as a caretaker until the next election. Quillen decided not to run for a fifth term in the state house in 1962, instead seeking the Republican nomination for the 1st District. This region was one of the few ancestrally Republican regions of the South; its voters had identified with the Republicans after the Civil War and had remained staunchly Republican ever since; indeed, Reece was one of the few truly senior Republican congressmen elected from a Southern state before the 1950s. Quillen won a five-way Republican primary with only 28 percent of the vote, and won the general election with 53.8 percent of the vote. He was reelected 16 more times. Apart from his initial run for the seat, he only faced one relatively close contest, when he was held to 57 percent of the vote in 1976. The 1962 and 1976 contests were the only times that Quillen dropped below 64 percent of the vote and are the only times since 1898 that a Democrat has even managed 40 percent of the vote in this district. Quillen faced no major-party opposition in 1966 and 1980, and was completely unopposed in 1984 and 1990. Quillen eventually became de facto leader of the Republican Party in East Tennessee, and thus a statewide power broker within the tight circle of Tennessee Republican politics. Quillen's popularity was not due only to his district's heavy Republican tilt, but also because he was widely perceived as providing strong constituent service. However, during his 34 years in Congress, Quillen managed to sponsor only three pieces of original federal legislation (including his legislation pertaining to the social security "notch babies" benefit adjustment and an anti-flag desecration amendment to the U.S. Constitution). Social security "notch babies" First surfacing as a federal legislative issue after the U.S. Congress decided to automatically link social security benefit increases to the consumer price index beginning in 1972, a cohort of social security retirees born during the period of 1910 through 1916 received undue windfall of payments from the federal taxpayers through the Social Security Administration miscalculating social security benefits based upon the 1910–1916 cohort. Social security retirees born immediately afterwards during the so-called "notch" period running approximately from 1917 to 1921–such as Quillen's wife Cecile–perceived agency mistreatment and petitioned members of Congress for a similar upward and unwarranted windfall adjustment for payments to their own social security benefits. Controversies Quillen amassed a