The marvelous film does not reveal why Senator Smith, played by Peter Lawford, voted against his party and his friends (e.g. the majority party leader). Obviously it was a big shock to them. The only thing I can imagine is that he had some fundamental questions or doubts about the nominee's positions. Any ideas, thoughts? Thank you.
shareSPOILERS!
Oh, the reason is obvious, sidney76. It's because of the suicide of Brig Anderson.
Brig was Lafe's closest friend in the Senate. He killed himself to escape the pain of being blackmailed over his past homosexual relationship by Senator Fred Van Ackerman. Once the Majority Leader, Bob Munson, released all votes pledged to Leffingwell, Smith was free to vote his conscience, so he voted against Leffingwell to honor his late friend's intentions and show that even in politics the cost of some things is just too high.
Senator Munson and the others were surprised but since Munson had released his votes he couldn't say that Lafe was doing anything wrong -- plus I'm sure Munson understood his motives. And in the end of course it was all rendered moot when the President died and the Vice President refused to break the tie vote, allowing the nomination to be defeated.
hobnob's explanation is precisely what I was going to post But, also know that in Drury's novel, the vote was to defeat the nomination and so there was no dramatic last minute switch of a vote. Still, it served a good purpose in the film. As written above "the cost of some things is much too high." No one nominee could be that important.
shareYes, in the book the nomination was defeated by something like 74-26 or so, so there was no suspense about the outcome. Frankly I like the film's tense and suspenseful showdown better. (It's also much more realistic, since in a loss of the magnitude of 3-to-1 the Senate leaders would be well aware beforehand that the nomination was doomed by a huge margin and would almost certainly persuade the President to withdraw the nomination rather than be humiliated by such an enormous defeat. Even a mindlessly stubborn President would see the futility of risking his prestige and his influence by sticking with a nominee about to suffer such a massive defeat.)
I misspoke above when I wrote that Lafe Smith's switch became moot because the VP declined to break the tie, thereby defeating the nomination. Of course, had Smith voted "aye" the vote would have been 48-46 in favor, with no tie to break. But I suspect the new President would have soon requested Leffingwell's resignation, probably after a decent interval of a few weeks.