For the Record

Superliberal New York Post columnist Harriet Van Horne headlined her piece the morning after: “A Lovely Election.” You could take it from there. A blitz: the Democrats picked up four in the Senate—will have 62 seats, to 38 for the Republicans. It will be 292 to 143 in the House—a pickup of 44. And they ended up with 36 gubernatorial mansions to 13 for the Republicans, and one for an independent, Janies P. Longley, of Maine, who ran on a cut-government-spending campaign, and won. The Democrats didn’t get all ten of the big states, as some had predicted. They took New York (Hugh Carey), California (Edmund Brown Jr.), Connecticut (Ella Grasso), Massachusetts (Michael Dukakis), but they failed to win two other big ones. In Ohio, former Gov. James Rhodes waged a successful comeback campaign that knocked Democrat John Gilligan not only out of the governor’s mansion but out of the 1976 presidential stakes. In Michigan, liberal Republican Gov. Milliken pulled off a squeaker against more liberal Democrat Sander Levin. . . . The GOP won the governorship in South Carolina—for the first time since you know what—in pretty much of a fluke. James Edwards sneaked in after the Democratic primary winner Pug Ravenel was ruled out for insufficient residency. . . . The Wall Street Journal predicted in advance of the election that a big Democratic Congress would mean new spending measures, among them a major public employment program, “soak the rich” tax revisions, and probable passage of a national health insurance bill. . . . Washington Post columnist David S. Broder not so sure. Historically, he says, it is only when there’s been a topheavy Democratic Congress with a Democrat in the White House that major new legislation has gotten through: Roosevelt’s New Deal after 1936; Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society after ’64. Broder points out that in 1959-1960, when Democrats had 282 House seats and 64 Senate seats, Eisenhower vetoed 44 spending bills; only two were overridden.

Richard Nixon, in his sick bed in California, was still hurting his erstwhile supporters. Nixon’s favorite mayor, Richard Lugar, lost to Sen. Birch Bayh in Indiana, and his last ditch congressional supporter Earl Landgrebe of Indiana (“I’m sticking by my President even if he and I have to be taken out and shot”) was blasted out of office. As were a number of prominent Judiciary Committee defenders of Richard Nixon. David Dennis, also of Indiana, Wiley Mayne, Iowa, and two from New Jersey, conservatives Charles Sandman and Joseph Maraziti. . . . Peter Rodino, on the other hand, racked up 85 per cent of the vote in a three-way race.

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Superliberal New York Post columnist Harriet Van Horne headlined her piece the morning after: “A Lovely Election.” You could take it from there. A blitz: the Democrats picked up four in the Senate—will have 62 seats, to 38 for the Republicans. It will be 292 to 143 in the House—a pickup of 44. And they ended up with 36 gubernatorial mansions to 13 for the Republicans, and one for an independent, Janies P. Longley, of Maine, who ran on a cut-government-spending campaign, and won. The Democrats didn’t get all ten of the big states, as some had predicted. They took New York (Hugh Carey), California (Edmund Brown Jr.), Connecticut (Ella Grasso), Massachusetts (Michael Dukakis), but they failed to win two other big ones. In Ohio, former Gov. James Rhodes waged a successful comeback campaign that knocked Democrat John Gilligan not only out of the governor’s mansion but out of the 1976 presidential stakes. In Michigan, liberal Republican Gov. Milliken pulled off a squeaker against more liberal Democrat Sander Levin. . . . The GOP won the governorship in South Carolina—for the first time since you know what—in pretty much of a fluke. James Edwards sneaked in after the Democratic primary winner Pug Ravenel was ruled out for insufficient residency. . . . The Wall Street Journal predicted in advance of the election that a big Democratic Congress would mean new spending measures, among them a major public employment program, “soak the rich” tax revisions, and probable passage of a national health insurance bill. . . . Washington Post columnist David S. Broder not so sure. Historically, he says, it is only when there’s been a topheavy Democratic Congress with a Democrat in the White House that major new legislation has gotten through: Roosevelt’s New Deal after 1936; Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society after ’64. Broder points out that in 1959-1960, when Democrats had 282 House seats and 64 Senate seats, Eisenhower vetoed 44 spending bills; only two were overridden.

Richard Nixon, in his sick bed in California, was still hurting his erstwhile supporters. Nixon’s favorite mayor, Richard Lugar, lost to Sen. Birch Bayh in Indiana, and his last ditch congressional supporter Earl Landgrebe of Indiana (“I’m sticking by my President even if he and I have to be taken out and shot”) was blasted out of office. As were a number of prominent Judiciary Committee defenders of Richard Nixon. David Dennis, also of Indiana, Wiley Mayne, Iowa, and two from New Jersey, conservatives Charles Sandman and Joseph Maraziti. . . . Peter Rodino, on the other hand, racked up 85 per cent of the vote in a three-way race.