Ralph Flanders - U.S. Senate Career

U.S. Senate Career

In 1940, Ralph Flanders ran an unsuccessful campaign for the U. S. Senate. His Republican primary opponent was George Aiken, the popular two-term Governor of Vermont. Although Flanders admired and liked Aiken, he felt that Aiken's "liberal" ideas would not help the nation’s economic recovery. In 1990, one of Vermont’s major newspapers, The Rutland Herald described the 1940 Republican primary campaign as dirty and mean. Aiken’s side accused Flanders of selling arms to the Nazis, and Flanders’s side suggested that "Aiken was unduly influenced by his administrative assistant, a pretty 24-year-old with a fondness for power." In retrospect, Flanders felt that he had allowed his campaign advisers to make too many of the decisions. For example, a campaign brochure showed the candidate wearing a three-piece suit and holding a piglet in his arms. Although he had grown up on a subsistence farm and had an active interest in Vermont agriculture—especially in the type of hog shown in the picture—this had the effect of making him appear to be a phony. The Rutland Herald observed that, “In Vermont in 1940, pigs were common to many households. But so was common sense. There were many people, most in fact, who did not want as their representative someone who would wear his best clothes if he intended to be handling pigs.” Aiken won by 7,000 votes, having spent $3,219.50 to Flanders’s $18,698.45. This campaign taught Flanders that “I had to be myself.”

On November 1, 1946, Vermont Governor Mortimer R. Proctor appointed Flanders to the U.S. Senate as a Republican to complete the term of Republican Senator Warren Austin. Austin had just been appointed by U.S. President Harry S. Truman as Ambassador to the United Nations. Flanders's appointment gave him seniority over the freshman Senators who would be elected four days later on November 5. Flanders ran for the office then, as well, and was elected to a full term. He was overwhelmingly reelected in 1952. He declined to seek a third term in 1958.