Although Byrd was never a candidate in a presidential election, he nevertheless received 134,157 votes in the 1956 election. In the 1960 election, also as a non-candidate, he received 15 votes in the Electoral College from unpledged electors: all 8 from Mississippi, 6 of Alabama's 11 (the rest going to Kennedy), and 1 from Oklahoma (the rest going to Nixon).
Byrd retired from the Senate in 1965. His son, Harry F. Byrd, Jr., was appointed his successor.
By the 1950sByrd was one of the most influential senators, serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and later as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
Although Byrd was never a candidate in a presidential election, he nevertheless received 134,157 votes in the 1956 election.
HarryByrd is of no relation to Robert Byrd, a U.S. Senator from West Virginia.
Although HarryByrd was certainly proud of the role his ancestors had played in the settling of the Virginia colony and was aware of the prominence of the family name in a state that venerated its colonial heritage, he did not traffic in his pedigree.
Byrd said years later that there must have been something wrong with her because "the three boys were always plotting how they could best escape me." There may not have been great outward signs of affection within the Byrd family, but there was a stable environment in which both freedom and responsibility flourished.
Byrd entered politics not primarily out of a sense of service to the larger community--although he always insisted that was his motive--but to preserve or advance that which was beneficial to himself and his interests.
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