The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [103]
Howard was at loose ends back in Omaha. Warren set up a partnership, Buffett & Buffett, that formalized the way they had occasionally bought stocks together. Howard contributed some capital, and Warren’s contribution was a token amount of money, but mostly ideas and labor. But Howard looked at going back into the stockbroking business for the third time with dismay. Warren had been tending his old accounts while he served in Congress, but Howard knew that Warren hated it, had never stopped trying to get Ben Graham to hire him, and would leave in an instant if he could go to New York. For his part, Howard missed his true love, politics. He harbored a desire to enter the Senate, especially now that there was a Republican in the White House. Yet his ambitions conflicted with his extreme political views.
On July 30, 1953—Alice Buffett’s birthday—Susie and Warren’s first child, a daughter, was born. They named her Susan Alice and called her Little Susie, sometimes Little Sooz. And Susie became a passionate, playful, and devoted mother.
Little Susie was Howard and Leila’s first grandchild. A week later, Susie’s sister, Dottie, gave birth to her second son, Tommy. Within months, Doris became pregnant with her first child, a daughter, Robin Wood. By the spring of 1954, Susie was pregnant with her second child. Now the Buffetts and Thompsons had a new focus—grandchildren.
A few months later, a moment came when it looked as though Howard’s time might have arrived. On the morning of July 1, 1954, news came from Washington that Nebraska’s senior Senator, Hugh Butler, had been rushed to the hospital with a stroke and was not expected to live. The deadline for entering the primary election that would fill his Senate seat was that very night. Howard’s sense of propriety was such that he refused to file the papers to run until Butler had actually died, so the Buffetts waited anxiously all day for news. They knew that Howard’s name recognition in Douglas County meant that if he ran in a special election without having to go through the party nominating process, even though the party bigwigs were disenchanted with him, the odds were excellent that he could win.
Word of Butler’s death came in the early evening, after Secretary of State Frank Marsh’s office had closed at its usual five p.m. Howard threw his candidacy filing in the car and he and Leila drove to Lincoln, assuming that they had plenty of time because the deadline was midnight. They tried to file the papers at Marsh’s home, but he refused them, even though Howard had paid the filing fee earlier in the day. Infuriated, they returned to Omaha.
The state Republican convention was in session at the time, and on the news of Butler’s death, delegates on the floor elected a temporary successor to serve out his term.16 Anyone serving would more or less automatically be elected to Butler’s job in November. As the ranking Republican in the state, Howard was an obvious choice. But he was seen as a zealot, as a guy who tilted at windmills, unyielding on trivial ethical matters and disloyal to his own party for not supporting Eisenhower. Instead, the convention elected Roman Hruska, the well-liked Congressman who had taken Howard’s seat when he retired. Howard and Leila sped back to Lincoln and quickly filed suit with the State Supreme Court to force the party to accept his nomination. But twenty-four hours later, they gave up the futile fight and dropped the lawsuit.
Warren was furious when he heard the news about Hruska. “They slit Daddy’s throat from ear to ear,” he said. How dare the party repay Howard’s decades of loyalty this way?
At fifty-one years of age, Howard had just seen his future disappear. As his anger ebbed, his depression grew. Until now, a retired senior party politician like him would have had a role to play, but he had been shut out of the arena that was the center of his life, that made him feel useful in the world. He tried to get a teaching position at the University of Omaha,