In 1949, many California Democrats urged liberal Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas not to run for the US Senate in 1950. They doubted that she could defeat the incumbent Democratic Senator Sheridan Downey in the primary. And whoever won the primary would have a divided Democratic Party with which to face the Republican candidate, Congresman Richard Nixon, in the general election. (Besides, some of them doubted any woman could be elected Senator from California at that time. And one of the fears was that there might be a backlash among *women* against a glamorous Hollywood actress. That she was married to a Jew, and that both of them were involved in Hollywood left-of-center politics also didn't help.) You have a safe congressional seat, they reminded Douglas. If you must run for the Senate, wait until 1952 when you could have a clear field against Knowland.
But Douglas was insistent. She did not like Downey's increasing conservatism. Downey had been Upton Sinclair's running mate in 1934 (the team was known as "Uppie and Downey"), backed the Townsend Plan in the mid-1930's (but broke with Townsend and supported FDR rather than Lemke in 1936) and was elected to the US Senate in 1938 as a New Deal Democrat (even though he had defeated FDR-backed incumbent William McAdoo in the primary). However, by the second half of the 1940's, though Downey still more often than not voted a pro-New Deal/Fair Deal line on national issues (for example, to sustain Truman's veto of Taft-Hartley) he had become quite conservative on specifically Californian issues, especially relating to tidelands oil, agribusiness, etc. (Not surprisingly, he got plenty of financial support from California oilmen and other big businessmen.) The last straw for Douglas came in August 1949:
"She had just completed a tour of reclamation projects and migrant camps in the Central Valley...This fired her determination to punish Downey for turning his back on farmworkers' plight. She planned to peg her campaign to a key California issue, known as the 160-acre limit. Decades ago liberals had passed laws that limited state-financed irrigation to farms of no more than 160 acres. This was meant to give the small farmer a chance to survive in a state dominated by agribusiness. But now the two-billion-dollar Central Valley Project was creating new irrigation channels, and land barons were fighting for repeal of the 160-acre limit, often referring to it as a socialist conspiracy. Among those who said this was the old populist Sheridan Downey." (Greg Mitchell, *Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady,* p. 29.)
In October, Douglas announced her candidacy. In March 1950 Downey announced his retirement, supposedly for health reasons (peptic ulcers). A good many people were suspicious of whether Downey's health was that bad; he was well enough after his retirement to become a lobbyist for the Los Angeles Harbor Commission to fight for tidelands control, and lived until 1961. But he may have thought that having to wage *two* strenuous campaigns (first against Douglas and then against Nixon) would be a bit too much for him. If he had a free path in the primary and only had to worry about Nixon, I doubt that he would have retired. Douglas faced Los Angeles Daily News publisher Manchester Boddy in the Democratic primary. Boddy, who had Downey's support, lost to Douglas but not before introducing some themes which would later be exploited by Nixon--e.g., linking Douglas to fellow-traveling Congressman Vito Marcantonio. Anyway, we all now how the general election turned out.
The POD here is that Douglas heeds the advice of most of her friends who urged her to stay out of the race. (Perhaps if her husband, Melvyn Douglas, had urged her not to run, it might have made a difference. But in OTL while Melvyn did have some concern about the effect of the race on their marriage and on his wife's ability to care for the children, he loyally went along with her decision.) Assuming Downey doesn't retire, how does he do against Nixon? It will obviously be much harder to portray him as left-wing than it was with Douglas, and Downey unlike Douglas will have plenty of money from big business. Liberals will be unhappy with Downey but most will still consider him a lesser evil than Nixon. There will certainly be no large number of Democrats for Nixon as there were in 1950 in OTL.
Yet before we rule Nixon out, we should remember that he decided to run for the Senate back when it looked like Downey would be his opponent. As with Douglas, some of his friends thought it was a bad idea to give up a safe House seat to face a formidable incumbent, but Nixon was willing to take the risk. He said he would explode two common "myths" about Downey--that he was conservative and that he was unbeatable. (Comparing Sheridan Downey to Vito Marcantonio might not pass the giggle test, but don't forget that 1950 was a year when even as conservative a Democrat as Millard Tydings could be defeated for "softness on communism" because of his opposition to McCarthy. And Jerry Voorhis had been the author of the Voorhis Act of 1940 requiring registration of foreign dominated-organizations including the Communist Party--yet that didn't prevent Nixon from attacking him on the communist issue in 1946, though admittedly Voorhis was well to the left of Downey and therefore much more vulnerable than him.) Nixon felt that advancement in the House was too slow a process and that if he wanted higher office he had to move now--while he was still famous for his role in the Hiss case, a fame that might not last indefinitely--or miss his chance for many years to come: unlike Douglas, he obviously couldn't run against Knowland in 1952.
Anyway, given the Republican trend in 1950 and the Warren landslide in California that year, I wouldn't rule out a Nixon victory. Still, as Pat Brown's successful campaign for Attorney General showed, even in 1950 a Demcorat could win in California. And if Nixon lost to Downey? Nixon told friends tht in that case he would happily go back to practicing law in Whittier--a comment which should perhaps be taken with more than a grain of salt (like "my last press conference")...
Thoughts?