Richard G. Lugar, United States Senator for Indiana

U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar, the Senate’s most senior Republican and longest serving U.S. Senator in Indiana history, moved into 12^th place on the all-time Senate voting list, having passed the late Senator William Proxmire who cast 12,133 votes.

Lugar’s 12,134^th vote was on a Kerry amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. He has maintained a better than 98 percent attendance record during his more than 32 years of Senate service.

Lugar is currently the fifth most senior Senator and ranks as the 30^th most senior senator in the history of the body. There have been 1,910 individuals to serve in the United States Senate since it was convened on March 4, 1789. On January 3, 1977, Lugar was the 1,705^th Senator sworn into the Senate.

On May 1, 1996, Lugar became the longest-serving Senator from Indiana when he surpassed Daniel Wolsey Vorhees (1877-1897). In 2006, Lugar was elected to an historic sixth term with more than 87 percent of the vote, his fourth consecutive victory by a two-thirds majority.

Active Senators who have cast more than 12,000 votes include all-time record holder Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) with more than 18,000 votes, Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

Proxmire still holds the remarkable Senate record for consecutive votes cast with 10,252. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Byrd (D-WV) and Susan Collins (R-ME) round out the top four senators with Grassley having cast more than 5,400 consecutive votes.

For more information, visit the Secretary of the Senate’s statistics page at: http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/three_column_table/Senators.htm.

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