Democrats maintain control of Congress
House seats
Democrat Republican
Elected 147 199
Leading 33 29
New Total 180 228
Present 179 256
Repns. won 15 Dem. seats, leading for
9 Dem. seats.
Dems won 8 Repn. seats, leading for 5 Repn. seats.
Senate seats
Democrat Republican
Elected 14 14
Leading 2 2
Holdovers 26 41
New Total 42 57
Present 45 55
Repns. won 3 Deni, seats, leading for 1 Dem. seat.
Dems. won 4 Repn. seats, leading for 1 Repn. seat.
By JOHN HALL
WASHINGTON DPI — Democrats
fought to retain control of Congress in
Tuesday’s election against faint
Republican hopes that a presidential
landslide would give them control of both
the House and Senate for the first time in
18 years.
With all 435 seats in the House of
Representatives at stake, 44 were won by
the Democrats and 7 by the Republicans in
the early counting.
In the Senate, 33 of the 100 seats were up
for grabs. Forty-one Democrats and 26
Republicans will return to the 93rd
Congress regardless of Tuesday’s
balloting.
Republicans pinned their hopes for a
takeover on the coattails of President
Nixon, but that possibility was considered
a longshot both for the House and for the
Senate.
Among those winning re-election without
opposition were four powerful Democratic
committee chairmen in the House —
Wilbur Mills, Ark., Ways and Means; W.R.
Poage, Tex., Agriculture; Edward Hebert,
La., Armed Services; and Wright Patman,
Tex., Banking and Currency.
House Democratic Leader Hale Boggs,
still missing in Alaska, and Democratic
Whip Thomas O’Neill of Massachusetts
both were re-elected y/ithout opposition.
All these officeholders and others would
lose their jobs if Democrats lost control of
Congress.
The majority party organizes each
house, selects the committee chairmen
and controls the flow of legislation to the
floor.
Democrats have been in control of both
houses since 1954. Except for four years.
they hav6 had the majority since 1932.
Democrats in the last Congress had a 10
vote edge in the Senate — 55 to 45. This
meant Republicans need only a net gain of
five seats to win control, providing Vice
President Spiro Agnew wins re-election
and casts the tie-breaking vote on
organizational control in the next session.
However, only 14 of the seats to be filled
are Democratic and 19 are Republicans.
Consequently, the Democrats needed to
win only 10 of the contested seats to
guarantee control of the Senate, while the
Republicans must win at least 24.
On top of this, several of the 19
Republican seats were threatened by
strong bids by Democratic challengers.
In Delaware, 29-year-old Joseph Biden
Jr. was giving Sen. Caleb Boggs, R-Del.,
the fight of his career and in Kentucky,
where Sen. John Sherman Cooper, R-Ky.,
retired, former Republican Gov. Louie
Nunn and Democratic State Sen. Walter
Huddleston were in a neck and neck race
for Cooper’s seat.
Biden would become the youngest
member of the Senate ever popularly
elected — qualifying for the age-30
minimum by only 44 days should he be
sworn in next January.
The election also was likely to produce
the first Black member of the Congress
from the South since Reconstruction.
Barbara Jordan, 36, of Houston, was the
favorite in a three-way race for a newly
redistricted Texas congressional seat.
Two other blacks were considered strong
possibilities for House seats from the
South — Andrew Young, a former aide to
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in Atlanta,
and J.O. Patterson Jr., in Memphis.
McGovern:
‘Too
old
to cry’
By WESLEY G. PIPPERT
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. UPI —
Acknowledging that “it hurts to lose,”
George S. McGovern conceded the election
to President Nixon late Tuesday but said
he felt sure his campaign “would bear
fruit for years to come.”
McGovern said he telegraphed his
congratulations and promise of support for
the next four years to the President at the
White House, but he told his cheering
supporters: “We do not rally to the sup
port of policies that we deplore. But we do
love this country and we will continue to
beckon it to a higher standard.”
McGovern appeared with his wife,
Eleanor, four daughters, his son and a son
in-law at his headquarters here shortly
before midnight EST as the President
rolled up one of the largest landslides in
history. Some of the women blinked back
tears.
“We are not going to shed any tears
tonight about the great joys this campaign
has given us in the past two years,” said
McGovern, who announced his candidacy
in this same prairie town in January of
1971.
“It does hurt all of us in this auditorium
and many others across the country to
lose. But we have found the greatest
outpouring of energy and love ... We will
never forget these we have seen at
countless meeting places around the
country. . .”
‘There can be no question that we
pushed this country in the direction of
peace and I think each of us prefers the
title of peacemaker to any other title in the
land.” McGovern told his cheering sup
porters.
McGovern said if his effort had brought
peace “one day closer” then “every
moment in this entire campaign was worth
the sacrifice.”
Nixon:
God
bless
America'
By ROBERT M. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON UPI — President Nixon
won re-election over George S. McGovern
in an election landslide of historic
dimemsions Tuesday night.
Demolishing the old Democratic
coalition with a sweep of the entire South,
the West and the populous Northern and
Midwestern industrial states, Nixon — the
classic political “loser” just a decade ago
handed the South Dakota senator the
worst drubbing in electoral votes that any
Democratic presidential candidate has
suffered since 1864.
McGovern’s tortuous, 22-month
campaign for the presidency at the head of
a shattered party yielded him only 21
electoral votes from Massachusetts and
the predominantly black District of
Columbia.
Nixon surpassed the 270 electoral votes
required for victory at 9:25 p.m. EST and
roared on to seal McGovern’s disaster,
winning even his home state of South
Dakota.
After receiving telephoned election
returns while alone in the Lincoln Sitting
Room of the White House, the President
told the nation by television shortly before
midnight that the country and both
political parties were united“in our desire
for peace . . . peace with honor.”
Said Nixon: “We are on the eve of what
could be the greatest generation of peace
that man has ever known.”
Photo by Bruce Lsndrey
McGovern supporter
at Eugene headquarters
was not too old to cry.