Dick Lugar
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Richard Green "Dick" Lugar (born April 4, 1932) is the senior United States Senator from Indiana, a Republican.
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Lugar attended the public schools of Indianapolis. He graduated from Denison University in 1954, and he attended Pembroke College in Oxford, England, as a Rhodes Scholar and received a graduate degree in 1956. He served in the United States Navy from 1957-60.
Lugar served on the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners from 1964-67, and then as mayor of Indianapolis from 1968-75. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1974. In 1976, he was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and reelected in 1982, 1988, 1994, and again in 2000 by a two-thirds majority.
Lugar has been influential in gaining Senate ratification of treaties to reduce the world's use, production and stockpiling of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In 1991, he created a partnership with then-Senate Armed Services Chairman Sam Nunn to destroy weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. To date, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program has deactivated more than 5,900 nuclear warheads that were once aimed at the United States.
As Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Lugar built bipartisan support for 1996 federal farm program reforms, ending 1930s era federal production controls. He initiated a biofuels research program to help decrease U.S. dependency on foreign oil, and led initiatives to streamline the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reform the food stamp program and preserve the federal school lunch program.
Lugar has received numerous awards including Guardian of Small Business, the Spirit of Enterprise, Watchdog of the Treasury, and 34 honorary doctorate degrees. He manages his family's 604 acre (2.4 km²) Marion County corn, soybean and tree farm. Before entering public life, he helped run the family's food machinery manufacturing business in Indianapolis.
Senator Lugar is member of the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).
