Near Balance

Drawing plans and specifications for overcoming a 49-47 Democratic majority in the Senate. Republican leaders at campaign's beginning faced a painful fact: shifting the balance to the G.O.P. would prove an impossible task unless Dwight Eisenhower kept the White House in an avalanche of votes and swept into office with him some hard-pressed senatorial candidates. This week came the avalanche.

But long after the Eisenhower votes were tallied into astronomical millions, the G.O.P., to its own astonishment, was still fighting what seemed to be a losing battle. Among the critical engagements: CJ In Illinois, oleaginous Everett McKinley Dirksen took a tight grip on the Eisenhower coattails, discovered they were a dandy answer for the vigorous door-to-door, factory-to-factory handshaking campaign waged by Democrat Richard Stengel. Dirksen, like Eisenhower, cracked Cook County, the Democratic stronghold, coasted to his second term on the crest of a comfortable downstate Republican vote that shot his majority to better than 300,000 votes.

P: In Ohio, five-time Governor Frank Lausche once again proved the truth of the local axiom that "nobody likes Lausche but the people" by capturing for the Democrats the state's second Senate seat, defeating a hard-working latter-day Ikeman, Senator George Bender.

P: In New York. State Attorney General Jacob K. Javits, 52, took retiring Democrat Herbert Lehman's seat with a decisive victory over New York City's Mayor Robert F. Wagner (TIME, Oct. 1 ). Ex-Congressman Javits (1947-54) rolled up an 885,000-vote lead over Wagner in Republican counties upstate, more than enough to counterpoint the Mayor's 441,000 Democratic edge in New York's five boroughs.

P: In California, riding the crest of the Eisenhower wave and backed by Nixon, Knowland and Knight, amiable, conscientious Senator Tom Kuchel barely squeaked through in the fight to keep his Republican Senate seat from falling into the hands of flamboyant young (40) Democratic State Senator Richard Richards.

P: In Washington, where Democrats turned out the vote to defeat a right-to-work initiative, Ike-blessed Republican Governor Arthur B. Langlie failed resoundingly in an attempt to topple personable Democrat Warren Magnuson from the Senate seat "Maggie" has enjoyed for twelve years.

P: In Kentucky, the G.O.P. picked up one of the two Senate seats at stake this fall when John Sherman Cooper, 55, former Ambassador to India, defeated former Governor Lawrence W. Wetherby handily in their battle for the remainder of Alben Barkley's term. In the second race, where the traditional Democratic edge also had been whittled by campaign-year squabbles within the party's ranks, ex-Governor Earle C. Clements hung to an uncomfortably narrow lead over Republican Thruston B. Morton.

P: In West Virginia, a slate-wide Democratic defection to the G.O.P. touched off by corruption charges, helped ex-Senator (1942-48) Chapman Revercomb, 61, win handily over Governor William C. Marland in their race for the remainder of the late Harley Kilgore's term.

P: In four scattered states the Ike boom sent incumbent Republicans back to the Senate: Connecticut's Prescott Bush beat Congressman Thomas J. Dodd; Maryland's John Marshall Butler, elected six years ago with Joe McCarthy's assistance, without it this time downed Democrat George P. Mahoney by 50,000 votes; Indiana's Homer E. Capehart easily won a third term over former Agriculture Secretary Claude R. Wickard; and Wisconsin's 72-year-old Alexander Wiley handily downed State Senator Henry W. Maier. In Nevada, after trailing part of the way through a nip-and-tuck battle with Cliff Young, Democratic Incumbent Alan Bible spurted ahead, eked out a breathless victory.

P: In Pennsylvania, where almost 4,500,000 senatorial votes were cast, onetime Philadelphia Reform Mayor Joseph S. Clark Jr., 55, defeated Republican Senator James H. ("Big Red") Duff by 20,000 votes to become an important new figure on the national Democratic scene.

P: In Oregon, cold-eyed Wayne Morse, 56, the maverick ex-Republican marked as the G.O.P.'s prime target in the Senate races, withstood the Western Eisenhower surge, to defeat, by more than 20,000 votes, Ikeman Douglas McKay, who had resigned as Secretary of the Interior at Ike's urging to take on the bloodiest senatorial battle in Oregon's history.

P: In Colorado, Two-Time Loser John A. Carroll, 55, whose chances of defeating former Governor Dan Thornton appeared so slim that the Democratic National Com mittee declined to finance his campaign, hung together enough votes to win the Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Eugene Millikin--a seat the Democrats cheerfully accepted as an unexpected gift.

P: In Idaho, handsome young (32) Attorney Frank Church achieved a startling upset in his first bid for a major political office by defeating moss-backed Republican Incumbent Herman Welker.

P: In South Dakota, where well-rounded Republicanism has sent G.O.P. Senators to Washington for 20 years, a farm revolt threatened mild-mannered Incumbent Francis Case. Pressing hard on Case in a tight battle was burly (6 ft. 2 in., 235-Ib.) Kenneth Holum, 43-year-old farmer-turned-politician.

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