The 1966 United States Senate election in Virginia was held on November 8, 1966. Senator A. Willis Robertson ran for re-election to a fourth term in office but was defeated in the Democratic primary by State Senator William B. Spong Jr. Spong then defeated Republican James Ould and Virginia Conservative F. Lee Hawthorne in the general election.
This was the last time a Democrat won the Class II senate seat from Virginia until 2008. The election was held on the same day as a special election for Virginia's other United States Senate seat.
Senator Robertson had long been one of the most conservative members of the Democratic Party and had opposed most civil rights legislation. To secure his defeat, President Lyndon B. Johnson personally recruited State Senator William B. Spong Jr., a much more liberal member of the party, to challenge Robertson in the Democratic primary. The decaying Byrd machine was unsure about supporting the aging Robertson, with some members favouring younger First District Congressman Thomas Downing. Nevertheless, fears that Downing's supporters would not rally behind Byrd lead the organization to stand with Robertson as its candidate for the primary.
Spong relied on support from newly enfranchised Black voters and the loss of power of such Byrd Democrats as Virginia Beach's Sidney Kellam. He was also helped by Robertson's age and overconfidence amongst his supporters, which may explain why fellow Senator Byrd junior held his place whereas Robertson did not.
Spong's extremely narrow 611-vote victory â the margin was 764 votes in the first count â was received as a major upset and heralded an end to the conservative Byrd Organization's dominance in the Virginia Democratic Party, alongside Armistead L. Boothe's close loss to Byrd junior in the primary for Virginia's other Senate seat. Spong was helped by the fact that many conservative voters, after the 1965 gubernatorial election, had already turned to the Republican or Virginia Conservative parties and did not vote in the primary.
This was the first time since 1948 that the Republicans nominated a candidate for the seat. James P. Ould was mayor of Lynchburg and ran an essentially conservative campaign against the moderately progressive Spong. He was less successful by about 4 percent than the lesser-known Lawrence Traylor in the concurrent election for the state's other Senate seat.
The Virginia Conservative Party was formed by hard-line Byrd Democrats who believed that the pay-as-you-go political system must be reinforced and federal control eliminated throughout the state. Support by several leaders of the machine for Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential election â most critically future party-switching two-time Governor Mills Godwin â angered this group and led it away from even the conservative state Democratic Party. Both Conservative Senate candidates devoted their campaigns to attacking the major parties for refusing to debate such issues as the supposed takeover of schools, inflation due to the War on Poverty, and judicial appointments that the Conservatives believed responsible for the crime wave of the 1960s.