page_title: Birch Bayh
section_title: Senate reelection campaigns
hierarchical_section_title: Birch Bayh / United States Senator / Senate reelection campaigns
caption_attribution_description: English: Birch Bayh speaking at 1968 DNC
context_page_description: Birch Evans Bayh Jr. was an American Democratic Party politician who served as U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1963 to 1981. He was first elected to office in 1954, when he won election to the Indiana House of Representatives; in 1958, he was elected Speaker, the youngest person to hold that office in the state's history. In 1962, he ran for the U.S. Senate, narrowly defeating incumbent Republican Homer E. Capehart. Shortly after entering the Senate, he became Chairman of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, and in that role authored two constitutional amendments: the twenty-fifth—which establishes procedures for an orderly transition of power in the case of the death, disability, or resignation of the President of the United States—and the twenty-sixth, which lowered the voting age to 18 throughout the United States. He is the only non-Founding Father to have authored two constitutional amendments. Bayh also led unsuccessful efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and eliminate the Electoral College.
  Bayh authored Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which bans gender discrimination in higher education institutions that receive federal funding.
context_section_description: Bayh ran for reelection to the U.S. Senate three times. In the 1968 general election, Bayh defeated challenger William D. Ruckelshaus with 51.7% of the vote against a strong Republican tide, becoming only the fourth Indiana Democrat to be popularly elected to a second term in the Senate. In 1974, Bayh was nearly defeated by Indianapolis Mayor Richard G. Lugar, garnering only 50.7 percent of the vote in what was otherwise a disastrous year for Republicans. Two years later, Lugar won Indiana's other Senate seat by ousting Democratic incumbent Vance Hartke.
  In 1980, Bayh faced Congressman and future Vice President Dan Quayle. Bayh engaged the challenger in seven debates, and was defeated for reelection in the Republican landslide year, with 46.2% of the vote to Quayle's 53.8%.
caption: Bayh speaking at the 1968 Democratic National Convention
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