1950 United States Senate elections


The 1950 United States Senate elections occurred in the middle of Harry S. Truman's second term as President. As with most 20th-century second-term mid-terms, the party out of the Presidency made significant gains. The Republican opposition made a net gain of five seats, taking advantage of the Democratic administration's declining popularity during the Cold War and the aftermath of the Recession of 1949. The Democrats held a narrow 49 to 47 seat majority after the election. This became the first time since 1932 that the Senate Majority Leader lost his seat and the only instance where the majority leader lost his seat while his party retained the majority.

Gains and losses

The Republicans defeated four incumbent Democrats:
  1. Illinois: Democrat Scott W. Lucas, lost to Everett Dirksen.
  2. Maryland: Millard Tydings lost to John Marshall Butler.
  3. Pennsylvania: Francis J. Myers lost to James H. Duff.
  4. Utah: Elbert D. Thomas lost to Wallace F. Bennett.
Republicans also won two open seats:
  1. Idaho: Glen H. Taylor lost renomination to David Worth Clark, who ended up losing the general election to Herman Welker.
  2. California: Sheridan Downey retired, citing ill health and facing a tough renomination fight against Helen Gahagan Douglas, who ended up losing the general election to Richard Nixon.
Democrats defeated one incumbent Republican:
  1. Missouri: Forrest C. Donnell lost to Thomas C. Hennings Jr.

    Change in composition

Before the elections

Results of the elections

Key:

Race summaries

Special elections during the 81st Congress

In these special elections, the winners were seated during 1950 or before January 3, 1951; ordered by election date.

Races leading to the 82nd Congress

In these general elections, the winner was seated on January 3, 1951; ordered by state.
All of the elections involved the Class 3 seats.

Special elections during the 82nd Congress

There were no elections in 1951 to the 82nd Congress.

Alabama

Arizona

Incumbent Democratic U.S. senator Carl Hayden ran for re-election to a fifth term, defeating Republican nominee Bruce Brockett in the general election. Brockett was formerly the Republican nominee for governor in both 1946 and 1948. Hayden first defeated Cecil H. Miller and Robert E. Miller, for the Democratic nomination.

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Connecticut (General)

Connecticut (Special)

Florida

Democratic incumbent Senator Claude Pepper lost renomination May 2, 1950 to George A. Smathers, who easily won the general election.
The Democratic primary for the 1950 United States Senate election in Florida was described as the "most bitter and ugly campaigns in Florida political history." Ormund Powers, a Central Florida historian, noted that ABC and NBC commentator David Brinkley said that "the Peppers-Smathers campaign would always stand out in his mind as the dirtiest in the history of American politics". On January 12, 1950, U.S. Representative George A. Smathers declared his candidacy for the race in Orlando at Kemp's Coliseum, where about 3,000 supporters had gathered. In his opening speech, Smathers accused Pepper of being "the leader of the radicals and extremists", an advocate of treason, and a person against the constitutional rights of Americans. Ed Ball, a power in state politics who had broken with Claude Pepper, financed his opponent, Smathers.
Prior to the entry of Smathers and Pepper, Orlando attorney James G. Horrell campaigned for the seat. Horrell researched Pepper's weaknesses and the state's voters. Horrell also compiled a list of communist-front groups that Pepper had communicated with. On the day that Pepper declared his candidacy, Horrell withdrew and endorsed Smathers. Horrell also sent his reports about Pepper to Smathers, which he used throughout the next few months. This would also prevent the chance of a run-off election. In late February and early March, the Jacksonville Journal conducted a poll in 11 counties important for the election. Smathers led by about 2-to-1 and dominated in Duval, Pinellas, and Volusia counties, while he was also statistically tied with Pepper in Dade, Escambia, and Hillsborough counties. However, Smathers did not trail in any of the 11 counties.
Smathers repeatedly attacked "Red Pepper" for having communist sympathies, condemning both his support for universal health care and his alleged support for the Soviet Union. Pepper had traveled to the Soviet Union in 1945 and, after meeting Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, declared he was "a man Americans could trust." Additionally, although Pepper supported universal health care, sometimes referred to as "socialized medicine", Smathers voted for "socialized medicine" in the senate when it was introduced as Medicare in 1965. In The Saturday Evening Post, even respected writer and notorious anti-segregation editor Ralph McGill labeled Pepper a "spell-binding pinko". Beginning on March 28 and until the day of the primary, Smathers named one communist organization each day that Pepper addressed, starting with the American Slav Congress.
Pepper's opponents circulated widely a 49-page booklet titled The Red Record of Senator Claude Pepper. It contained photographs and headlines from several communist publications such as the Daily Worker. In April the Daily Worker endorsed Pepper, with Communist Party of Florida leader George Nelson warning that a Smathers victory would "strengthen the Dixiecrat-KKK forces in Florida as well as throughout the South." The booklet also made it seem as if Pepper desired to give Russia nuclear bomb-making instructions, billions of dollars, and the United States' natural resources. There was also a double page montage of Pepper in 1946 at New York City's Madison Square Garden with progressive Henry A. Wallace and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, and quoted Pepper speaking favorably of both of them. Throughout the campaign, Pepper denied sympathizing with communism.
Simultaneous to this election, then-U.S. House Representative Richard Nixon was running for the senate seat in California. In a letter from Senator Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota, he told Nixon that "It occurs to me that if Helen is your opponent in the fall, something of a similar nature might well be produced", in reference to The Red Record of Senator Claude Pepper and a similar Democratic primary between Manchester Boddy and Helen Gahagan Douglas.
Race also played a role in the election. Labor unions began a voter registration drive, which mostly added African Americans to the voter rolls. Smathers accused the "Northern labor bosses" of paying black people to register and vote for Pepper. Shortly after Smathers declared his candidacy, he indicated to the Florida Peace Officers Association that he would defend law enforcement officers for free if they were found guilty of civil rights violations. With the election occurring during the era of racial segregation, Pepper was portrayed as favoring integration and interracial marriage. He was also labeled a "nigger lover" and accused by Orlando Sentinel publisher Martin Andersen of shaking hands with a black woman in Sanford. In Dade County, which had a significant black and Jewish population, doctored photographs depicting Smathers in a Ku Klux Klan hood were distributed.
In the Groveland Case, four young African American men – Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd, and Ernest Thomas – known as the Groveland Four, were accused of raping a 17-year old white women in Groveland on July 16, 1949. Thomas fled the area but was later shot and killed by police. Greenlee, Irvin, and Shepherd were convicted by an all-white jury. After the St. Petersburg Times questioned the verdict in April 1950, Lake County State Attorney J. W. Hunter, a supporter of Pepper, demanded that Pepper repudiate the news articles. However, Pepper refused. Hunter then denounced Pepper and endorsed Smathers. In addition to the racial violence, cross burning was also common at the time, with five in Jacksonville, ten in Orlando and Winter Park, and seventeen in the Tallahassee area.
With the accusation of "Northern labor bosses" sending "the carpetbaggers of 1950" to Florida on his behalf, Pepper reminded voters that Smathers was born in New Jersey and sometimes referred to him as a "damn Yankee intruder". In response, Smathers decorated speaking platform in the colors of his alma mater at the University of Florida, orange and blue, while informing his supporters that Pepper graduated from Harvard Law School.
Powers noted that throughout the campaign, "scarcely a day passed" without Andersen writing a news story, column, or editorial that was very positive of Smathers or highly critical of Pepper. Thirty-eight daily newspapers in Florida endorsed Smathers, while only the St. Petersburg Times and The Daytona Beach News-Journal endorsed Pepper. Among the newspapers that supported Smathers were the Miami Herald, owned by John S. Knight, and the Miami Daily News, published by James M. Cox, a former Governor of Ohio and the Democratic Party nominee for the 1920 presidential election. However, Pepper's aides compared this situation to when Alf Landon was endorsed by more editors and newspapers than Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, but received far fewer votes than him.
Smathers performed generally well across many areas of the state, with the exception of Miami, Tampa, and the Florida Panhandle. On the morning after the election, Andersen wrote on the front-page headline of the Orlando Sentinel, "Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow... We Have Won from Hell to Breakfast And From Dan to Beersheba... And Staved Off Socialism", which was inspired by a headline in The New York Times celebrating Lawerence of Arabia's victory over the Turks in 1917.
Smathers defeated Booth in a landslide in the general election on November 7. Results indicated that Smathers received 76.3% of the vote compared to just 23.7% for Booth. In the popular vote, Smathers garnered 238,987 votes versus 74,228 for Booth. Smathers fared well throughout the state and won all but Pinellas County.

Georgia

Idaho

Idaho (General)

Idaho (Special)

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kansas (General)

Kansas (Special)

Kentucky

Kentucky (General)

Kentucky (Special)

Louisiana

Maryland

Missouri

Nevada

New Hampshire

New York

The Socialist Workers state convention met on July 9, and nominated Joseph Hansen for the U.S. Senate.
The American Labor state convention met on September 6 and nominated W.E.B. DuBois for the U.S. Senate.
The Republican state convention met on September 7 at Saratoga Springs, New York. They re-nominated Lieutenant Governor Joe R. Hanley for the U.S. Senate.
The Democratic state convention met on September 7 at Rochester, New York, and re-nominated the incumbent U.S. senator Herbert H. Lehman
The Liberal state convention met on September 6 and 7 at the Statler Hotel in New York City, and endorsed Democratic nominee Lehman.
Although almost the whole Republican statewide ticket was elected in a landslide, only the Democratic incumbent U.S. senator, Ex-Governor Herbert H. Lehman, managed to stay in office.

North Carolina

There were 2 elections in North Carolina.

North Carolina (General)

North Carolina (Special)

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island (Special)

South Carolina

South Dakota

Utah

Vermont

Washington

Wisconsin

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