as having an "aloof" disposition. Return to politics Tydings resumed his legal career after he lost his Senate seat, entering into practice with a Washington law firm that included Giant Food President Joseph Danzansky. After several years out of politics, he began traveling the state in 1975 to gauge his chances for winning a rematch versus Beall, who was coming up for re-election in 1976. On January 10, 1976, Tydings announced his candidacy for his former senate seat, which he argued was taken unfairly in 1970 due to an undisclosed $180,000 gift to the Beall campaign. In the primary, Tydings faced a strong challenge from Congressman Paul Sarbanes, who had entered the race several months earlier. This head start gave Sarbanes a considerable organizational and monetary advantage, and he had already secured influential endorsements. To fend off Sarbanes, Tydings hoped his name recognition and charisma on television would compensate for Sarbanes' other advantages. He also worked to relabel himself as more fiscally conservative than Sarbanes, since both candidates were seen as liberal. For the primary election, Tydings needed a large margin of victory from precincts in the Washington, D.C., suburbs of Prince George's and Montgomery Counties, where he was most popular. Despite Tydings winning both counties, Sarbanes performed well in the rest of the state and defeated him by over 100,000 votes, 61% to 39%. Sarbanes had outspent Tydings two-to-one during the campaign. After defeating Tydings, Sarbanes won the general election by a landslide and served as senator until 2007. Post-Senate career Following his electoral defeat, Tydings returned to his law career at Danzansky's firm. In 1971, he gave oral argument on behalf of Bill Baird in the Supreme Court case Eisenstadt v. Baird in November 1971; in its decision the next year, the Court held that a Massachusetts state law barring the use of birth control for single persons was unconstitutional. The Eisenstadt decision has been described as among the most influential Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century. Tydings also worked as a partner in the law firm of Finley, Kumble, Wagner, Underberg, Manley, Myerson & Casey, which collapsed in 1987. Later, Tydings worked at Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky from 1988 until his departure with Jerold Oshinsky in 1996 to join Dickstein Shapiro in Washington, D.C. In academics, Tydings was a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Maryland from 1974 to 1984, serving