Modern

The youngest Kennedy brother took his Senate seat in 1962 and served until his death in 2009, becoming the third-longest-serving s...

Shot down over Hanoi in 1967, McCain endured five and a half years as a POW, refusing early release. Elected to the House in 1982 ...

Daughter of a Baltimore congressman-mayor, Pelosi won a San Francisco seat in 1987 and rose through the Appropriations and Intelli...

McConnell, a polio survivor turned procedural savant, entered the Senate in 1985 and led Senate Republicans from 2007 until standi...

Grievously wounded in Italy in 1945, Dole recovered through years of surgery to serve Kansas in the House from 1961 to 1969 and th...

Son of a congressman and son-in-law of Senator Everett Dirksen, Baker won election in 1966 as the first Republican senator from Te...

Inouye, a Japanese American who lost an arm leading charges in Italy with the 442nd Regiment, for which he received the Medal of H...

Moynihan wrote the secret 1965 report on the Black family that ignited decades of welfare debate, served in the cabinets of Kenned...

Chairman of SNCC and the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, Lewis had his skull fractured by Alabama troopers at Se...

A social worker whose activist roots included the defense of Baltimore's Fells Point, Mikulski won a House seat in 1976, and in 19...

The son of a Searchlight miner, a onetime amateur boxer and Capitol policeman, Reid represented Nevada in the House from 1983 to 1...

A West Georgia history professor elected in 1978, Gingrich built a nationalized, confrontational strategy, the Contract with Ameri...

Succeeding his father in 1955 at 29, Dingell served until 2015, the longest tenure ever. He sat at the desk where the Medicare bil...

Thurmond began as a Dixiecrat presidential candidate in 1948, was elected to the Senate as a write-in candidate in 1954, and set t...

Raised by a coal miner in Raleigh County, a onetime Ku Klux Klan member who renounced the group, Byrd served in the House from 195...

A nursery school teacher and state legislator, Chisholm won a redrawn Brooklyn district in 1968 under the slogan Unbought and Unbo...

A Houston lawyer elected to the Texas Senate in 1966, the first Black state senator since Reconstruction, Jordan won a House seat ...

The son of immigrant parents, Javits served in the House from 1947 to 1954, as New York attorney general, and then in the Senate f...

Jackson represented Washington from 1941, first in the House and from 1953 in the Senate, until his sudden death in 1983. He autho...

Elected to Joe McCarthy's old seat in 1957, Proxmire served until 1989, chairing Banking and pressing budget discipline against Pe...

Foley represented eastern Washington for thirty years beginning in 1965, chairing the Agriculture Committee and rising through the...

Ryan won his first House election in 1998 and became the party's leading voice on fiscal policy, chairing the Budget Committee and...