page_title: 1950 United States Senate election in California
section_title: Candidates
hierarchical_section_title: 1950 United States Senate election in California / Aftermath / Candidates
caption_attribution_description: English: Ticket to Richard Nixon victory dinner at the William Penn Hotel following the 1950 United States Senate election in California.
context_page_description: The United States Senate election held in California on November 7, 1950, followed a campaign characterized by accusations and name-calling. Republican Congressman and future President Richard Nixon defeated Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas, after Democratic incumbent Sheridan Downey withdrew during the primary election campaign. Douglas and Nixon each gave up their congressional seats to run against Downey; no other representatives were willing to risk the contest.
  Both Douglas and Nixon announced their candidacies in late 1949. In March 1950, Downey withdrew from a vicious primary battle with Douglas by announcing his retirement, after which Los Angeles Daily News publisher Manchester Boddy joined the race. Boddy attacked Douglas as a leftist and was the first to compare her to New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio, who was accused of being a communist. Boddy, Nixon, and Douglas each entered both party primaries, a practice known as cross-filing. In the Republican primary, Nixon was challenged only by cross-filers and fringe candidates.
  Nixon won the Republican primary and Douglas the Democratic contest, with each also finishing third in the other party's contest.
context_section_description: A week after the election, Downey announced that he was resigning for health reasons. Warren appointed Nixon to the short remainder of Downey's term; under the Senate rules at the time, this gave Nixon seniority over the senators sworn in during January. Nixon took office on December 4, 1950. He used little of his seniority, since in November 1952 he was elected vice president as Dwight Eisenhower's running mate, the next step on a path that would lead him to the presidency in 1969. Downey, who as a former senator retained floor privileges, was hired as a lobbyist by oil interests. In 1952, as Republicans took over the White House and control of both houses of Congress, he was fired. An aide stated that the big corporations did not need Downey anymore. Boddy, dispirited by his election defeat and feeling let down by the average citizens for whom he had sought to advocate, lapsed into semi-retirement after his primary defeat. In 1952, he sold his interest in the Daily News, which went into bankruptcy in December 1954.
  It was rumored that Douglas would be given a political appointment in the Truman administration, but the Nixon-Douglas race had made such an appointment too controversial for the President. According to Democratic National Committee vice-chair India Edwards, a Douglas supporter, the former congresswoman could not have been appointed dogcatcher. In 1952, she returned to acting, and eight years later campaigned for John F. Kennedy during Nixon's first, unsuccessful presidential run. She also campaigned for George McGovern in his unsuccessful bid to prevent Nixon's 1972 reelection, and called for his ouster from office during the Watergate scandal.
  Less than a week after the election, Douglas wrote to one of her supporters that she did not think there was anything her campaign could have done to change the result. Blaming the war, voter mistrust of Truman's foreign policy, and high prices at home, Douglas stated that she lost in California because Nixon was able to take a large part of the women's vote and the labor vote. Later in November, she indicated that liberals must undertake a massive effort to win in 1952. In 1956, she stated in an interview that, while Nixon had never called her a communist, he had designed his whole campaign to create the impression that she was a communist or "communistic". In 1959, she wrote that she had not particularly wanted to be a senator, and in 1962 she stated that the policy of her campaign was to avoid attacks on Nixon. In her memoirs, published posthumously in 1982, she wrote, "Nixon had his victory, but I had mine ... He hadn't touched me. I didn't carry Richard Nixon with me, thank God." She concluded her chapter on the 1950 race with, "There's not much to say about the 1950 campaign except that a man ran for Senate who wanted to get there, and didn't care how."
  In 1958, Nixon, by then vice president, allegedly stated that he regretted some of the tactics his campaign had used in the campaign against Douglas, blaming his youth. When the statements were reported, Nixon denied them. He issued press releases defending his campaign, and stating that any impression that Douglas was pro-communist was justified by her record. He said Douglas was part of a whispering campaign accusing him of being "anti-Semitic and Jim Crow". In his 1978 memoirs, he stated that "Helen Douglas lost the election because the voters of California in 1950 were not prepared to elect as their senator anyone with a left-wing voting record or anyone they perceived as being soft on or naive about communism." He indicated that Douglas faced difficulties in the campaign because of her gender, but that her "fatal disadvantage lay in her record and in her views".
caption: Ticket for Nixon's victory dinner
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