Candidates File Papers for Vacant Seat in Wisconsin (PJW)

January 28, 1958
MADISON - The vacant senate seat once held by controversial firebrand anticommunist Joseph McCarthy will once again be filled this November. The seat has remained empty since McCarthy’s death last September. Both parties are highly interested in the office, seeing it as an opportunity to make inroads into a state once gripped tightly by the Red Scare.

Governor Walter J. Kohler Jr. has announced his candidacy for the Republicans. Kohler has been governor since 1950, and has remained moderately popular, though he has drawn criticism for his association with McCarthy. This criticism has inspired William Proxmire, a businessman and former State Assemblyman, to run once again, after being defeating several times by Kohler in previous elections for governor.

Proxmire, a small government Democrat, campaigns on a platform of cleaning up what he calls the “waste” in Washington, both domestically and abroad. He specifically calls out the American Defense Force and the lengthening war in Cuba as two of such wastes.

Kohler remains a moderate. His main talking point will be how his own state government has been clean, efficient, and corruption-free model, which will hopefully downplay Proxmire’s charges. But Kohler sees some dissent in his own party.

The hardliner McCarthyists are looking to place one of their own into the seat: Henry Maier; veteran of the War and a state senator. Maier plays a difficult game of balancing his anticommunist credentials with gaining support of labor unions, to which he has promised greater rewards for workers’ compensation.

It’ll be a close one in Madison this year folks, and your friends at the Chicago Tribune will be covering it to the end.