RICHARD LUGAR MARKS EIGHTY

RICHARD G. LUGAR

b. April 4, 1932

SENATOR RICHARD LUGAR (R-Indiana)

at the 1980 Republican National Convention

Detroit, Michigan

in which Ronald Reagan was nominated as the

Republican candidate for president (he won)

The photograph above was taken half a grown-up lifetime ago, when former Indianapolis Mayor was in only his fourth year as U.S. Senator. Now in his thirty-sixth year in the job, Lugar is the third most senior member of the Senate, widely thought to have compiled a distinguished record, especially in arms control and foreign policy, and in what looks to be the battle of his political life.

He is, it is thought by tea-partiers and such, not conservative enough.

There have been rumblings, or grumblings, that if Ronald Reagan came back today, he would not be conservative enough.

So this year Senator Lugar has an opponent in the May 8 Republican primary, the state treasurer, Richard Mourdock. And there will be a Democratic candidate this time around too (unlike the last time, six years ago), U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly.

The biggest, easiest-to-digest knock on Lugar so far? He sold his home in Indiana back in 1977; therefore, how can be be a real Hoosier? (He still has a farm in the state, which has recently been officially accepted as his voting residence.)

And the subliminal target of opportunity? His age.

Richard Lugar turns eighty today.

For more on Lugar's record and on Lugar today, see here and here and here and here and here.