EDITORIAL
March 4, 1954

Futures of Those Censured

In the likelihood that despite delay, despite a possible watering-down of the resolution, Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin will eventually be censured by the Senate, the question then arises: What of his political future?

The last censured Senator was Hiram Bingham of Connecticut. He was renominated two and one-half years after but lost in a close race, getting 49.6% of the total major party vote. The fact that he was an outstanding anti-prohibitionist – the election was in 1932 – may have been a factor in his defeat. And, it must also be noted, five other Republican candidates that year were also defeated by much wider margins. There is, then, no clear evidence that the censure resolution had and appreciable effect on Mr. Bingham’s candidacy for reelection.

A Texas congressman, the turbulent Tom Blanton of Texas, was censured by the House in 1921. He was reelected for three terms thereafter, defeated in a primary race for a Senatorial nomination, and then came back to the House for three more terms.

Another high-tempered Southerner, “Pitchford Ben” Tillman of South Carolina, censured in 1902 for fisticuffs on the Senate floor with a fellow South Carolinian, was twice reelected.

The records, brief as they are, indicate that objects of censure in the Senate or House are not necessarily weakened among the voters back home. That may prove to be the McCarthy experience.

Martyrdom can be welded into a strong weapon at the polls.