Outside of his tenure in the CBS Rome bureau, Downs spent much of his later career at CBS in Washington covering presidential elections with other members of the Murrow Boys. He accompanied both candidates on the campaign trail during the 1952 presidential election, and reported from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. At one point, he was among a crowd of reporters on the floor as vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon gave a press conference, with Murrow and Cronkite in the anchor booth for CBS. Producer Don Hewitt told him to remove his headset and place it on Nixon so that Murrow and Cronkite could speak to him directly. He did so, handed Nixon his microphone, and told him "Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow want to talk to you." Nixon went on to answer their questions, audible only to him. This practice of placing headsets on personalities to talk to Cronkite became a CBS trademark and joke.