Former DNC leader Don Fowler dies at 85
COLUMBIA, S.C. » Don Fowler, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee and mainstay of South Carolina and national politics for decades, has died. He was 85.
Trav Robertson, chairman of South Carolina’s Democratic Party, told The Associated Press that Fowler died Tuesday night.
No cause was mentioned, but Fowler’s wife said on Facebook that he had been in the hospital this week. DNC Associate Chairman Jaime Harrison said Fowler had leukemia.
Fowler attended Wofford College, where he played basketball and baseball, and earned master’s and doctorate degrees in political science from the University of Kentucky.
He led the state party from 1971 to 1980, overseeing the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.
Fowler served as national chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1995 to 199. Part of that tenure also included defending an unsuccessful legal challenge from candidate Lyndon LaRouche, whom Fowler said was not a “bona fide Democrat” due to what he said were anti-Semitic expressions and other activities, instructing state parties not to vote for him.
Fowler was also accused of but not charged with contacting the CIA about a businessman and party donor, notably telling U.S. Senate inquisitors, “I have in the middle of the night, high noon, late in the afternoon, early in the morning, every hour of the day, for months now searched my memory about conversations with the CIA. And I have no memory, no memory of any conversation with the CIA.”