Herman Welker

In the early 1950s, Welker told Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith about Harmon Killebrew, a young baseball player from Payette who was batting .847 for a semi-professional team at the time.[10][11] Griffith told his farm director Ossie Bluege about the tip and Bluege flew to Idaho to watch Killebrew play.[12] The Boston Red Sox also expressed interest but Bluege succeeded in signing Killebrew to a $50,000 contract on June 19, 1954.[11][13][14] Killebrew (1936–2011) had a Hall of Fame career in the major leagues, with 573 home runs.

In the early 1950s, Welker became closely associated with fellow Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and "McCarthyism", so much so that he was often referred to by Senate colleagues as "Little Joe from Idaho."[15] In 1954, Welker was McCarthy's chief defender during censure proceedings in the U.S. Senate against McCarthy for the questionable investigative techniques McCarthy had used in pursuing individuals he accused of being communists, and others he accused of being homosexuals, within the government.[16] Welker was one of 22 Republicans (out of a total of 46 Republican senators) who voted against the censure of McCarthy in 1954 for these "red scare" communist witch hunts, and his so-called "lavender scare" tactics aimed at homosexuals in government.[17]

Welker, along with Republican Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, was a key collaborator with McCarthy in the blackmail of Democratic Senator Lester C. Hunt of Wyoming and his son, that led to Hunt's suicide in his Senate office on June 19, 1954.[18][19][20][21] Welker threatened Sen. Hunt, a staunch opponent of McCarthy's tactics, that if he did not immediately retire from the Senate and not seek re-election in 1954, Welker would see that his son's arrest for soliciting an undercover policeman was prosecuted and would widely publicize his son's alleged homosexuality. Welker also threatened Inspector Roy Blick of the Morals Division of the Washington Police Department with the loss of his job if he failed to prosecute Hunt Jr.[22][23] After Hunt's suicide, a Republican, Edward D. Crippa, was appointed by the Republican acting governor of Wyoming, Clifford Joy Rogers, to fill the vacant seat.[24]

Alex Ross in The New Yorker wrote in 2012 of an event "loosely dramatized in the novel and film Advise & Consent [in which] Senator Lester Hunt, of Wyoming, killed himself after ... Welker [and others] ... threatened to expose Hunt's son as a homosexual".[25]

In 1955, Welker would be one of two non-Southern senators to vote against the nomination of John Marshall Harlan II to the Supreme Court,[26] opposing Harlan because he was unsatisfied that Harlan[27]

adheres to the doctrine that American sovereignty could not and must not be diluted

In 1956, Welker ran for a second term in the Senate. Although he won the Republican nomination, again defeating Sanborn, he was decisively defeated by 32-year-old Democrat Frank Church of Boise, a relative of his 1950 opponent; Welker received less than 39 percent of the vote. This increased Democratic control of the Senate and led to much anger within the Republican Party, with Joseph McCarthy even accusing President Dwight Eisenhower of not supporting Welker's reelection campaign enough.[28][29]