Later Service in The Senate
Senator Barkley died in office on April 30, 1956. Republican leaders encouraged Cooper to return from India and seek the seat, but Cooper was reluctant to give up his ambassadorship. After a personal appeal from President Eisenhower, however, Cooper acquiesced and declared his candidacy in July 1956. Even after leaving India, he maintained close ties with the country's leaders and was the official U.S. representative at the funerals of Prime Minister Nehru in 1964, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.
Because Barkley's death occurred after the filing deadline for the November elections, the Democratic State Central Committee had to choose a nominee for the now-open seat. After unsuccessfully attempting to find a compromise candidate that both the Clements and Chandler factions could support, they chose Lawrence Wetherby, whose term as governor had recently expired. Chandler, now serving his second term as governor, was angered by the choice of Wetherby, and most members of his faction either gave Wetherby lukewarm support or outright supported Cooper instead. This, combined with Cooper's personal popularity, led to his victory over Wetherby by 65,000 votes.
Upon his return to the Senate in 1957, Cooper was assigned to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1959, he challenged Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen to become the Republican floor leader in the Senate, but lost by four votes. In a 1960 poll of fifty journalists conducted by Newsweek magazine, Cooper was named the ablest Republican member of the Senate. He helped author and co-sponsored the National Defense Education Act. Together with Senator Jennings Randolph, he sponsored the Appalachian Regional Development Act, designed to address the prevalent poverty in Appalachia. He succeeded in gaining more state and local control over the anti-poverty group Volunteers in Service to America. He was a vigorous opponent of measures designed to weaken the Tennessee Valley Authority.
In 1960, Democrats nominated former governor Keen Johnson, then an executive with Reynolds Metals, to oppose Cooper's re-election bid. Cooper had the support of organized labor and benefitted from a large segment of Kentuckians who voted for Republican Richard M. Nixon over Democrat John F. Kennedy as a reaction against Kennedy's Catholicism in the 1960 presidential election. Cooper ultimately defeated Johnson by 199,257 votes, a record victory margin for a Kentucky senatorial candidate.
Shortly after his election as president in 1960, Kennedy chose Cooper to conduct a then-secret mission to Moscow and New Delhi to assess the attitudes of the Soviet government for the new administration. Kennedy and Cooper had served together on the Senate Labor Committee and maintained a social friendship. On the mission, Cooper discovered that the Soviets disliked Kennedy and Nixon equally. Cooper concluded in his report to Kennedy that there was little potential for harmonious relations with the Soviets. After meeting with Secretary Khruschev, Kennedy confirmed to Cooper that his report had been correct and confessed that he should have taken it even more seriously. Cooper supported Kennedy's decision to resume nuclear weapons testing after the Soviets resumed their testing in March 1962, but he urged Kennedy to negotiate an agreement with the Soviets if possible.
President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Cooper to the Warren Commission, which was charged with investigating Kennedy's assassination in 1963. As one of three Republicans on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, he was involved with the investigation of Johnson aide Bobby Baker in 1964, which he decried as "a whitewash" after the committee blocked further investigation. He proposed the establishment of a Senate Select Committee on Standards and Conduct in July 1964 and was named to that committee in July 1965. Also in 1965, he was chosen advisor to the United States delegation to the Manila Conference that established the Asian Development Bank.
An advocate for small businesses and agricultural interests, Cooper opposed an April 1965 bill that expanded the powers of the Federal Trade Commission to regulate cigarette advertising. In March 1966, he proposed an amendment to a mine safety bill supported by the United Mine Workers of America that would have nullified provisions of the bill if they were not shown to contribute to the safety of small mines, but his amendment was defeated.
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