RIP.
I briefly confused him with Mark Pryor.
That's his Dad.
1972 Democratic U.S. Senate primary results[1]
Party Candidate Votes %
Democratic John L. McClellan (inc.) 220,588 44.70%
Democratic David Pryor 204,058 41.35%
Democratic Ted Boswell 62,496 12.66%
Democratic Foster Johnson 6,358 1.29%
1972 Democratic U.S. Senate run-off results[2]
Party Candidate Votes %
Democratic John L. McClellan (inc.) 242,983 52.00%
Democratic David Pryor 224,262 48.00%
General election results[3][4]
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
(D) John L. McClellan (inc.) 386,398 60.88%
(R) Wayne H. Babbitt 248,238 39.12%
Pryor almost beat John McClellan, a significantly more conservative Democrat than Pryor, who was basically a moderate National Democrat. 1974 was a Godsend for Pryor; Gov. Bumpers ran for the Senate and dumped Sen. J. William Fulbright in the primary. Meanwhile, Pryor won the Democratic nomination for Arkansas Governor (a job which paid $10k a year back then) and won. But what if Pryor had actually beaten McClellan in the primary; what then?
The fact is that losing the primary against McClellan was probably a break for Pryor. It is quite possible that Pryor, who was a liberal by Arkansas standards, would have lost the election to the Republican, Wayne Babbitt. McClellan had an advantage over Babbitt, even in the year of McGovern's disastrous loss (a 69-31 loss in Arkansas); he was conservative, and during the campaign he became Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. (McClellan endorsed McGovern, but didn't campaign with him; when you're Appropriations Chairman, you can do such things.)
Because of his chairmanship, the Nixon Administration didn't invest in Babbitt heavily, but he was an appointee in the Winthrop Rockefeller Administration and he campaigned actively. If Pryor was the candidate, things would have been different; the Nixon Administration would have seen the seat as a pickup chance. In addition, 1972 was a very bad year for more moderate Democrats running statewide in the South. Nick Galafainakis lost 54-46 to Jesse Helms in Arkansas. William Spong, who did not endorse McGovern (the Virginia Democratic Party as a whole did not endorse McGovern; they stayed neutral) was defeated by William Scott in Virginia. Ed Edmondson lost 52-48 to Dewey Bartlett in Oklahoma. (Edmondson was a standard liberal who moved to the right in the late 1960s and who emphasized his differences with McGovern on the campaign trail, but it wasn't enough.) Sam Nunn won in Georgia, but he won because he was seen as a more conservative candidate than incumbent Democratic Sen. David Gambrell (though he turned out not to be).
So Pryor may well have accomplished winning by losing. Had he been the Democratic nominee, only to lose to Babbitt, he may have been done in politics. Certainly, he would not have been a candidate in waiting for Governor in 1974. He may have been able to come back, but he wouldn't have been an odds on favorite for Governor, then Senator, each time he ran. Indeed, he would then have been competing for a run for Governor in 1978 with the up-and-coming Arkansas Atty. General, William Jefferson Clinton.
