Margaret Chase Smith - U.S. Senate

U.S. Senate

In August 1947, after three-term incumbent Wallace H. White, Jr. decided to retire, Smith announced her candidacy for his seat in the U.S. Senate. In the Republican primary, she faced incumbent Governor Horace A. Hildreth, former Governor Sumner Sewall, and Reverend Albion Beverage. She ran a grassroots campaign with little money, using the slogan, "Don't change a record for a promise." When the wife of one of her opponents questioned whether a woman would be a good Senator, Smith replied, "Women administer the home. They set the rules, enforce them, mete out justice for violations. Thus, like Congress, they legislate; like the Executive, they administer; like the courts, they interpret the rules. It is an ideal experience for politics." On June 21, 1948, she won the primary election and received more votes than her three opponents combined. In the general election on September 13, she defeated Democrat Adrian H. Scolten by a margin of 71%-29%. She became the first woman to represent Maine in the Senate, and the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.

Smith was sworn into the Senate on January 3, 1949. Less than a year in office, she gained national attention when she became the first member of Congress to condemn the anti-Communist witch hunt led by her fellow Republican Senator, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Smith was initially impressed by McCarthy's accusations of Communists working in the State Department, but became disillusioned after McCarthy failed to provide any evidence to validate his charges. On June 1, 1950, she delivered a fifteen-minute speech on the Senate floor, known as the "Declaration of Conscience," in which she refused to name McCarthy directly but denounced "the reckless abandon in which unproved charges have been hurled from this side of the aisle." She said McCarthyism had "debased" the Senate to "the level of a forum of hate and character assassination." She defended every American's "right to criticize...right to hold unpopular beliefs...right to protest; the right of independent thought." While acknowledging her desire for Republicans' political success, she said, "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horseman of calumny -- fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear." Six other moderate Senate Republicans signed onto her Declaration, including Wayne Morse of Oregon, George Aiken of Vermont, Edward Thye of Minnesota, Irving Ives of New York, Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, and Robert C. Hendrickson of New Jersey.

In response to her speech, McCarthy referred to Smith and the six other Senators as "Snow White and the Six Dwarfs." He removed her as a member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, giving her seat to Senator Richard Nixon of California. He also helped finance an unsuccessful primary challenger during Smith's re-election campaign in 1954. Smith later observed, "If I am to be remembered in history, it will not be because of legislative accomplishments, but for an act I took as a legislator in the U.S. Senate when on June 1, 1950, I spoke...in condemnation of McCarthyism, when the junior Senator from Wisconsin had the Senate paralyzed with fear that he would purge any Senator who disagreed with him." She voted for McCarthy's censure in 1954.

In the 1952 election, Smith was widely mentioned as a vice-presidential candidate under General Dwight D. Eisenhower. When asked by a reporter what she would do if she woke up one morning and found herself in the White House, she replied: "I'd go straight to Mrs. Truman and apologize. Then I'd go home." Exhibiting the same independent nature in the Senate as she had in the House, Smith opposed President Eisenhower's nomination of Lewis Strauss as Secretary of Commerce in 1959. In her successful re-election campaign in 1960, she ran against Democrat Lucia Cormier, the minority leader of the Maine House of Representatives; it was the first time in American history that two women ran against each other for a Senate seat.

During the administration of President John F. Kennedy, Smith argued that the United States should use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. This led Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to call Smith "the devil in disguise of a woman" whose position exceeded "all records of savagery." Smith later replied, "Mr. Khrushchev isn't really mad at me. I am not that important. He is angry because American officials have grown more firm since my speech." The morning after President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, she went into the Senate chamber before it convened and laid a rose on the desk Kennedy had occupied as a Senator. A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she supported the Vietnam War but opposed the deployment of the Sentinel anti-ballistic missile.

Smith was the first (and as yet only) woman to serve as chair of the Senate Republican Conference, serving from 1967 to 1972. She voted against President Nixon's unsuccessful nominees to the Supreme Court, Clement Haynsworth in 1969 and G. Harrold Carswell in 1970. She was a strong supporter of the space program and served as a charter member of the Senate Aeronautical and Space Committee. NASA administrator James E. Webb once commented that the United States never would have placed a man on the Moon if it were not for Smith. She supported increased educational funding, civil rights, and Medicare. She held an all-time voting record in the Senate until 1981 with 2,941 consecutive roll call votes.

She was defeated for re-election in 1972 by Democrat Bill Hathaway, the only election she ever lost in the state of Maine. In her last election, Smith had been plagued by rumors of poor health (she had been using a motor scooter around the Senate). A Republican primary challenger taunted her for being out of touch; she did not have a state office operating in Maine. Smith lost the election by 27,230 votes, a margin of 53%-47%.