Birch Evans Bayh Jr. (/baɪ/;[3] 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 the 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 to date since James Madison, and the only non–Founding Father, to have authored more than one constitutional amendment. 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,[4][5] as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court of the United States.[6][7] 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.

Early life

Youth and education

Bayh was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, the son of Leah Ward (née Hollingsworth), a teacher, and Birch Bayh, an intercollegiate coach and athletic director. His ancestry included ancestors who were German, English, Scotch-Irish, and Scottish. Bayh spent summers on his grandparents' farm in Shirkieville, Indiana, where he later lived. As a student at New Goshen (Fayette Township) High School, young Birch took part in speaking contests, played baseball and basketball, and won the Indiana 4-H Tomato Championship.[8]

From 1946 to 1948, Bayh served as a Military Police Corps with the United States Army in occupied Germany following World War II.[9] He excelled in sports, competing as a Golden Gloves boxer in college[10] and taking part in two Major League Baseball tryouts.[11] Bayh graduated from the Purdue University School of Agriculture in 1951, where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega social fraternity and senior class president.[8] In 1951, he won Alpha Tau Omega's highest individual collegiate award, the Thomas Arkle Clark Award. He married Marvella Hern in August 1952, and took courses at Indiana State University in Terre Haute for two years while also running the family farm.[12]

Indiana legislature and 1962 U.S. Senate campaign

Bayh with son Evan Bayh, wife Marvella and an unidentified woman, 1962.

Bayh's political career began at age 26 with his election to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1954, where he served two years as Speaker and four years as Democratic Floor Leader. At the time, Bayh was the youngest Speaker in Indiana state history.[10] While he served in the legislature, Bayh studied law at Indiana University's School of Law, received his LL.B. in 1960, and was admitted to the Indiana Bar in 1961.[13]

At age 34, Bayh was elected to the United States Senate in the 1962 United States Senate elections, defeating 18-year incumbent Homer E. Capehart. Capehart was outspoken on the threat of Soviet nuclear missiles being placed in Cuba, and was buoyed by the Cuban Missile Crisis of that October. Bayh's disadvantage was dramatized in the opening scene of the 2000 film Thirteen Days, as President John F. Kennedy rattles a newspaper and asks an aide, "You see this goddamn Capehart stuff?" and the aide responds, "Bayh's going to lose".[14]

Bayh's success was attributed to a vigorous campaign of 300 speeches between Labor Day and the election,[8] and a catchy campaign jingle that taught voters the correct pronunciation of his last name:[15]

For more than four decades — throughout his entire career in politics — Bayh continued to manage the growing of corn and soybeans on his family farm.[11]