The death of Robert Byrd won’t immediately affect the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, but his home state’s political landscape has changed in the more than fifty years Byrd represented West Virginia in Washington, D.C. University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin says the 92 year-old Byrd entered national politics from the conservative southern wing of the Democratic party – including an association and a vote he later came to regret. Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, when he began his political career in the state legislature. “He used that as part of his entry into politics,” notes Franklin. “And in the 60s voted against the Civil Rights Act, along with just about every other Southern Democrat.”
Despite his opposition to civil rights, Byrd retained his allegiance to the Democratic Party, becoming a key vote and a powerful player on Capitol Hill, and a strong advocate for his impoverished state. “Bob Byrd was superlative at . . . bringing home the bacon,” says Franklin. “West Virginia benefitted tremendously from the pork barrell politics that Byrd sent back to the the constituents.” Those constituents will likely continue to be represented by a Democrat: Franklin notes the state’s Democratic governor will appoint an interim successor, but West Virginia is no longer a solidly Democratic state and he expects the next Senate race to be “hard fought and wide open.”
