Winning wasn't necessary

Sidney Yates, a seven term Democratic Congressman from Chicago, gave up a safe House seat to run for U.S. Senator in 1962 in an uphill battle against incumbent Republican Everett Dirksen, the Senate Minority Leader. Some felt the party slated him because he wasn’t likely to win.

National Democratic party leaders, in fact, were thought to favor Dirksen’s re-election because they preferred his leadership of the opposition party to that of a potential successor and wanted to keep him in his current position.

But the decision to back Yates was worth it to local Democratic Party kingpins. They expected his candidacy to attract large Jewish contributions to the party and hoped downstate voters would recognize his surname as the same as a 19th century Illinois governor (to whom he was not related), thus garnering additional support for the party slate.

His Congressional incumbency was thought to establish him as a credible candidate. Winning wasn’t necessary.

And his Senate candidacy also cleared the way for freshman Congressman Edward Finnegan, whose district had been merged with Yates’, to keep his post.

Yates drew 47% of the vote, the best showing of any of Dirksen’s opponents, but he lost.