Strauss's term as AEC chair completed at the end of June 1958. Eisenhower wanted to reappoint him, but Strauss feared the Senate would reject or at least subject him to ferocious questioning. Besides the Oppenheimer affair, he had clashed with Senate Democrats on several major issues, including his autocratic nature as AEC chair and his secretive handling of the Dixon-Yates contract. Indeed, by this time Strauss had garnered the reputation, as a "Time" magazine profile put it, of being "one of the nation's ablest and thorniest public figures."