by defeating Joe Bates, the candidate favored by Chandler, in the Democratic senatorial primary. On April 30, 1956, Kentucky senator Alben Barkley died suddenly of a heart attack. With the Democratic primary already over, the Democratic State Central Committee was charged with selecting a candidate to run for Barkley's seat. They chose Wetherby, Clements' former lieutenant governor. Journalist John Ed Pearce later recorded that Clements had favored Chandler's choice, Joseph Leary, as a candidate rather than Wetherby. Clements didn't think Leary had a very good chance of winning, but he felt Leary's selection would keep Chandler from throwing his support to the Republican candidates. Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower convinced John Sherman Cooper, a former senator and ambassador who was immensely popular in Kentucky, to challenge Wetherby, hoping his presence on the ticket would aid his own re-election bid. In the Republican primary, voters chose Thruston B. Morton to challenge Clements. With two of his factional enemies as candidates for the Senate, Governor Chandler bolted the party and supported the Republican candidates. Further complicating Clements' campaign was the fact that Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson suffered a heart attack in 1956, and as majority whip, Clements had to spend much of his time in Washington, D.C. covering Johnson's duties in the Senate. What time he was in Kentucky was usually devoted to Wetherby's campaign, since the Democrats believed Clements would be re-elected easily while Wetherby faced much stiffer odds. These factors, combined with the landslide of support for Eisenhower, the Republican presidential candidate, contributed to the defeat of both Wetherby and Clements. Cooper defeated Wetherby by 65,000 votes, while Clements lost to Morton by a margin of 7,000 votes out of more than 1 million that were cast in the election. It was Clements' first defeat for elected office in a career that spanned thirty years. Later life Clements never again sought an elected office after his defeat by Morton, though he remained active in state politics and continued to lead the anti-Chandler faction of his party. From 1957 to 1959, at the insistence of Lyndon Johnson, he served as executive director of the United States Senate Democratic Campaign Committee and helped ensure the election of a fourteen-seat Democratic majority in the Senate. He considered running for governor again in 1959, but ultimately decided against it. Without Clements in the race, the anti-Chandler faction was unable to unite behind either