(2 of 4)
The Lady Wavers. One by one, through the weeks, Anderson scratched off the undecideds on his worn tally sheet, wrote their names among the nays. Early last week he was only a couple of votes short of the magic 50 nays that would assure him of victory. For Louisiana's Russell Long he had a reminder of a personal favor done for father Huey a quarter-century ago, swung a needed vote despite pressure on Long from the pro-Strauss Southerners led by Harry Byrd. For Georgia's Herman Talmadge he had some flowery praise given in a speech just two weeks before at Georgia Tech; word naturally got back to Talmadge, and he growled: "You can put Herman Talmadge down against Strauss." Three times Anderson guided West Virginia's wavering freshman Robert Byrd through the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee's 1,128-page transcript of the bitterly quarrelsome confirmation hearings, finally won his vote, even though Byrd was under heavy pressure from coal operators and the United Mine Workers, who like Lewis Strauss's quota on oil imports.
Then, on the morning before the showdown, Anderson checked off his second Republican vote. Unlike North Dakota's maverick William ("Wild Bill") Langer, who announced back in May that he was going to vote against Strauss, Maine's Margaret Chase Smith kept a pursed-lipped silence about her intentions, but she tipped Anderson off by asking him to help her go over the committee hearings. What ever she found in the transcript, her decision seemed to be motivated in part by pique at getting no G.O.P. help at all in her feuding campaign to keep Air Force Lieut. General Emmett ("Rosie") O'Donnell Jr. from getting a fourth star, in part to her feeling, well known to Senators of both parties, that the Eisenhower Administration does not pay enough attention to the only woman in the Senate.
Men in a Hurry. Sure at last that he had enough votes to beat Strauss, Anderson asked Texas' Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson to insist on a vote at midweek. Still stinging from the "Won't-Do Congress" gibe that G.O.P. National Chairman (and Senator from Kentucky) Thruston B. Morton hurled at him in early June, Johnson suddenly became a man in a hurry.
Right after an appropriations bill tally that showed five Republicans absent and all 64 Democrats present—Johnson and Anderson had seen to the Democratic attendance—Johnson pushed for a vote on Strauss. Caught with three men scattered far from Washington, Republican leaders huddled in Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen's office, decided on a strategy: filibuster until the missing
Republicans could get to Capitol Hill to cast their ayes. Dirksen himself got on the phone to do some long-distance calling. He hustled Kentucky's Morton onto a plane in Denver, where he was about to address the Young Republican National Federation. With help from the White House, he whisked Utah's Wallace Bennett back from Salt Lake City in an Air Force two-seat T-33 trainer—Bennett's first jet flight of his 60 years.