==Democratic leadership==
[[File:Biden with the Exalted Cyclops.PNG|thumb|right|350px|Byrd with [[Joe Biden]], [[Joe Manchin]], and [[Jay Rockefeller]].]]
Campaigning as a [[New Deal]]er,<ref>Clymer, Adam (June 28, 2010). [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/politics/29byrd.html Robert C. Byrd, a Pillar of the Senate, Dies at 92]. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved April 19, 2021.</ref><ref>Longley, Robert (October 30, 2019). [https://www.thoughtco.com/robert-byrd-kkk-4147055 Senator Robert Byrd and the Ku Klux Klan ]. ''ThoughtCo''. Retrieved April 19, 2021.</ref> Byrd was elected as a member of the [[United States House of Representatives]] in 1952 for the 6th district of West Virginia, succeeding E.H. Hedrick, who had decided to step down to run for Governor of [[West Virginia]]. Byrd was reelected to the House twice. In 1958, he was elected to the [[United States Senate]], defeating the [[United States Republican Party|Republican]] incumbent W. Chapman Revercomb. He has been reelected eight times. For his first four terms, Byrd was West Virginia's junior senator. This was because his colleague from 1959 to 1985, Jennings Randolph, had been elected on the same day in a special election to fill the seat of the late Senator Matthew Neely.
While Byrd faced vigorous Republican opposition in the past, he had not faced truly serious opposition since freshman congressman Cleve Benedict ran against him in 1982. He had since won by comfortable margins. Despite his tremendous popularity in the state, he had only run unopposed once, in 1976. On two other occasions — in 1994 and 2000 — he carried all 55 of West Virginia's counties. In his reelection bid in 2000, he won all but seven of West Virginia's precincts. [[Shelley Moore Capito]], a Congresswoman and the daughter of one of Byrd's longtime foes—former Governor Arch Moore, Jr.—briefly weighed a challenge to Byrd in 2006, but decided against it.