THE NEW SENATOR

Sworn in last week as the junior U.S. Senator from Wisconsin: Edward William Proxmire, 41.

Early Life: Born in Lake Forest, Ill., son of a wealthy physician and Republican, he went to Hill Preparatory School in Pottstown, Pa., where his classmates voted him "biggest grind,'' and to Yale University (.'38), where he got his letter for boxing and football (end), though he had earlier won the unhappy practice-session distinction of dropping ten straight forward passes from Yale's All-America Clint Frank. He got a master's degree (1940) and a liberal bent from Harvard Business School ("I didn't raise my boy to be a Democrat," says father Proxmire. "Harvard's where it happened"), put in six months as a trainee for Wall Street's J.P. Morgan & Co., five years in the U.S. Army (Stateside) in World War II, decided to leave business for politics because "the area of responsibility and opportunities were no longer in business but in public office."

Political Career: In 1949 Illinoisan Proxmire moved to Wisconsin as the kind of liberal state, La Follette and all that, that might enshrine a liberal political career. He worked as a reporter for the New Dealing Madison Capital Times, as business manager for the local A.F.L.'s Union Labor News, bought a half-interest in a printing plant in Waterloo (pop. 1,667). In 1950 he put on a handshaking campaign for the state assembly, ousted a six-term incumbent in the Democratic primary and later beat the Republican candidate by a 2-1 margin. He went on to write a record as a diligent researcher into tax problems, a highroad critic of high-riding Joe McCarthy and a smiling sort who took defeat good-naturedly. The defeats: in 1952 for governor, by Walter Kohler. by 400,000 votes; in 1954 for governor, by Walter Kohler. by 35,000 votes; in 1956 for governor, by Vernon Thomson, by 59,000 votes.

This year he campaigned about the state from the back of a 1955 Chevrolet and from $2.50-a-night hotel rooms to capitalize on this record. "My opponent does not know what it is to lose. I do. And I'll welcome the support of voters who do too. I'll take the losers . . . I'll take the debtors . . . I'll take the Milwaukee Braves . . . The next Senator from Wisconsin should be one who knows defeat."

Personality & Philosophy. Sincere and single-minded about his political future, Bill Proxmire does not smoke or drink, teaches Sunday school (Episcopal) and wallows in the Congressional Record. In 1955 he was divorced, after nine years of marriage, two children, from Elsie Rockefeller, great-granddaughter of old John D.'s brother William (she later married a man who helped out on Bill's 1954 campaign). Last December he married Mrs. Ellen Sawall. 32, a pert, Virginia-born Phi Beta Kappa (University of Richmond) with two children, whom he met while she was financial secretary of the state Democratic Party. His political philosophy: down the line with his personal friend Adlai Stevenson, but beyond Stevenson in espousal of federal aid for farmers, "the one out of seven Americans who are the forgotten men in our economy."

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