The Congress: When Is a Majority a Majority?

(5 of 10)

Devoted Claques. Michael Joseph Mansfield was born on the edge of Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen 61 years ago this week to a father who had emigrated from County Kilkenny and a mother who hailed from Limerick. His mother died when he was seven, and he was packed off with two younger sisters to live with relatives in Great Falls, Mont. When the U.S. entered World War I, he quit the eighth grade and ran away from home, got into the Navy just before he was 15 by lying about his age. He served on convoy duty in the Atlantic for ten months, later served in both the Army and the Marines. By the time he was 19, Mike had served in three branches of the armed forces, never rising above the rank of private first class, and was the youngest Montanan in the war. He still wears the Marines' discharge button in his lapel.

For the next six years, Mansfield worked, often half a mile underground, as a $4.25-a-day mucker and ore sampler in Butte's copper mines. He entered Montana State University in Missoula in 1928, in his senior year married Maureen Hayes, a copper-haired Butte schoolteacher who had tutored him for a time in high school English. They have one child, Anne, a 25-year-old Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College who now works for the Alliance for Progress in Washington.

Through special courses and exams, Mike finally made up his high school credits in 1933, received his B.A. at the same time. He began teaching history a«t Montana, never rose higher than assistant professor. "He was not fiery as a lecturer," recalls a colleague, but the students liked him, and those who sat in on his Latin America and Far East history courses still form a large, devoted and politically profitable claque.

Much Better, Thanks. In his first political venture—a congressional primary race in Montana's First District in 1940 —Mansfield finished third, but he has never lost an election since. In 1942 he succeeded G.O.P. Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, who was the only member of the House to vote against U.S. participation in both World Wars I and II. After five terms, he was ready for the Senate. In the 1952 race, Joe McCarthy descended on Montana to campaign for G.O.P. Incumbent Zales Ecton, accused Mansfield of promoting

"Communist-coddling practices," and called him "either stupid or a dupe." Mike squeaked by with a 5,800-vote plurality out of 260,400, and despite his kindly soul, he was not the sort to forget McCarthy's smears. At the start of his first term, McCarthy strode up, slapped him on the back, and asked, "How are things in Montana these days, Mike?" Replied Mansfield, "Much better since you left."