After next January 20, Capitol gallery-goers will miss one of the sights of the Senate during the past twelve years — tall, slim-waisted, beautifully tailored Robert Rice Reynolds.
"Buncombe Bob," who is 59 and looks 45, has been something to see: his blond hair, worn actor's length, combed casually over the back of a Barrymore-ish collar, his gay bow tie propped at an insouciant angle, striding merrily and importantly through the Senate at the noontime opening of a session. He gives a backslap here, a glad hand there, pausing to drop a witticism at this Senator's desk, an encouraging word of counsel at another's, to confer now gravely, now casually —dynamic, carefree, yet occasionally sober under the solemn responsibilities of statesmanship. Here, it seems from the gallery, is the very picture of a wise and charming legislator, beloved of his colleagues, happily resuming his daily burden.
The performance lasts some 15 minutes, perhaps half an hour if the noontime gallery is crowded, with Senator Reynolds on his feet several times, as a vigilant guardian of North Carolina's interests, to ask unanimous consent to insert a North Carolina editorial in the Congressional Record. (No Senator in a generation has been able to put such dramatic flair into such routine.)
Then, his presence elsewhere obviously demanded by the pressure of world events, the Senator hastens out of the chamber, leaving his dull-appearing colleagues to carry on with whatever small chores remain. He is usually seen no more that day, to the concern of the galleries. But on the morrow, around noon, he will return, in another suit, another bow tie, with fresh stones and new wisdom.
Except on the occasions when the Senate considers immigration legislation (no living Senator can draw a more appalling picture of the Yellow, Black and Brown Perils) this daily matinee is the sum total of Bob Reynolds' Senate achievements. His only other distinctions: that he was one of the Senate's most rabid isolationists until "We were attacked, suh!"; that he is rabidly antilabor; that he once shot an Alaskan bull walrus at 20 paces; that he once kissed the late Jean Harlow on the Capitol steps.
Wisely, Buncombe Bob, happy in his fifth marriage (this to Evalyn Washington McLean, 21, the daughter of heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean), chose not to stand for re-election this year.
Mr. Tutt. Last week, Tarheel voters gave the Democratic senatorial nomination, and thus the election, to Clyde Roark Hoey (pronounced hooey), 66, a Southern gentleman with flowing locks and black claw-hammer coat, who looks like Arthur Train's lawyer, Mr. Tutt.
Clyde Hoey is lukewarm to the New Deal, but Southern-hot for internationalism. An ex-Governor of North Carolina, Hoey is a brother-in-law of O. Max Gardner, another ex-Governor, now a lawyer-lobbyist, whose political machine is known as the "Gardner Dynasty." Hoey and the Gardner Dynasty had an easy time beating out still another ex-Governor, the famed "Cam" Morrison, 74, who held the Senate seat before Bob Reynolds beat him in 1932 by telling North Carolinians in horror that "Cam" actually ate caviar, "fish aigs that come from Red Rooshia'"