page_title: Robert Byrd
section_title: Public service records
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Byrd / Congressional service / Public service records
caption_attribution_description: English: United States Senator Robert C. Byrd (D–WV)
context_page_description: Robert Carlyle Byrd was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from West Virginia for over 51 years, from 1959 until his death in 2010. A member of the Democratic Party, Byrd previously served as a U.S. Representative from 1953 until 1959. He is the longest-serving U.S. Senator in history, was the longest-serving member in the history of the United States Congress, until surpassed by Representative John Dingell of Michigan; the last remaining member of the U.S. Senate to have served during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower; and the last remaining member of Congress to have served during the presidency of Harry S. Truman. Byrd is also the only West Virginian to have served in both chambers of the state legislature and both chambers of Congress.
  Byrd served in the West Virginia House of Delegates from 1947 to 1950, and the West Virginia State Senate from 1950 to 1952. Initially elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1952, Byrd served there for six years before being elected to the Senate in 1958.
context_section_description: Byrd was elected to a record ninth consecutive full Senate term on November 7, 2006. He became the longest-serving senator in American history on June 12, 2006, surpassing Strom Thurmond of South Carolina with 17,327 days of service. On November 18, 2009, Byrd became the longest-serving member in congressional history, with 56 years, 320 days of combined service in the House and Senate, passing Carl Hayden of Arizona. Previously, Byrd had held the record for the longest unbroken tenure in the Senate (Thurmond resigned during his first term and was re-elected seven months later). He is the only senator ever to serve more than 50 years. Including his tenure as a state legislator from 1947 to 1953, Byrd's service on the political front exceeded 60 continuous years. Byrd, who never lost an election, cast his 18,000th vote on June 21, 2007, the most of any senator in history. John Dingell broke Byrd's record as longest-serving member of Congress on June 7, 2013.
  Upon the death of former Florida Senator George Smathers on January 20, 2007, Byrd became the last living United States Senator from the 1950s.
  Having taken part in the admission of Alaska and Hawaii to the union, Byrd was the last surviving senator to have voted on a bill granting statehood to a U.S. territory. At the time of Byrd's death, fourteen sitting or former members of the Senate had not been born when Byrd's tenure in the Senate began, President Barack Obama among them.
caption: Byrd early in his Senate career
exif: {}