Ross Bass - Congressional Service

Congressional Service

In 1954, Bass was elected as a Democratic U.S. Congressman from Tennessee's 6th District, which included Pulaski. He was reelected four times and served until 1964, when Senator Estes Kefauver died in office. A Democratic primary was held for the unexpired balance of this term in August, 1964, and Bass entered this contest, surprising some by defeating Governor of Tennessee Frank G. Clement. In November, Bass defeated the Republican nominee, Howard Baker, to win the final two years of the term.

Since the election was for an unexpired term, and in the Senate seniority is a very important consideration when being considered for committee assignments, office assignments, and the like, Bass was sworn in as soon as the election results could be certified in order to give him a slight seniority advantage over other freshmen Senators elected in 1964. Bass became Tennessee's junior Senator (the senior Senator at that time being Albert Gore, Sr.) and prepared to run for a full term in 1966.

However, this race proved problematic for Bass. Clement still desired the seat for himself, especially since term limits were going to prevent him from standing to succeed himself as governor in 1966, and without this seat he would find himself out of politics, as he had once before when faced with term limits the first time in 1958. Bass lost the 1966 Democratic Primary to Clement that August, even though he received 10% more votes than in the previous election. The Republican primary election was uncontested, and Tennessee does not have permanent registration by party so his loss was widely attributed to a large Republican crossover vote. Since Bass had defeated Howard Baker two years earlier by a good margin of victory, the Republicans felt they had a better chance of defeating Clement. (Clement then proceeded to lose in the general election to Baker, who became Tennessee's first elected post-Reconstruction Republican Senator.)

While serving in Congress, Bass was the only Representative from the rural South to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, even though his hometown was Pulaski, which is where the Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866. The only other two Southern Representatives to vote for the bill were from large cities—Richard Fulton from Nashville, Tennessee and Claude Pepper from Miami, Florida.