Birch Bayh

Birch Evans Bayh Jr. (/baɪ/; January 22, 1928 – March 14, 2019) was an American politician from Indiana who served as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives representing Vigo County, Indiana from 1954 to 1962 and as a member of United States Senate for three terms from 1963 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, 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 United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, and in that role authored two constitutional amendments: the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution—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 Amendment to the United States Constitution, which lowered the voting age to 18 throughout the United States. He is the first person since James Madison and the only non–Founding Father to have authored more than one constitutional amendment to date. Bayh also led unsuccessful efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and eliminate the United States Electoral College.

Bayh authored Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which bans sexism in higher education institutions that receive federal funding. He also authored the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, and co-authored the Bayh–Dole Act, which deals with intellectual property that arises from federal-government-funded research. Bayh voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court of the United States. He led the Senate opposition to the nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, two of Richard Nixon's unsuccessful Supreme Court nominees. Bayh intended to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, but declined to run after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, but dropped out of the campaign after disappointing finishes in the first set of primaries and caucuses.

Bayh won re-election in 1968 and 1974, but lost his 1980 bid for a fourth term to Dan Quayle, who later became Vice President of the United States under President of the United States George H. W. Bush from Texas. After leaving the Senate, he remained active in the political and legal world. His son, Evan Bayh, served as the 46th Governor of Indiana and held his father's former U.S. Senate seat from 1999 to 2011.