National Affairs: A Write-in Winner

Until last week no write-in candidate had ever been elected to the U.S. Congress. Last week’s write-in winner: J. (for James) Strom Thurmond, 51, whom South Carolina sent to the Senate seat of the late Burnet R. Maybank.

Thurmond, the 1948 states rights’ candidate for President of the U.S., defeated 66-year-old State Senator Edgar Brown in a fight to protest Brown’s nomination by the state Democratic Executive Committee instead of by primary election, the chief instrument of democracy in one-party South Carolina. A few weeks ago, Governor James Byrnes endorsed

Thurmond, as did most of the state’s newspapers. The kiss of death for Brown came when Harry Vaughan told a Washington newspaperman that Harry Truman was for Brown because of Thurmond’s 1948 disloyalty to the party (TIME, Nov. i). The vote: Thurmond 139,106, Brown 80,956. After the count, Senator-elect Thurmond renewed a promise: he will resign in 1956 to meet all comers in a proper primary.