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Tattered Coattails. Political coattails were next to worthless. Adlai Stevenson had depended on strong Democratic state tickets to help him win; only in Missouri, where the Democratic ticket was led by able Senator Tom Hennings. did "Operation Reverse Coattails" succeed. Oregon's Republican Douglas McKay chatted endlessly at the corner gas station or general store about his service as Eisenhower's Secretary of the Interior. But Oregonians were interested in issues, e.g., public power, declining lumber prices, and they re-elected the man who discussed those issues: professorial Democratic Senator Wrayne Morse (who was also pretty good at the country-crossroads campaign once he got the hang of it). In Colorado. Republican Dan Thornton did little besides sashay around in cowboy boots and talk about his (very valid) friendship with Ike. But voters remembered that Texasborn Dan Thornton spends much of his time away from Colorado and that, as governor, he had tried to revise the bookkeeping on Colorado's old-age-pension system. They sent Democrat John Carroll, plain-spoken and obviously homegrown, to the Senate.
Ohio's Republican Senator George Bender campaigned as a 100% Ikeman—but Ohioans still thought of him as a bell-ringing buffoon at the 1952 Republican convention, and they overwhelmingly backed Governor Frank Lausche, a great vote-getter who managed to project his own honesty and humility (but little more), and thus seemed to rise above political partisanship.
Massachusetts' Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Sumner Whittier gladhand-ed his way around the state as a simon-pure Eisenhower supporter; he took a fearsome trouncing (141,000) from Democrat Foster Furcolo, who could point to a solid congressional record.
Clobbered Clowns. As they made their decisions, even voters in the most hidebound areas jumped traditional party lines in pursuit of their local or regional interests. Kansas Republicans, fed up with G.O.P. factionalism, named Democrat George Docking governor over Warren Shaw (who suffered the additional liability of charges that he had taken kickbacks on gasoline sales to the state). In Republican Iowa, voters resented G.O.P. Governor Leo Hoegh's move-fast, high-tax program (TIME, Oct. 22), and elected Democrat Herschel Loveless. In West Virginia, corruption charges against the outgoing Democratic state administration resulted in the election of Republican Old Guardsman Chapman Revercomb to the U.S. Senate and of Republican Cecil Underwood, a party comer at 34, as governor (Democratic House Incumbent M. G. Burnside lost to Republican Will Neal partly because the Democratic administration messed up a garbage-hauling contract). In the Great Plains, farm unrest caused the defeat of Republican House incumbents in South Dakota and Montana.