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Implying that his opponent Helen Gahagan Douglas is a Communist, Nixon wins a seat in the Senate in 1950.
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Title Card: The Pink Lady
NARRATOR: 1950. The Russians had exploded an atomic bomb of their own. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were charged with giving the Soviets atomic secrets. Communists took control of mainland China. In Korea, Communist troops poured across the 38th parallel and American soldiers were sent to stop them. Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that Communists in government were responsible for it all.
Senator JOSEPH McCARTHY: And call the roll. And call the roll of the traitors who plunder.
NARRATOR: And Congressman Nixon had his sights on the Senate. His opponent was three-term Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. Like Jerry Voorhis, she was wealthy, well-educated and an outspoken New Dealer. She condemned the fear of internal Communism as "irrational" and opposed the very existence of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Politicians in both parties called the former actress "a bleeding-heart liberal, a do-gooder, a Hollywood parlor pink." Congressman John F. Kennedy quietly gave Nixon $1,000 to help defeat her, saying, "It won't break my heart if you can turn the Senate's loss into Hollywood's gain."
Mrs. Douglas was a perfect target for what Nixon called his "rocking, socking style" of campaigning. Implying the congresswoman was pro-Communist, he distributed a flyer on pink paper, showing Mrs. Douglas had voted with the controversial left-wing congressman Vito Marcantonio 354 times. The fact that most Democrats and a good many Republicans had voted the same way was ignored. Nixon charged that his opponent was "pink right down to her underwear." Mrs. Douglas fought back hard, calling Nixon "a peewee who is trying to scare people into voting for him," and she gave him the nickname he would never entirely shake, "tricky Dick."
HELEN GAHAGAN DOUGLAS: [1979 Interview] When Richard Nixon ran for the House of Representatives and unseated Jerry Voorhis, it was the same kind of campaign as he waged against me in 1950, but the essence of that kind of campaign is this: to avoid the issues, you work up bogus issues, trying to play on the fears of people, because if you talk about the real issues, you may lose votes. It's as simple as that.
NARRATOR: Other candidates employed scare tactics that year, but few were more blatant than Richard Nixon's. "People react to fear," he once told an aide, "not love. They don't teach that in Sunday school, but it's true." Nixon defeated Mrs. Douglas by almost 700,000 votes, the largest plurality won by any senatorial candidate in the country.
Senator NIXON: [1950] A lot of people probably wonder how it is possible for a candidate to be elected to any office in California when he is a member of the Republican Party. I have just had that experience and I should like to point out the reason for our election victory. It's because in this particular election, the issues, rather than the partisan labels of the candidates, were what governed the electorate.
ROGER MORRIS, Nixon Biographer: Richard Nixon does not simply defeat Jerry Voorhis for the Congress or defeat Helen Gahagan Douglas for the Senate in 1950, he destroys these people politically and very nearly personally. And he does that in such a way as to leave a great legacy of bitterness among their supporters and even among onlookers, people who were sort of neutral observers on the side.
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