Congress
In 1954, the Congressman in Schwengel's district (Iowa's 1st congressional district), Thomas E. Martin, ran for the U.S. Senate. Schwengel ran and won the Republican nomination for the seat, and easily defeated John J. O'Connor in the general election. He won re-election in the following four elections. However, in the 1964 Democratic landslide, Schwengel (like all but one of Iowa's Republican U.S. House members) was defeated. He lost to University of Iowa political science Professor John R. Schmidhauser by fewer than 4,000 votes. But Schmidhauser, like many members of the 1964 freshman class, served only one term; in 1966 Schwengel ran again for his former seat and defeated Schmidhauser by fewer than 5,000 votes, then defeated him again in 1968 by a wider margin.
In 1970 Schwengel narrowly defeated Iowa legislator Edward Mezvinsky by only 765 votes. Redistricting before the 1972 election shifted several Republican areas out of the 1st district, so when Mezvinsky ran against Schwengel a second time in 1972, he won with 53 percent of the vote. Some also attribute Schwengel's opposition to prayer in public schools as contributing to his defeat. In all, Schwengel served eight terms in Congress.
Read more about this topic: Fred Schwengel
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