California's All-Time Top Ten U.S. Senate Races
Submitted by editor on March 23, 2008 - 10:56am.Since the direct election of U.S. Senators began in 1914, California has had 35 general elections of the U.S. Senate, including special elections. Here is our very subjective list of the ten best.
1  In an epic Senate battle for the open Senate seat of retiring Democrat Sheridan Downey, Rep. Richard Nixon beat Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas by a 59%-41% margin. For more information, read Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas--Sexual Politics and the Red Scare, 1950 (NewYork: Random House, 1998), |
2  Max Rafferty, California's conservative Superintendent of Public Instruction, defeated three-term incumbent Thomas Kuchel in the GOP primary (50%-47%), and then lost the general election to Alan Cranston, the State Comptroller, 52%-57%. Cranston went on to spend 24 years in the Senate, including a stint as Senate Majority Whip and in 1984, a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. |
3  Seven-term Congressman Clair Engle (D) defeated popular Gov. Goodwin Knight in 1958 after the incumbent, Senate Minority Leader Bill Knowland, decided he wanted to run for Governor instead; he thought being Governor would enhance his presidential aspirations. Pat Brown beat Knowland in the gubernatorial race, and Engle beat Knight, 57%-43%. |
4  Republican Tom Kuchel was the 43-year-old California State Controller when he was appointed to the Senate in 1953, after Richard Nixon's election as Vice President. In a 1954 special election for the two-year unexpired term, Kuchel beat Sam Yorty, a Democratic Congressman from Los Angeles, by a 53%-46% margin. Yorty later served three terms as Mayor of Los Angeles and sough the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. Kuchel lost his bid for a fourth term in the 1968 GOP primary. Yorty lost his bid for a fourth term as Mayor in 1973, and lost comeback bids for U.S. Senate in 1980 and Mayor in 1981. |
5  When 76-year-old one-term wonder S.I. Hayakawa retired in 1982, the GOP ran Pete Wilson, the Mayor of San Diego and the Democratic candidate was Jerry Brown, who has served two terms as Governor and ran twice for President. Wilson beat Reps. Pete McCloskey and Barry Goldwater, Jr. and Bob Dornan in the GOP primary, while Brown defeated novelist Gore Vidal. Wilson won the general election, 53%-45%, over Brown. He served in the Senate until his election as Governor in 1990. Brown ran for President again in 1992, served as Mayor of Oakland, and won election as California Attorney General in 2006. |
6  Dianne Feinstein, elected rather easily (54%-38% over incumbent John Seymour) in a 1992 special election for the remaining two years of Pete Wilson's seat, was supposed to have an easy race in 1994. But Michael Huffington, a one-term Congressman, spent nearly $30 million of his own fortune and held Feinstein to a 47%-45% margin -- a margin of just 121,000 votes out of nearly 8 million cast. |
7  After Clair Engle's untimely death from brain cancer at age 52, Gov. Pat Brown appointed Pierre Salinger, who had been John F. Kennedy's press secretary, to the U.S. Senate. Salinger ran for a full six-year term in 1964 and lost to Republican George Murphy, a onetime song-and-dance man who had served two terms as President of the Screen Actors Guild -- this was two years before Ronald Reagan ran for Governor. Murphy beat Salinger, 51%-49%. |
8  Bill Knowland, a California State Senator and son of the Oakland Tribune publisher, was serving in World War II when he was appointed to fill the U.S. Senate seat caused by the death of five-term Sen. Hiram Johnson. His opponent in 1946 was Will Rogers, Jr., 35, a one-term Democratic Congressman and the son of the legendary humorist. Knowland won 54%-44%. Footnote: Knowland committed suicide in 1974 and Rogers took his own life in 1993. |
9  This was the first time California voters elected a United States Senator, and it was a three-way race between Democrat James Phelan, 53 the former Mayor of San Francisco, Joe Knowland, 41, a one-term Congressman and the Oakland Tribune publisher, and Francis Heney, 55, a former SF prosecutor and onetime Attorney General of the Arizona territory. Phelan won with 32%, to 29% for Heney and 29% for Knowland. |
10  n/a |
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