Posted on 08/07/2011 7:59:40 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Mark O. Hatfield, the former governor and senator who transformed Oregon’s economy and landscape while becoming one of the nation’s most prominent skeptics of military might, died about 6 p.m. in Portland at the age of 89.
Hatfield, who had been in ill health for several years, died at a care home in Portland. His family did not have an immediate cause of death. He had lived in Oregon since his retirement from the Senate at the end of 1996 but had recently spent several months in a hospital at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
Through nearly five decades in public office, Hatfield was both Oregon's most durable politician and — after his rise to the chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee in 1981 — its most important.
The Republican lawmaker brought the state more than $3 billion in federal money that affected how Oregonians work, play and commute.
(Excerpt) Read more at oregonlive.com ...
Further proof that Republicans love their pork too.
RIP.
Yep, there you go. I'm sure he was a fine man and I hope he RIP but..........
That sounds like a brag, when it should be an apology.
I wonder how much he took with him this evening.
Well, at least he got that fancy hospital clinic named after him at NIH.
He was a good Governor and fair Sinator but far from Conservative. Basically a Rhino.
Prayers up for his family.
“And he fueled creation of the region’s lauded and widely imitated light rail system.”
“Lauded”, my a$$. That POS is a money-pit pile of crap.
“That sounds like a brag, when it should be an apology.”
Exactly. That $3B may not sound like much (these days), but it is part of that debt that was just downgraded.
Ping and a Bump...
‘Basically a Rhino’
Hatfield was never a RINO. He was a hard-fighting John Lindsay, Clifford Case type liberal Republican.
I lived in Oregon for awhile when Hatfield was a Senator. Please understand that only a liberal Republican will be the only type of Republican ever elected in Oregon. A liberal Republican (while still dangerous) is 100 times better than an Oregon Democrat. Spend 5 minutes in Portland, and you will see what I mean. BTW, Portland is one of my favorite cities, but anyone who has spent anytime there will know what I mean.
Hatfield was typical of a bygone era, a RINO by today’s standards.
I respect this man as a sincere Christian but his pacifism was too legalistic and extreme among other things.
Hatfield was a teacher at Willamette University and one of his students there joined him as the junior RINO senator from Oregon 30 years ago.
That was the one and only Robert Packwood, disgraced by sexual harrassment incidents.
No doubt Hatfield’s passing is a great loss to his family and may he rest in peace.
The normal human lifespan is about 80 to 85 years, so why do people feel obligated to list a cause of death? When a person is that old, the cause of death is “it was their time”. Nobody lives forever.
I found it interesting that he endorsed Bush in 2004 despite his pacifistic beliefs.
I do give him kudos for being pro-life and sticking to it in a state that isn’t the friendliest toward such beliefs.
He cast the deciding vote AGAINST the balanced budget amendment. RIP senator RINO.
Vividly remember Hatfield’s whining and hand wringing over the prosecution of the VN war. Not that the strategic framework of the conflict was truly hosed up but because it was’bad’ and ‘cruel’ and ‘immoral’.People like Hatfield were defeatists and objectively made successful prosecution of the conflict impossible. While not as responsible fir making sure that the finale would be a US defeat ( and one that could be hung around the Republicans neck) such as the current contemptible pos who is VP Hatfield belongs in the Viet Nam Hall of Shame.
I agree.
He was a flaming liberal, not a RINO. Back then, what we today would call RINOs were the Republican mainstream. The party was much farther to the left that it is today. There were a number of raging left-wing Republicans in the Senate, like Hatfield and Jacob Javitz.
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