Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/174531
bit the Illustration by Carrie Neumayer LOUISVILLE'S SHOP FOR HALLOWEEN & FALL CHOCOLATES! PUMPKIN BOURBON BALLS APPLE PIE FUDGE AND... PEANUT BUTTER FILLED VAMPIRE BUNNIES ARE BACK! 1201 STORY AVENUE LOUISVILLE, KY 40206 www.cellardoorchocolates.com CELLARDOORCHOCOLATES.COM 502.561.2940 JUST SAYIN' I www.experiencelouisvilleweddings.com 24 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 10.13 have a Kentucky trivia question for you: What native-born Republican politician holds the record for U.S. Senate election wins? Tat's a no on Mitch McConnell, who has been elected six times but — as most of us are aware — was born in Alabama and raised in Georgia before moving to Louisville as a teen. Te correct answer, which I stumbled upon while researching the 1960s for the article on JFK in this issue (page 62), is the late John Sherman Cooper, who won the ofce fve times in all — twice in regular elections (1960 and '66, by then-record margins) and three more times in special elections to fll the seats of senators who had either resigned (Albert "Happy" Chandler, to become Major League Baseball commissioner in 1945) or died (Virgil Chapman in 1951 and former Vice President Alben Barkley in 1956). It's somewhat surprising that all three partial-termers were Democrats, and yet the state's voters replaced each with this Somerset-born Republican, which should tell you how well-liked Cooper was, even though those same voters had handed him two senatorial election losses — to Chapman (riding Barkley's vice-presidential coattails) in 1948 and to the gregarious, highly popular, 77-year-old Barkley in 1954. Barkley, incidentally, also won fve Senate elections. But what transfxes me so about Cooper, who gave McConnell his frst taste of national politics as a 1964 Cooper summer intern, is the breadth of his government contributions and the remarkable independence he brought to the Republican Party — something you would fnd impossible to say about any GOP member today. Between 1928 and 1976, in addition to his Senate career, Cooper served as a U.S. representative, (Pulaski) county judge, Army legal advisor, state circuit judge, U.N. delegate, NATO adviser, and U.S. ambassador to India and then East Germany. As a senator, he was foreign to today's Republicans: co-sponsoring a bill to provide federal aid to education; opposing bans on collective bargaining for labor and closed shops; opposing GOP plans to cut taxes amid national budget defcits; speaking out against his party's measures to reduce funding for the Marshall Plan; opposing deployment of anti-ballistic missiles; attacking Jim Crow laws that impede sufrage for minorities; introducing legislation to curb escalation of the Vietnam War; co-sponsoring a bill to create Medicare. Let me repeat: Cooper was a Republican. — Jack Welch