accompanied him to Washington, D.C. She continued working as a journalist, writing a syndicated news column called "The Reflections of a News Hen" for newspapers in Alabama. The column won Alabama Press Association awards as "best original column". U.S. Senate Jim Allen died suddenly on June 1, 1978, the victim of a heart attack. One week later, on June 8, 1978, Alabama Governor George Wallace appointed Maryon Allen to succeed her husband in the Senate. In the Senate, she gained assignments to two of the committees on which her husband had served, Judiciary and Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, but was unsuccessful in her effort to get appointed to the Rules and Administration Committee. She was the first woman to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like her husband, Maryon Allen was very conservative even by Alabama Democratic standards of the time. In October 1978, she voted for a proposal to allow states that had ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to rescind their ratification. At the time, 35 states had ratified the ERA, three short of the total that would be needed before March 1979 in order to add the ERA to the U.S. Constitution. The proposal to allow states to rescind their ratifications failed to win a majority, and the Senate went on to join the House in voting to give states three additional years to ratify the ERA, but no additional states ratified it, so it failed. Following her appointment to the Senate, Allen decided to become a candidate in the November 1978 special election for the remaining two years of her husband's Senate term. Governor Wallace had been expected to seek the Senate seat, but he decided not to run, making Allen the favorite to win. However, she suffered serious damage to her public image after the Washington Post published an interview she had given to reporter Sally Quinn. Quinn quoted statements by Allen that appeared critical of Governor Wallace and his wife Lurleen Wallace. Allen said that Quinn had distorted her statements, but the comments alienated many Alabamians, and some questioned her judgment in sitting for an interview with the Post, which conservatives considered to be a liberal publication. She won a plurality in the September 5, 1978, Democratic primary election, receiving 44 percent of the vote, but failed to win the outright majority that was needed to avoid a runoff. In the runoff held on