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May 10, 2005

Roll Call's Top Ten


by Cliopatria


This morning's Roll Call offers its list of the nation's top ten Senate races since the magazine's founding 50 years ago. The article is subscription only, but here's the list:

1961 Texas Senate race: John Tower (R) vs. William Blakley (D)

1970 Tennessee Senate race: Al Gore Sr. (D) vs. Bill Brock (R)

1974 Nevada Senate race: Paul Laxalt (R) vs. Harry Reid (D)

1980 Idaho Senate race: Frank Church (D) vs. Steve Symms (R)

1980 New York Senate race: Al D’Amato (R) vs. Elizabeth Holtzman (D)

1984 North Carolina Senate race: Jesse Helms (R) vs. Jim Hunt (D)

1992 Georgia Senate race: Paul Coverdell (R) vs. Wyche Fowler (D)

1994 California Senate race: Dianne Feinstein (D) vs. Michael Huffington (R)

1994 Virginia Senate race: Chuck Robb (D) vs. Oliver North (R)

2004 South Dakota Senate race: Tom Daschle (D) vs. John Thune (R)

I'd agree with 2004 SD, 1984 NC, 1980 NY, 1970 TN, and perhaps 1961 TX, but in lieu of the other five, I would include the following:

--1964 NY. Along with Helms/Hunt, the only Senate race during this time period that overshadowed the same year's presidential contest. This race had everything: personal intrigue between LBJ and RFK; the typical ethnic, racial, and regional squabbling among the NY Democratic Party; Kenneth Keating's debate against a chair, after the Keating staff blocked RFK from entering the debate hall; an outcome that positioned RFK to eventually rival Johnson for control of the Democratic Party.

--1970 NY. A three-way contest between Republican Charles Goodell, appointed to the seat following RFK's assassination; Richard Ottinger, an early environmentalist and ardently anti-war Dem congressman; and the Conservative Party nominee, James Buckley (brother of the National Review founder and editor, William F. Buckley). Goodell's lurch to the left in the Senate robbed him of much Republican support, and it appeared that Ottinger would edge Buckley until Spiro Agnew made a highly-publicized visit to the state lambasting Goodell (whom the VP denounced as a"political Christine Jorgenson"). As the White House had hoped, Agnew's attacks triggered a sympathy vote for Goodell among the principled voters of the New York City Left, who switched from Ottinger to Goodell in just a large enough number to ensure the election of Buckley with 39 percent of the vote.

--1986 SD. A race that matched the state's leading political figures of a generation: incumbent Republican James Abdnor, who had crushed George McGovern in 1980; maverick then- and future governor (and congressman) William Janklow; and then-congressman Tom Daschle. Abdnor edged Janklow in the primary but could not best Daschle in an outcome that previewed the Dem recapture of the Senate in 1986.

--1992 IL. A case could be made that this contest featured the biggest Senate upset of the last 50 years: in 1991, who could have predicted that incumbent senator Alan Dixon, overwhelmingly elected in 1980 and re-elected in 1986, would fall in the primary to a black woman who had never run statewide? Though her Senate career didn't live up to the promise of the campaign, Carol Moseley-Braun's victory in many ways set the stage for the (slowly) increasing number of African-American candidates making realistic statewide runs across the country.

--2000 MO. Another clash of state political titans, pairing former governor and then-senator John Ashcroft against then-governor Mel Carnahan. Carnahan's death in a plane crash seemed to seal the race for Ashcroft, only to see his widow, Jean, announce that she would accept the seat in her late husband's place.

And, perhaps replacing Texas 1961 would be North Carolina 1990, if only because it featured the most famous Senate campaign commercial of the last 50 years--Jesse Helms' brutally effective "white hands" ad, used against the African-American mayor of Charlotte, Harvey Gantt.


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More Comments:

Andre Mayer - 5/11/2005

Dead candidates have won a lot of elections -- but usually as incumbents. Can we think of another dead challenger who won? And doesn't Ashcroft's defeat cast doubt on his status as a political titan (despite his subsequent national importance)? I'd suggest Kuchel's defeat in CA, as a harbinger of the disappearance of moderate Republicanism.

Oscar Chamberlain - 5/11/2005

It's easy to miss what the future is bringing. During the 1976 primary, I was at Texas Tech, and Gerald Ford came to town. I thought it a measure of Lubbock's backwardness that there were more people passing out literature for that joker Reagan than for Ford.

Ah well. The day may have been worth it when, after the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, one of my profs yelled out, "Play Ball!"

Ralph E. Luker - 5/10/2005

Oscar, I was on the Orange County (Chapel Hill), North Carolina, Republican Executive Committee when the rumor was first floated that Jesse Helms was considering a bid for the United States Senate. It's a measure of how isolated academics can be in a university town that I scoffed at the very idea. I'm afraid to admit that I wouldn't have scoffed at the idea if my hold on North Carolina history had been stronger than it was.

Oscar Chamberlain - 5/10/2005

I lived in upstate South Carolina in 1990 and got some North Carolina stations on cable. I still have not forgiven Helms or the Republican party. He openly played for the bigot vote, and Republicans kept him in a leadership position.

They were the party of bigotry that year.

Robert KC Johnson - 5/10/2005

Yes, I was surprised by the CA 1994 selection as well, since apart from the $$ angle, there wasn't anything too distinctive about it. If I were going to pick a CA race, I would have chosen Barbara Boxer's triumph in 1992--very interesting primary, and then the election of a candidate everyone thought was too liberal to win.

Ralph E. Luker - 5/10/2005

Excellent calls, KC. Some of these Senate races have to stand in as representative of the widespread displacement of white Southern Democrats in the Senate by Republicans. I suppose Tower/Blakely and Helms/Hunt do that, though Helms was the incumbent in the latter. Roll Call's selection of Feinstein/Huffington is really quirky, unless they're talking simply about the amount of cash expended. Do you think that's its criteria? As I recall, all of the races it lists were extremely expensive ones.