Heidi Alexander: “Mark Hatfield was elected to the Senate in 1966. It was a distinguished class that included some prominent Republicans…”

“Mark Hatfield was elected to the Senate in 1966. It was a distinguished class that included some prominent Republicans, sort of a new wave in the Republican Party. In addition to Governor Hatfield, a former two-term Governor, there was Charles Percy of Illinois, former President of Bell & Howell; there was Ed Brooke of Massachusetts, the first African American popularly elected to the Senate. Also in that Republican class were Cliff Hansen, a prominent rancher from Wyoming, and a young man who was a son-in-law of then-Republican leader, Everett Dirksen, Howard H. Baker, Jr. I hitched a ride with Howard Baker to Washington, DC, in that year and went to work as Baker's legislative assistant in 1967, and, of course, had a chance to meet Senator Hatfield. At that time, there was less space for Senators than there is even today. So new Senators were put into rooms with each other. For example, Senator Baker and Senator Brooke and all their staffs were put in a single room, separated only by a partition. They got along with that for 6 months. But Senator Hatfield did not like it very much. After all, he had been a Governor for two terms and was not used to being treated in that way. He was polite about it, as he always was. But soon he made a mission. He went around the Senate and the Capitol and he counted up all the rooms that then-Senator James Eastland of Mississippi had taken to himself.…”