page_title: Richard Lugar
section_title: Cuba
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Lugar / Political positions / Cuba
context_page_description: Richard Green Lugar was an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Indiana from 1977 to 2013. He was a member of the Republican Party.
  Born in Indianapolis, Lugar graduated from Denison University and the University of Oxford. He served on the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners from 1964 to 1967 before he was elected to two terms as mayor of Indianapolis, serving from 1968 to 1976. During his tenure as mayor, Lugar served as the president of the National League of Cities in 1971 and gave the keynote address at the 1972 Republican National Convention.
  In 1974, Lugar ran his first campaign for the U.S. Senate. In the year's senate elections he lost to incumbent Democratic senator Birch Bayh. He ran again in 1976, defeating Democratic incumbent Vance Hartke. Lugar was reelected in 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000, and 2006. In 2012, Lugar was defeated by Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock in the Republican primary, ending his 36-year tenure in the U.S. Senate. Lugar ran for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 1996 primaries but lack of success led to his withdrawal early in the campaign.
context_section_description: Lugar described U.S. sanctions on Cuba as a failed policy and wrote to President Obama that "additional measures are needed...to recast a policy that has not only failed to promote human rights and democracy, but also undermines our broader security and political interests". He supported the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act (S.428), which would lift the restrictions on U.S. citizens visiting Cuba in place since the early 1960s.
caption: Richard Lugar meeting with actress Ashley Judd
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