Truman, who declared to one audience that “farmers are the most ungrateful people in the world.” Republican Bob Dole damned the Freeman program, won 21 rural counties in Breeding’s old district.

Mack, a seven-term Congressman who had survived a G.O.P. gerrymander a decade ago, found his twelve new rural Illinois counties too much ground to cover, lost to freshman Republican Paul Findley. West Virginians seemed to resent all the outside help received by Bailey, an eight-termer, including stumping by Kennedy and Truman. They rallied behind underdog Arch Moore Jr., 39, to give him a 32,000-vote victory despite a 51,000 Democratic registration edge. Santangelo’s East Harlem district was knocked out by the legislature, and he never had much chance of dislodging five-term Republican Paul A. Fino in The Bronx.

The Ailing. Physical and ethical ailments caused turnouts in some districts. California’s Dalip Saund, a native of India, suffered a stroke, could not campaign at all, was beaten by Minor Martin, a former University of California football player. Texas Democrat J. T. (“Slick”) Rutherford had accepted a $1.500 “campaign contribution” from Billie Sol Estes; he was done in by Republican Ed Foreman. Washington’s five-term Democrat Don Magnuson (no kin to Senator Warren Magnuson ) had been hurt by drinking, driving and marital problems. He was defeated by the G.O.P.’s Bill Stinson, 32, a salesman seeking office for the first time. A federal indictment for trying to influence a mail fraud case was too great a handicap for Maryland’s Thomas Johnson, who was unseated by Rogers Morton, strapping younger brother of Kentucky’s victorious Senator Thruston Morton.

Ohio’s anti-Di Salle vote swept Robert E. Cook out of office and brought in a mother-son team. Cook was beaten by Republican Oliver Payne Bolton, 45, a wealthy Cleveland-area publisher whose mother, Frances Payne Bolton, 77, was re-elected to her twelfth full term. A shift toward the right in Utah dislodged M. Blaine Peterson, who plugged the welfare state and was replaced by Professor Laurence J. Burton, 35, who attacked big Government and big taxes.

The Comers. The 67 newcomers include several worth watching. Among the Republicans, former New York Herald Tribune Editor Ogden R. Reid proved to be a rousing vote getter in New York’s Westchester County, buried New Rochelle’s Mayor Stanley Church by a record plurality. Ohio’s Robert Taft Jr., majority leader of the Ohio house and son of the late Senator, swamped Cleveland’s inept Richard D. Kennedy to win an at-large seat. Utah unveiled a bright newcomer in Sherman P. Lloyd, 48, a talented Utah state senator, who clobbered Liberal Bruce Jenkins. Florida’s Ed Gurney appeared attractive on television, ran as a genuine conservative to win over Democrat John Sutton in the Cape Canaveral area.

Among Democrats, Michigan’s Neil Staebler ran a back-breaking campaign, lured former G.O.P. Congressman Alvin Bentley into reckless remarks in face-to-face debate, won an at-large seat despite the Romney tide. New York’s Samuel Stratton, who tried unsuccessfully for the gubernatorial nomination, scored an upset victory in a Republican-gerrymandered district. California’s Gus Hawkins, 55, a 28-year veteran of the state assembly and a New Frontiersman, became the first Negro from west of the Rockies to reach the House. He defeated another Negro, Republican Herman T. Smith, 47, in a Los Angeles district that is 70% Negro. And after it was all over, the political makeup of the House remained much the same as before.