Some New Boys in the Old Club

Retirements and upsets will bring more new faces to the Senate than any election since 1958. Among them:

SO confident was Margaret Chase Smith that she would win a fifth Senate term that she returned $20,000 in political contributions and ran an aloof campaign that stressed the Smith record of service during 32 years in Congress. After all, had she not beaten back a determined primary challenge with just such a cool approach?

In fact, that primary campaign was what began Maggie Smith's defeat. During it, her opponent managed to make her age, 74, a campaign issue for the first time. This fall Democratic Challenger William Hathaway, a four-term Congressman, shrewdly avoided direct attacks on Mrs. Smith's age to prevent a sympathetic backlash, but played up his own age, 48, and his vigor. Another factor: Hathaway, a liberal of the Muskie stripe, had prepared for this election by maintaining high visibility. His 6 ft. 3 in. figure was seen everywhere around the state, and his flair for publicity got him frequent radio and newspaper coverage. Mrs. Smith, meanwhile, stayed far above the battle.

> One of the biggest Senate upsets took place in one of the smallest states. Delaware's J. Caleb Boggs, 63, after three terms as Congressman, two more as Governor, and two as U.S. Senator, was forcibly retired by Democratic Upstart Joseph R. Biden Jr., 29. Biden's most important political post until now has been two years as a member of the New Castle county council.

Biden defeated the respected Boggs and withstood the Nixon avalanche by making his inexperience a virtue. "Politicians have done such a job on the people," he insisted during the campaign, "that the people don't believe them any more. I'd like a shot at changing that." The young Wilmington lawyer, who rides a motorcycle and plays touch football, was helped enormously by pert Sister Valerie, 26 (as campaign manager), a brace of other siblings, and parents who collectively reminded Delaware voters of the Kennedy family.

> Richard Nixon won close to 70% of Virginia's presidential vote, and one result was an unexpected defeat for Moderate Democrat William B. Spong Jr., 52. Spong had led Republican William L Scoff, 57, for much of the campaign. One reason: Scott, a three-term Fairfax Congressman, was presumably so inept that the Washington Post stoned him for "unimpressive service" in the House and "shallow understanding" of the Senate.

Scott had friends, however. One lent him $200,000 for a last-minute media blitz. Scott challenged Spong to say which presidential candidate he backed; Spong was damaged politically when a newsman reported having heard him tell some students that he was for Senator McGovern.

-- No one summed up the political philosophy of North Carolina's new Republican Senator-elect, Jesse Helms, better than Barry Goldwater. "If you want to out-Goldwater Goldwater," the Arizona Senator told North Carolinians, "let him come." Helms, in his victory over three-term Congressman Nick Galifianakis for the seat now held by Democrat B. Everett Jordan, was also aided by a timely endorsement from President Nixon.

Nixon's support was generous, considering that Helms, as a longtime Raleigh television and radio commentator, had lambasted the President (for "appeasing") almost as often as he attacked Social Security ("doles and handouts") or rural electrification ("socialistic power"). But North Carolina is undergoing a major political shift and the opportunity to pick up a Republican Senate vote was compelling. Nixon stopped off at Greensboro over the weekend to say of Helms: "I need him and I deeply appreciate your support for this fine man." Meanwhile, Helms hired the eminent conservative campaign consultant F. Clifton White. Under White's tutelage, Helms, 51, modulated his more extreme positions, thereby overcoming what had been a substantial Galifianakis lead.

> The campaign for a Georgia Senate seat eventually developed into a bare-knuckle brawl between Democrat Sam Nunn, 34, and Republican Congressman Fletcher Thompson, 47. As the campaign reached its climax, Nunn happily swung a devastating haymaker: Opponent Thompson during his six years in Congress had dropped 119 bills into the hopper, but not one had ever made it out of committee. "He's just interested in headlines," snorted Nunn. Nunn's ridicule was helped along by some Thompson gaffes. The Congressman, who pilots his own plane, at one point scheduled an airport press conference and then proceeded to the wrong airport.

> A combination of luck and hard campaigning won a Louisiana Senate seat for J. Benneff Johnston Jr., 40, a Shreveport lawyer and former state senator. His good fortune occurred in July after Senator Allen J. Ellender died suddenly at 81. Johnston, who had already filed as Ellender's Democratic primary opponent, easily won the nomination. Former Governor John McKeithen, 54, attempted to become a late-starting Democratic candidate but was barred by the party. McKeithen waged an emotional campaign as an independent. But Johnston neatly sloughed off his charges that he was a "country club kid" to defeat "Big John" McKeithen and two other candidates.

>Kentucky Democrat Walter D. Huddleston, 46, is generally known as "Dee," from hi? middle initial. The nickname was a handy one during his successful campaign for the Senate seat vacated by Republican John Sherman Cooper. As state senate majority leader, Huddleston helped repeal a 5% sales tax on food items that Kentuckians vigorously resented; the tax, as it happened, had been raised by his opponent, former Governor Louie B. Nunn (no kin to Georgia's new Senator Sam Nunn). Huddleston labeled Oct. 1, when the tax repeal on food items took effect, as "Dee-day" and reminded voters to "dee-duct" part of the cost of bread, milk and other essential items.

The sales tax increase, and the fact that Nunn ran for Governor in 1967 on a no-new-tax platform, so irritated voters that Huddleston made it the foundation of a strong campaign. Tuesday became another Dee-day, and Huddleston emerged as the first Kentucky Democrat in the U.S. Senate in 18 years.

> On a hunch that two-term Republican Senator Jack Miller, 56, was vulnerable this time around, Iowa Congressman John Culver made plans to challenge him. But Culver lost heart at the last minute and the nomination went to his administrative assistant, Dick Clark, 43. Clark, though a political unknown, ran such a skillful campaign that he will now outshine his former boss as Iowa's junior Senator.

Clark's first strategy was a three-month, 1,312-mile walking tour which helped him identify issues and helped Iowans identify him. Next, he zeroed in on Miller for missing meetings of the Senate Special Committee on the Aging: that was a telling charge in Iowa, which sometimes claims to have an older average population than any other state. The rest was easy because Clark was backed up by a superb organization --which he himself had put together for Culver's anticipated campaign.

-- In Idaho the Senate race drew more attention than the presidential campaign. After Len B. Jordan announced his retirement, Democrats decided to go after what had previously been a safe Republican seat. But Congressman James A. McClure, 47, survived a tendentious G.O.P. primary --and Jordan's coolness toward him --to win a tough contest.

McClure is a consistent conservative who in the past has supported re- peal of the federal income tax, and more recently opposed a Government rat-extermination program ("In Payette we kill our own rats"). He ran a smooth campaign against Idaho State University President William E. Davis, 43, shrewdly tying the moderate Democrat to unpopular McGovern positions. When it came out that Davis endorsed the farm workers' lettuce boycott, Mc-Clure staffers passed the word: "Will a potato boycott be next?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.