Senator Byrd Campaign Button
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Title
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Senator Byrd Campaign Button
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Description
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Campaign button from Senator Byrd's 2000 bid for re-election. His opponent was Republican David T. Gallagher. Senator Byrd won with roughly 78 percent of the vote.
During Byrd's time on the Senate Appropriations Committee, he brought the FBI Fingerprinting Identification Center to Clarksburg; IRS offices to Parkersburg; Fish and Wildlife Training to Sheperdstown; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in Martinsburg; the NASA Research Center in Wheeling; the National White Collar Crime Center in Fairmont and Morgantown; and the National Energy Technology Lab in Morgantown. He also obtained funds for miners who were displaced by the Clean Air Act of 1990, and co-sponsored the unanimously adopted resolution in 1997 opposing the Kyoto Protocol so long as it exempted developing countries. He was one of the members of Congress to bring a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the line-item veto enacted in 1996. In June of 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. In 2004, he pushed for passage of an amendment that established Constitution Day as a federal observance. All federally funded schools are required to provide educational programming on the history of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, the day the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in 1787.
He was elected to his eighth term in 2000 by a 78 percent margin- the third time he had carried all 55 counties in West Virginia. He served as president pro tempore of the Senate, 4th in line to succeed the presidency from 1989 to 1995, and from 2001 to 2003. In 2001, Governor Wise and the West Virginia State Legislature voted Byrd the West Virginian of the 20th Century.
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Date
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2000
2818_byrd_2000.jpg