The Republican senator who imposed federal control over D.C.

Lauch Faircloth never expected to take over the management of Washington, D.C. A wealthy Republican hog farmer elected to the Senate to represent North Carolina in the mid’90s, he was assigned to a subcommittee overseeing the District of Columbia. He arrived at a time when Democrat Marion Barry had just pulled off a comeback as mayor after serving prison time for smoking crack. Barry returned to a government in crisis, grappling with a city deficit of $772 million. Faircloth led the effort that stripped D.C. of authority to deal with its finances from 1995 to 2001. Advocates of home rule for D.C. were outraged, but Faircloth was unflinching. “My ability to run a city is exactly that of Mayor Barry’s,” he said. “None at all.”

Duncan McLauchlin Faircloth— he went by a shortened version of his Scottish middle name, pronounced “Lock”— was born near Roseboro, N.C., said The New York Times. He left college to run the family’s 2,500-acre cotton farm and proved to be “an astute businessman,” adding lucrative timber, concrete, and hog ventures. He was a similarly savvy political climber, spending 40 years in Democratic politics before switching to the GOP to win his Senate seat.

Faircloth’s single term in Washington was defined by his face-off with Barry, said the Winston-Salem Journal, who openly rejoiced when the senator lost reelection. But back home in North Carolina, he was better known as a wheeler-dealer of the old school. While serving on the state highway commission, he finagled a contract for his company’s plants to supply concrete for several extensive and lucrative state highway projects. When pressed later on the propriety of such a deal, he shrugged. “Son,” he said, “that’s just the way things got done in those days.”