Republican senator Orrin Hatch dies at 88
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Orrin Hatch, the gentlemanly, long-serving Republican US senator from Utah who championed deep tax cuts, an anti-terrorism law and a children’s health program while fighting for conservative judicial nominees, died on Saturday at age 88.
His death was announced by the nonprofit Orrin G. Hatch Foundation, which said he died surrounded by family in Salt Lake City.
Outpourings from fellow lawmakers, some of whom had known Hatch for decades, started flooding the Internet late on Saturday as word of his death spread.
“This breaks my heart,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox wrote on Twitter. “Utah mourns with the Hatch family.”
Longtime friend and fellow Senator Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, said on Twitter, “Orrin was the one who I would go to for wisdom, and we had the same love for Jesus and everything we hold dear.”
Utah Sen. Mike Lee posted that Hatch was a “friend, a mentor and an example” for him in his career. “His name and memory will forever be enshrined in the history of the US Senate and the State of Utah,” Lee wrote.
An enduring conservative
voice in Congress, Hatch held a seat in the Senate from 1977 to 2019 and served under eight presidents, starting in the waning days of Gerald Ford’s term and ending with Donald Trump’s first two years in office. He served in the Senate longer than any other Republican, ever.
Trump awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honor, in 2018.
Hatch fiercely advocated for conservative Supreme Court nominees including Robert Bork, nominated in 1987 by Ronald Reagan but rejected by the Senate; as well as Clarence Thomas, nominated in 1991 by Republican George W. Bush and narrowly confirmed by the Senate; and Brett Kavanaugh,
nominated by Republican Trump and also narrowly confirmed by the Senate in 2018.
Hatch, a lay minister in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a champion of religious liberty and an opponent of abortion rights, represented the state that is home to the Mormon Church and was one of the foremost Mormons in public life in American history.
He was elected to seven six-year terms as Utah’s longest-serving senator. His first election victory was boosted by an endorsement from future president Reagan. Hatch ran for his party’s 2000 presidential nomination but dropped out early in the race.
He was known for a courteous demeanor and liked writing poetry and songs, but showed flashes of temper. He held powerful posts including chairman of the influential Senate Judiciary and Finance Committees.
Hatch was one the architects of the Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The law expanded the government’s ability to track potential terrorists by, among other steps, expanding its surveillance powers but its critics called it an infringement on individual liberties. Hatch called it constitutional, legal and effective.
Hatch was born in Pennsylvania on March 22, 1934, and grew up in a poor family in Pittsburgh during the Great Depression. He practiced law after college and was a complete unknown when he decided to run for the Senate in Utah in 1976.
He vaulted out of obscurity when Reagan, a champion of the conservative movement, endorsed him before the Republican primary. Hatch then upset three-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Frank Moss in the general election. That election was a harbinger of the conservative ascent nationally in 1980 and the decline of the Democratic Party in many Western states.