South Carolina's New Senator

Since 1933, six U.S. Governors have resigned from office, turned their jobs over to their lieutenants and, by prearrangement, been named to fill vacancies in the U.S. Senate. Voters have not exactly appreciated this tactic, and of the six, five were defeated when they actually ran for the office.*

Nevertheless, South Carolina's Donald B. Russell, 59, last week quit as Governor, turned the post over to Lieutenant Governor Robert E. McNair, 41, who then appointed Russell to the Senate seat left vacant after the death of Olin Johnston on April 18. Johnston was a Senate veteran of 21 years who made his Capitol Hill name as chairman of the patronage-wielding Post Office and Civil Service Committees and maintained his home-state political power through a vast network of country-store and piny-woods cronies.

Russell is the farthest thing in the world from the Johnston sort of wool-hat politician. A lawyer by profession, Russell amassed a fortune estimated at $40 million in banking, auto financing and other investments, served without pay for five years as president of the University of South Carolina.

The Record. As a lawyer, Russell was once a partner of Jimmy Byrnes, former South Carolina Governor, Senator, F.D.R.'s top war mobilizer and Truman's Secretary of State. Russell served for five years in Washington in the '40s as Byrnes's chief deputy in the Office of War Mobilization and later as an Assistant Secretary of State for Administration. While he was president of the University of South Carolina (1952-57), he improved the school's reputation of sleepy mediocrity by recruiting new faculty men from across the country and launching a $7,000,000 building program. He resigned to run for Governor in 1958, lost, but tried again and was successful in 1962.

As Governor, Russell mapped an ambitious program to improve the quality of education without raising the state's 3% sales tax. He instituted an extensive money-saving program in state purchasing practices, even convinced the legislature that it should pay cash for school buses to save the interest charges. Although he is a segregationist, Russell is relatively popular with Negroes: he was the first South Carolina Governor in modern times to invite Negroes to his inauguration ceremonies, and he saw to it that the integration of Clemson College and the University of South Carolina was carried out in peace. He has insisted on meticulous compliance with federal court desegregation orders, yet he has vigorously led the state's legal fights to stall off further integration wherever it could be delayed.

The Future. Russell must run for election as Senator next year, and he is by no means a shoo-in. He has no real organization in the state, relies on his own oratorical skills and his record to pull him through. Republicans are on the rise in the state; Goldwater won South Carolina by 93,000 votes-in 1964. Senator Strom Thurmond, a Dixiecrat who turned Republican last year, will be running in a separate race at the same time and, as the state's best vote-getter, will undoubtedly attract support for the entire G.O.P. state ticket.

* The Governors who lost out: Montana Democrat John E. Erickson in 1934; Nevada Democrat Edward P. Carville in 1946; Wyoming Democrat John Joseph Hickey in 1962; New Mexico Republican Edwin L. Mechem in 1964; Oklahoma Democrat J. Howard Edmondson in 1964. Kentucky Democrat Albert Benjamin ("Happy") Chandler won senatorial elections in 1940 and 1942.

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