Party Man

Illinois' handsome, athletic Senator Scott Wike Lucas is living proof of the virtues of party regularity. In his 14 years as Congressman and Senator he has sponsored little major legislation, made few headlines, shown no notable talent for leadership. But he has toiled long & loyally for the Administration on Capitol Hill, and had stuck staunchly by Harry Truman in the dark days before Philadelphia. This week, for such services loyally rendered, Scott Lucas, 56, was chosen new Majority Leader of the Senate. (Tennessee's ancient Senator Kenneth McKellar, who became president pro tern, will inherit a purely honorary role and the use of a Cadillac limousine.)

A ponderous, prolix debater, with an edgy temper and a taste for snappy double-breasted suits, Scott Lucas likes to describe himself as just another Midwestern farm boy. He is also a smalltown lawyer (in Havana, Ill.; pop. 3,999), an ex-professional baseball player (in the Three-Eye League), a onetime national judge advocate of the American Legion.

The son of an impoverished tenant farmer, he put himself through Illinois Wesleyan by stoking furnaces and waiting on table, emerged in 1914 with a law degree and letters in football, baseball and basketball. After World War I, in which he rose from private to lieutenant, he went back to his law office and began the long haul up through the Illinois political machine. Making his first bid for the Senate in 1938, he had to buck Chicago's high-riding Kelly-Nash machine to win the nomination. When he came up for re-elec tion in 1944 he had so won over the old Boss that syntax-wrecking Ed Kelly nominated him for the vice-presidency.*

By that time Lucas had made his mark in Washington as a friend of the farmer and a down-the-line New Dealer. One of the few measures on which he broke with Franklin Roosevelt was the court-packing bill. Since then he has jumped the fence only to nibble at such lush political grass as last year's Republican tax cut. He voted for the Taft-Hartley bill, then changed front, voted to uphold Harry Truman's veto.

After the Republican congressional landslide in 1946, Scott Lucas moved in as minority whip. When Vice President Alben Barkley left the floor to preside over the Senate, good Party Man Scott Lucas was the unanimous choice for his post.

* In a speech still treasured by collectors of political palaver. At one point, to establish Lucas' superiority over Henry Wallace, Kelly solemnly told the convention that Senator Lucas was "a member of no thinking group."

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