| Show both houses reconvened monday for seemingly turbulent finals supplementing the associated press report that the sixty eighth congress which already has established a record as the most turbulent in the nations history reconvened monday for its short and final session our washington correspondent writes to us newspaper articles which speak of this session as being controlled b by y so called lame ducks are misleading these articles give the impression that the recent election resulted in a great overturn of memberships in the house of representatives and that the control of the remaining session of this congress will be in the hands of men who have been repudiated at the polls an examination of the election returns hardly bears out any such theory there are members of the house of representatives and in the new congress there will be but 82 new members that is less than 20 per cent of the members in the new house will be serving their first terms but even these figures do noi not accurately cura tely represent the change in membership due to repudiation of men who serve in the present congress some of those who were not returned at the recent election voluntarily retired before the primaries because of advancing age ill health or because of a desire to reenter re enter private business some of them retired from we th e house in order to become candidates for vacancies in the senate when these there exceptions are made the election re results indicate that only about 60 50 members were defeated by their constituencies and some one else elected in their place this is not a large number considering the fact that in roost most states the incumbent must go 90 through two elections the contest in the primaries for the nomination and then the election so far as the election was a repudiation of members of the present congress that repudiation affected chiefly the democrats A summing up of the result shows that as compared with the present congress the republicans will have 21 more members in the next congress while the democrats will mil have 23 less the third party gains 2 members if democrats and republicans stood on an equality in the matter of elections the change would undoubtedly be even greater to the disadvantage of the democrats As is well known there is practically only one election in the solid south the primaries the man who wins in the democratic prim primaries aries in in any one of the southern states is practically assured an election As a consequence there are comparatively few changes in membership in that section of the country the incumbent is practically free from any criticism of his official record from the opposition party in alabama and arkansas for instance there was anas not a single change in the house membership in the recent elections in mississippi there was only one in louisiana one in virginia one and in texas none the state in which there was the largest number of changes in membership was west virginia only one of the present members will be back in 11 the next congress the changes were not all due to defeat of present members however for some of the pres present ent members were not candidates for reelection election re in the present west virginian delegation there are four democrats and two republicans while in the next delegation from that state there will be five republicans and one democrat this is of special interest inte iest because west virginia is is the home state of davis the democratic nominee for president another state in which there were nui numerous nerous changes was new jorsey where the damoc democrats rats have six sin si N of the present members but will have only two of the twelve in the next congress the states in which there was not a single change in in house membership for any cause are alabama arizona arkansas colorado idaho maine maryland aryland Bl montana nebraska new mexico north dakota rhode island south dakota texas utah washington and wisconsin this record does docs not indicate a control of congress by lame ducks |
