Jerry G. Udell discovered his passion for government and politics in his last year as an undergraduate at Hanover College in the wake of the election of President John F. Kennedy. He was hired by Birch Bayh's Senate office as the first intern to join the new senator's staff in January 1963. He assisted with legislative work and answering the ever-increasing load of constituent mail, but his political and people skills quickly became evident, and he was asked to assist Lee Hamilton in his 1966 re-election campaign. Udell became a mainstay of the Bayh Political Department, handling the southern half of the state in his 1968 re-election campaign, setting up the Indianapolis office, and then heading up the Political Department in the Washington, DC office. During Bayh's bid for the 1972 Presidential nomination, Udell handled six upper midwestern states, work that led to his being asked to join the staff of Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) in 1973, the year before Gravel faced a difficult re-election campaign, a position from which Udell not only made Gravel's victory possible but became intimately involved in S. Res. 60, the crucial bill reorganizing Senate committee staff allocations that broke the monopoly of seniority held largely by southern conservative Democrats.