The 1944 United States Senate special election in Massachusetts was held on November 7, 1944. Republican Governor Leverett Saltonstall was elected to finish the term of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who had resigned from the Senate to serve in World War II.
Primary elections were held on July 10; Saltonstall was unopposed for the Republican nomination, while John H. Corcoran won a highly competitive race for the Democratic nomination, in which all four candidates came from Boston or Cambridge.
Incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. resigned from the Senate on February 3, 1944, to return to active duty in the U.S. Army during World War II.
Despite initial reporting that Governor Leverett Saltonstall would resign so that Lieutenant Governor Horace T. Cahill could appoint him to the vacant seat, he chose not to.[1] Instead, on February 8, Saltonstall appointed Sinclair Weeks, whom Lodge had narrowly defeated at the party convention in 1936.
A special election was scheduled on November 7, concurrent with the regularly scheduled elections to state and national office.
Though he was entitled to be seated immediately upon the certification of the election, Saltonstall did not take office until January 4, 1945, when his term as Governor ended.
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