page_title: Barry Goldwater
section_title: Return to the Senate
hierarchical_section_title: Barry Goldwater / Political career / Return to the Senate
caption_attribution_description: English: President Reagan meeting with Senator Barry Goldwater in Oval Office. 12/12/84.
context_page_description: Barry Morris Goldwater was an American politician, businessman, and author who was a five-term Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States in 1964. Despite his loss of the 1964 presidential election in a landslide, Goldwater is the politician most often credited with having sparked the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.
  Goldwater rejected the legacy of the New Deal and, along with the conservative coalition, fought against the New Deal coalition. A member of the N.A.A.C.P. and active supporter of desegregation in Phoenix, Goldwater voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, believing it to be an overreach by the federal government - a decision that considerably anguished him. In 1964, Goldwater mobilized a large conservative constituency to win the hard-fought Republican presidential primaries.
context_section_description: Goldwater remained popular in Arizona, and in the 1968 Senate election he was elected to the seat of retiring Senator Carl Hayden. He was subsequently reelected in 1974 and 1980. The 1974 election saw Goldwater easily reelected over his Democratic opponent, Jonathan Marshall, the publisher of The Scottsdale Progress.
  With his fourth Senate term due to end in January 1981, Goldwater seriously considered retiring from the Senate in 1980 before deciding to run for one final term. It was a surprisingly tough battle for re-election. He was viewed by some as out of touch and vulnerable for several reasons. Chief among them was that Goldwater, because he had planned to retire in 1981, had not visited many areas of Arizona outside of Phoenix and Tucson. Additionally, his challenger, Bill Schulz, proved to be a formidable opponent. A former Republican turned Democrat and a wealthy real estate developer, his campaign slogan was "Energy for the Eighties." In the general election, Goldwater won by a very narrow margin, receiving 49.5% of the vote to Schulz's 48.4%.
  Arizona's changing population also hurt Goldwater. The state's population had soared, and a huge portion of the electorate had not lived in the state when Goldwater was previously elected; hence, many voters were less familiar with Goldwater's actual beliefs, and he was on the defensive for much of the campaign. Early returns on election night seemed to indicate that Schulz would win. The counting of votes continued through the night and into the next morning. At around daybreak, Goldwater learned that he had been reelected thanks to absentee ballots, which were among the last to be counted. Goldwater's surprisingly close victory in 1980 came despite Reagan's 61% landslide over Jimmy Carter in Arizona. Republicans regained control of the Senate, putting Goldwater in the most powerful position he ever had in the Senate. In October 1983, Goldwater voted against the legislation establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday.
caption: Goldwater meets with President Ronald Reagan in the oval office, 1984
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