The 35 million votes cast for senatorial candidates last week yielded surprisingly unspectacular changes in the U.S. Senate. Democrats won the right to organize it come January, but only by the margin of a handful of votes in Multnomah County, Ore. (see below), which gave them, with the help of Wayne Morse, a 49-47 majority. Although 37 seats were on the block, there were only eight shifts from which the Democrats eked out a net gain of two Senators. Some of the changes (Nevada, Wyoming, Ohio) were a return to a status quo ante, i.e., before a temporary appointment by a governor to fill an unexpired term.
Senatorial Unemployment. Only four previously elected Senators were defeated for reelection. Among them, the Republicans suffered one stunning blow, the sacking, after twelve years in the Senate, of Michigan's able, gentle, white-maned Homer Ferguson, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Republicans also lost Kentucky's John Cooper (who had twice been elected to the Senate for two-year terms, never for a full term) and Oregon's Guy Cordon. Iowa's Guy Gillette was the only casualty among Democratic Senators who had previously been elected to their seats.
Twelve new faces and two reappearing ones will adorn the Senate of the 84th Congress. His Veepship Alben William Barkley, 76, won back the Kentucky seat he had held for 21 years (1927-48), and Joseph Christopher O'Mahoney, 70, was elected to represent Wyoming, as he had for 18 years until the 1952 Eisenhower landslide forced him to spend two years as a Washington lawyer (one client: Owen Lattimore).
Under a Bushel. The rest of the fresh man group (average age: 55) does not stand high in national renown. Two, South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond and North Carolina's W. (for William) Kerr Scott, 58, have been governors of their states. Of the seven new Republican Senators, all but one are or have been Congressmen. The one: Colorado's Gordon Allott, 47, whose light, as lieutenant governor, has been hidden under the bushel-basket showmanship and popularity of retiring Governor Dan Thornton. Allott, a liberal Republican and onetime Stassen-for-President booster, scored a minor upset by trouncing ex-Congressman John Carroll. Among the other senatorial newcomers:
Nevada: Alan Bible, 44, onetime Senate elevator operator and state attorney general, defeated Senator Ernest Brown, who was appointed last month to fill the late Pat McCarran's seat. Bible, McCarran's protégé and law partner, has promised to carry on the McCarran tradition by plugging for higher wool, lead and zinc tariffs.
Michigan: Democrat Patrick Vincent McNamara, 60, outdrew Senator Ferguson at the polls on the coattails of popular Governor "Soapy" Williams and with the help of unemployment in the automobile industry. A hearty Irishman with a toothy smile, McNamara is a member of the Detroit board of education, president of a local pipefitters' union and customers' contact man for a construction firm.