The New Boy

Bounding up Capitol Hill last week with the handshake and "hi ya" enthusiasm of schoolboys beginning a new term, members of that exclusive academy, the U.S. Senate, made a disconcerting discovery. In a body whose love for headlines is exceeded only by its awe of seniority, the new boy from Ohio was focusing attention on himself. Not only were gallery eyes during opening session fixed on stonefaced, wavy-haired Frank Lausche, but the Senate's majority and minority leaders both had to reckon with his presence.

On the chance that Lausche would make good on a vague campaign implication to vote with the G.O.P. on organization (TIME. Oct. 22), Republican Leader William Knowland had called New York's new Senator Jacob Javits to Washington for the opening. Uneager to take his Senate seat until a reconvening New York assembly outfoxes Governor Averell Harriman and elects a Republican to succeed him as New York's Attorney General, Javits was not sworn in. But he kept within three minutes' hailing distance, on the chance that Lausche's vote and his own would throw the Senate into a 48-48 tie, to be broken the Republicans' way by Vice President Richard Nixon.

No Pressures. For his part, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had to summon ailing Matthew M. Neely of West Virginia. Plagued by a broken hip, aging (82) Matt Neely was wheeled in, sat uncomfortably fingering a water cup, waiting for the roll call. But not even Neely's arrival in a wheelchair, nor the appearance of Adlai Stevenson in the gallery, could shift the glow of a glorious moment from Frank Lausche, as he sat poised and quiet in an end seat, an aisle's breadth away from Republicanism.

Unpressured to vote Democratic (or Republican), Lausche at one point had announced that he would skip the embarrassments of the opening session. But it struck him that playing hooky would rob him of seniority in a body where tenure is next to godliness. Provided that he was on hand for the first session, his rank as an ex-governor would give him seniority over two other new Democrats: Pennsylvania's ex-Mayor Joseph S. Clark Jr., 55, and Idaho's Frank Church, 32, holding his first elective office. By alphabetical precedence he would also outrank the other ex-governor among new Democrats: Georgia's Herman Talmadge, 43.

Yea & Nay. Sporting a red carnation in his lapel, Lausche stood while Senate Chaplain Frederick Brown Harris prayed that his charges be saved "from all compromise, which crucifies principle, and from all shoddy workmanship, which betrays the possible best, and from cowardly expediency, which is treason to the highest integrity." With the 33 other members beginning terms, he marched to the Senate well to be sworn in by the Vice President. Then came Lausche's moment. When Texas Democrat Lyndon Johnson proposed that Arizona's venerable Carl Hayden be elected Senate President Pro Tempore, Republican Bill Knowland rose, offered New Hampshire's Styles Bridges instead, called for yeas and nays on his amendment--the time-honored way of finding out whether the Senate will organize as Republican or Democratic.

Yeas and nays on Republican Bridges were sounded by party adherence: "Kennedy? Nay. Kerr? Nay. Knowland? Yea. Kuchel? Yea. Lausche?" In the gallery tense onlookers leaned forward. On the floor necks craned, eyes glared. Sensing the tension, aware of the glares. Frank Lausche hesitated a pleasurable moment. Then came his answer: "Nay." Among Democrats, applause ruffled toward him. On the Republican side, as the roll call continued toward an ultimate 49-46 victory, Senators sat silent and unapplauding. For the time being, at least, New Boy Lausche would find his seat and his headlines on the Democratic side of the aisle.

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