Portal:Indianapolis/Selected biography/6
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Richard Lugar (born April 4, 1932) is the senior United States Senator from Indiana. He is a member of the Republican Party. Lugar was born in Indianapolis to Bertha Green and Marvin Lugar. He attained the Boy Scouts' highest rank: Eagle Scout. At the age of 35, he was elected Mayor of Indianapolis in 1967 and began serving the first of two mayoral terms in 1968. A political cartoon of the time questioned how an Eagle Scout could survive in the world of politics. He is closely associated with the adoption of Unigov in 1970, which unified the governments of Indianapolis and Marion County. He was reelected mayor in 1971. During this time he became known as "Richard Nixon's favorite mayor" due to his support for devolving federal powers to local communities.
In his second attempt, Lugar successfully unseated incumbent Senator Vance Hartke in the 1976 election. He was reelected in 1982, 1988, 1994, in 2000, and again with over eighty-five percent of the vote in 2006. Lugar served as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 1984 Senate elections. In 2006 he ran without a Democratic Party challenger and earned over 87% of the vote, and won over three fourths of the vote in every county. In 1994, Lugar became the first Indiana senator to be re-elected for a fourth term.
