In September 1949, Nixon hired Chotiner as campaign manager for his upcoming 1950 run for the United States Senate. Helen Gahagan Douglas defeated Manchester Boddy for the Democratic nomination in a primary that badly splintered the Democratic Party, while Nixon had little effective competition for the Republican slot. Chotiner realized that Nixon could not beat Douglas by advocating more social welfare programs, so he advised his candidate to attack Douglas on the issue of communism, seen as a Democratic vulnerability. Echoing a theme used by Boddy in the primary, Chotiner linked Representative Douglas with leftist Congressman Vito Marcantonio of the socialist American Labor Party, listing the matters in which the two had voted the same way in a leaflet printed on pink paper—the "Pink Sheet"—and popularizing a label for Douglas which had been first coined by Boddy—the "Pink Lady". However, the Northern California campaign chairman for Nixon, John Dinkenspiel, and his paid assistant, Harvey Hancock, declined to use the Pink Sheet in their territory. With the Korean War raging, Douglas also tried to depict Nixon as soft on communism, stating this in her first speech of the general election campaign, but that strategy was not successful, and Chotiner noted, "She made the fatal mistake of attacking our strength instead of sticking to attacking our weakness."