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The 1950 Midterms, Continued
Sheridan Downey, the incumbent Democratic Senator from California, faced strong populist primary challenges from James Roosevelt, the son of late President Franklin Roosevelt, and Representative Helen Douglas. In response to this, Downey dropped out of the race and endorsed newspaper publisher Manchester Boody (who would enter the race the next day) to succeed him. Roosevelt would go on to win the primary by a fairly comfortable margin. His general election opponent would be Richard Nixon, a staunch Anti-Communist and Representative, who had won his party's primary easily. Despite the fair amount of division the Democrats suffered in their primary, Roosevelt's name recognition advantage and the national environment gave Roosevelt an advantage Nixon just couldn't overcome, and Nixon would lose the race by double digits, launching speculations of a potential third President Roosevelt.

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Alben Barkley, the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1948 and Senate Majority Leader for 10 years, had initially planned to retire, but changed his mind and ran for re-election, easily dispatching of Republican Nominee Charles Dawson, former United States Federal Judge and failed Gubernatorial Nominee for Governor of Kentucky in 1923.

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After the defeat of ARDA, the Democrats became very confident of potentially defeating Wisconsin Senator Alex Wiley. Wiley had not only been a strong supporter of Dewey in 1948, but had also been a strong supporter of Dewey in 1944. This made it very easy for Thomas Fairchild, the Democratic nominee and sitting Attorney General of Wisconsin, to run a populist campaign painting Wiley as out of touch with Wisconsin and a rubber-stamp for Dewey, a message which resonated with Dewey's approval rating in the mid 30's.


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