LUGAR DEFEATED IN INDIANA REPUBLICAN PRIMARY

Richard Lugar, the six-term Republican senator from Indiana and one of the GOP’s most ardent arms control advocates, was defeated in Indiana’s Republican primary yesterday by State Treasurer Richard Mourdock. Lugar joined the Senate in 1976 and one of his signature achievements came with the creation of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which helped secure and dismantle nuclear weapons in Russia and other former Soviet Union states in the wake of the Cold War. As the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lugar also served as an ally of the Obama Administration and a supporter of the New START Treaty with Russia in 2010. Lugar conceded victory to Mourdock last night, and unlike other incumbents that have been defeated in primaries in recent years, Indiana law would prevent Lugar from running as an independent. “Serving the people of Indiana in the United States Senate has been the greatest honor of my public life,” Lugar said in a concession speech. “We are experiencing deep political divisions in our society right now. These divisions have stalemated progress in critical areas, but these divisions are not insurmountable.”