September 26 - 1958: When the GOP controlled Beacon Hill and Cape Cod

1958: Back when the Republicans ran the Bay State Senate and House and Massachusetts had 14 Congressmen vs. today's 9

Cape Cod begins to morph from a conservative to a liberal county

The election seasons on Cape Cod in the middle of the 20th century found the Republican Party still in firm control of the state political scene with a Republican US Senator and many GOP Congressmen representing the state in Washington.

Jack Kennedy was a new,  fledgling US Senator who was just beginning to flap his political wings for the Presidential nomination in 1960 when the next national census would also remove two of Massachusetts' fourteen seats in the US Congress (see the reprint below).

Meanwhile, back on conservative Cape Cod

Here on Cape Cod, often referred to back then as the "second most conservative county in the state", second only to the Berkshires, the Republicans were still in firm control with a GOP rising star Hastings Keith (right) about to become our US Congressman for a dozen years.

Keith was finally done in by his support of the Vietnam War while a new Democrat rising star Gerry Studds led demonstrations against it.

It would take another wave of Boston area Democrats retiring here and the Vietnam anti-war movement to open the door for our first Democrat US Congressman, Gerry Studds, a decade and a half later in 1973.

Today all that has changed, and the Cape is almost entirely in Democrat hands.

Here's the start of a New York Times report that season:

VOTE IN BAY STATE AIMS BEYOND 1958:
Parties Battle to Control Expected Redistricting for the National House

BOSTON -- The chief political struggle in Massachusetts this year is a forward-looking one involving control of the State Senate.

Redistricting of the national house of representatives is a function of the Massachusetts State Senate, and the state stands to lose two seat in the next census...

Read the rest below.