THE SENATE: Some Penance, Much Preference

MAGGIE SMITH in Maine? Gordon Allott in Colorado? Jack Miller in Iowa? Until the vote count was well under way, such senior Republican Senators seemed nearly invulnerable. Many of the other Republican candidates in the 33 Senate contests appeared to have good prospects as well, and party leaders hoped to reduce the 55 to 45 Democratic advantage by at least two. Some even dreamed of G.O.P. control. After all, there were those long presidential coattails. The voters had other ideas. Said one Washington Republican on Election Night: “Coattails, hell! That guy is wearing a T shirt, and he’s got it tucked into his trousers.”

As Smith, Allott, Miller and others were retired, the Republicans suffered a net loss of two seats, and the new line-up of 57 to 43 will give the President an upper chamber somewhat more liberal—and potentially more hostile —than its predecessor. It will also contain a goodly number of new faces (see following story).

Conflict. Some Democrats doubtless cast what politicians called “penance votes”: having opted for a Republican President, they came back to their party for other offices. But most were in a selective mood; personalities and state-level disputes weighed at least as heavily as national politics. Thus in Kentucky, where voters could have voted a straight Republican ticket with the flick of a single voting-machine lever, not enough did. The result was that while Nixon was winning handily, Republican Senatorial Candidate Louie B. Nunn was losing a seat that had traditionally been Republican. Whatever patterns existed seemed in conflict with one another. Most of the Democrats who won surprising victories—such as Floyd K. Haskell in Colorado, Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Delaware, Dick Clark in Iowa and William D. Hathaway in Maine—are liberals. Haskell, 56, a tax lawyer, is a former Republican who turned Democrat two years ago in protest over Administration policies culminating in the U.S. movement into Cambodia. New Republican Senators-elect are mostly staunch conservatives: James A. McClure in Idaho, Jesse Helms in North Carolina, Dewey Bartlett in Oklahoma and William L. Scott in Virginia.

Many of the Republican losers ran lethargic campaigns, apparently expecting familiarity and the Nixon tide to get them through. There was some retroactive bitterness over the White House’s benign neglect of Senate candidates through much of the campaign. Protested Colorado National Committeewoman Jo Anne Gray: “National media, money, everything was Nixon, Nixon, Nixon.”

One factor that neither Nixon nor his campaign managers could control was the apparent voter preference for youth over age. In contest after contest, from Oregon to Maine, younger candidates seemed able to exploit the contrast between vigor and venerability. One likely explanation: the huge increase in younger voters. A continuation of that trend could eventually revolutionize the congressional seniority system by ending the present arrangement in which seniority and senility sometimes go hand in hand.