I
On February 20th, 1962, Friendship 7, lifted off from Cape Canaveral sending John Glenn into orbit. In nearly five hours, he had launched into space, orbited it three times, and finally returned to Earth splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. His launch found itself watched by millions, and with his successful return (now placing the United States on an 'equal' field with the Soviet Union) would find the nation celebrating his flight on a level not seen since Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in 1927. For the next ten days, John Glenn would find himself meeting with Vice President Johnson and President Kennedy in Cape Canaveral Air Force Base and then in Washington DC, with a parade in DC (before addressing a joint session of Congress) and then a ticker-tape parade in New York City, before finally returning home to a parade in his hometown of New Concord, Ohio.
John Glenn would return back to work at NASA, helping to work on the design of the Apollo Command Module and on a variety of ground stations for Project Mercury. Throughout that time, he would lobby for a return to space as a crew member on either Project Gemini or Project Apollo, but NASA would refuse such requests for a return to flight for John Glenn (unbeknownst to him, President Kennedy had refused any return to flight for John Glenn considering the national image he had as the first American to enter orbit). However as a result of his flight, John Glenn would establish a friendship with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated how to proceed with NASA refusing any further flights for him. Considering the kind of popularity that John Glenn had, they would begin pushing for John Glenn to run for public office, most specifically the Ohio Senate seat. They would eventually convince Glenn to run (despite the eventual assassination of President Kennedy in November of 1963), and in early 1964 would resign from the Astronaut Corps before formally announcing his run for the Ohio Senate seat.
For John Glenn, his first challenge was that of facing incumbent Senator Stephen M. Young, who had been elected in 1958. Stephen M. Young had emerged as a surprise facing off against the incumbent Republican Senator, John W. Bricker in 1958. Considering Stephen M. Young's age at the time (69), many had questioned his changes of victory including Democratic Senator Frank J. Lausche, but former Representative Young would capitalize on the proposed right-to-work amendment that Bricker had endorsed. The widespread public opposition to the amendment would see the Democrats sweep elections in Ohio, with only the Secretary of State (in terms of a position in the executive) remaining Republican-controlled. Senator Young's responses to letters sent by his constituents had been of a highly volatile nature, usually being abusive or offensive, which did not add points for the Senator in the primary election. Despite Senator Young's fighting for the Senate seat, John Glenn would trounce Senator Young in the Democratic primary winning 55%-43%.
John Glenn's victory as the Democratic nominee would set him against Robert A. Taft Jr., as the Republican nominee for the Senate. The election would be to an extent somewhat head to head, with Glenn slightly edging over in comparison to Taft Jr. For John Glenn, it would introduce him much more to the world of politics as he would begin to take more of a lead over Representative Taft Jr. as Election Day came around and everyone began to wait for the results. By the time the results had come in, John Glenn had won the Ohio Senate seat by 51.7% to 48.4%, making him the new Senator-elect of Ohio for the 89th United States Congress.