Impressive Freshman Class

"There is going to be a coalition of people down there in the Senate now doing things a different way. Some of us will have gotten in there tenuously, and we will have to prove ourselves by making some changes. I know I will."

-- Patrick Leahy, Democratic Senator-elect from Vermont

By no stretch of the imagination will the U.S. Senate Chamber on Jan. 20, 1975, look the way it did on Jan. 5, 1937, when a bleak band of 16 Republicans assembled to face a phalanx of 76 Democrats on the other side of the aisle. But the Democrats did reasonably well in last week's elections: they scored a net gain of at least three seats, thereby increasing their strength in the Senate to 61 (with 38 for the Republicans and one contest still in doubt). More important, perhaps, they elected a particularly impressive freshman class. Among the more promising, in addition to the ebullient Dale Bumpers of Arkansas (see box page 10):

PATRICK LEAHY, 34, the first Democrat sent to the Senate by Vermont since the Republican Party was founded in 1854. As late as a week before the election, the polls showed Leahy trailing his Republican opponent, Congressman Richard Mallary, by as much as 13%. But the prematurely gray Leahy a state's attorney for Chittenden County, kept plugging at a theme with peculiar appeal to Vermonters: there was no place for partisanship in replacing "the strong independent vote we've had for 34 years," the vote of retiring G.O.P Senate Dean George Aiken. Leahy won in the end, by 4,000 votes.

GARY HART, 36, the manager of George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, who defeated Colorado's two-term incumbent Republican Senator, Peter Dominick. A sort of "Marlboro man" turned politician, the Kansas-born Hart stumped the state for 18 months in an endless switchback between the vote-rich "front range" and the lightly populated western slope The party is over, the day of having it all is gone," he told Coloradans, pledging to conserve the state's energy resources and work against any damaging exploitation of Colorado's oil shale "We lave an energy-rich state, and yet we have this fantastic scenic treasure with resources of air, beauty and water that we have damaged already. We are entering a period of history when conspicuous consumption and waste just must end." Dominick's campaign was hampered by his arthritic back, his too-long loyalty to Nixon and his occasional malapropisms; he was swamped by Hart who won by a 3-to-2 ratio.

JOHN GLENN, the former astronaut who received the highest margin that Ohio voters have given a Senate candidate in the past 40 years. Glenn has been running for the Senate for ten years. In 1964 he challenged aging Democratic Senator Steven Young, but withdrew from the race after he slipped on a bathroom rug and began to suffer dizzy spells. In 1970 he tried again, but he was still running as a space hero; he lost in the primary to Howard Metzenbaum who was defeated by Republican Robert Taft Jr. Then Glenn sensibly undertook the business of being a politician. He ran a citizens' committee for Democratic Governor John Gilligan, chaired an environmental task force, and ate countless dinners of rubber chicken on the state political circuit. This year he beat Metzenbaum in the primary, and last week he defeated Cleveland Mayor Ralph Perk, 64% to 31%. Glenn leaves little doubt of his interest in holding a higher office or of his desire to get on the Senate Interior Committee so that he can work on national energy policy.

Of the remaining winners in 34 Senate contests, most were incumbents Louisiana's Russell Long did not even have an opponent, and Hawaii's Daniel Inouye ran virtually unopposed. Alabama's James Allen got 90% of the vote, Georgia's Herman Talmadge 75% and South Carolina's Ernest Boilings 71%. Other re-elected Democrats were George McGovern of South Dakota Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, Alan Cranston of California, Thomas Eagleton of Missouri Birch Bayh of Indiana, Frank Church of Idaho, Warren Magnuson of Washington, Mike Gravel of Alaska and Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin.

Among the re-elected Republican Senators were Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Robert Packwood of Oregon Charles Mathias Jr. of Maryland and Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania Jacob Javits of New York was a fairly comfortable winner; he received 45% of the vote in his race against former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the Democratic nominee, who drew 39%, and Conservative Party Candidate Barbara Keating, who got 15%. Robert Dole of Kansas, who was Republican National Chairman in 1972, won by a whisker. Four months ago Dole thought he was "down the tube." But he managed to beat Obstetrician William Roy (by about 2%), with the help of a Manhattan political-research firm and a Boston advertising agency. A TV commercial showed a Dole poster with mud being thrown at it, then the mud miraculously falling away to reveal the handsome Dole unblemished. By thus aggressively fighting back against the taint of Watergate, Dole managed to accuse his opponent of "Watergate tactics."

In Doubt. Democratic candidates won in Kentucky and Florida, Republicans in Nevada, Utah and New Hampshire. In Oklahoma, Republican Senator Henry Bellmon appeared to have retained his seat by 3,100 votes, but the outcome was cast in doubt when his opponent, former Democratic Congressman Ed Edmondson, moved to invalidate the returns from Tulsa County, where Bellmon had piled up a majority of 21,000. Even more confused was the situation in North Dakota, where Veteran Republican Senator Milton Young, 76, was opposed by former Democratic Governor William L. Guy. Young was leading Guy by only 252 votes out of more than 236,000 cast, according to one unofficial tally, so the final result may not be known for several weeks.

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