 Cochran only served two years in the Virginia Senate, because after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Davis v. Mann, another new redistricting plan took effect and Republican H. Dunlop Dawbarn of Waynesboro defeated him in the next election, perhaps as a result of sympathy for losing his wife, or outrage over Cochran's distancing himself from the Byrd Organization.In the General Assembly, Cochran had been one of the "Young Turks", World War II veterans who disagreed with the Byrd Organization on many education and civil rights issues, although he was not as liberal as Armistead Boothe of Alexandria.They introduced measures to abolish Jim Crow laws and the Poll Tax, which didn't pass until much later; and the Organization retaliated by limiting their committee assignments.