GOP congressman co-founded Earth Day, challenged Nixon
FRESNO, Calif. — Pete McCloskey — a pro-environment, antiwar California Republican who cowrote the Endangered Species Act and co-founded Earth Day — has died. He was 96.
A fourth-generation Republican “in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt,” he often said, Mr. McCloskey represented the 12th Congressional District for 15 years, running for president against an incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972. He battled party leaders while serving seven terms in Congress and went on to publicly disavow the GOP in his later years.
He died at home Wednesday, according to Lee Houskeeper, a family friend.
Years after leaving Washington, Mr. McCloskey made one last bid for elective office in 2006 when he challenged Richard Pombo of Northern California’s 11th District in a primary race that Mr. McCloskey described as “a battle for the soul of the Republican Party.” After losing to Pombo, who had spent most of his tenure in Washington attempting to undo the Endangered Species Act, Mr. McCloskey threw his support behind Democrat Jerry McNerney, the eventual winner.
“It was foolish to run against him (Pombo), but we didn’t have anybody else to do it, and I could not stand what a------ they’d become,” the frank-talking former Marine colonel said of the modern GOP in a 2008 interview with The Associated Press.
Born in Loma Linda, California, on Sept. 29, 1927, as Paul Norton McCloskey Jr., he graduated from South Pasadena High School, where the second baseman made the school’s baseball hall of fame.
He earned a law degree from Stanford University and founded an environmental law firm in Palo Alto before making the move to public office. In 1967, he defeated fellow Republican Shirley Temple Black and Democrat Roy Archibald in a special election for the San Mateo County congressional seat.
The left-leaning Mr. McCloskey had a thundering presence in Washington, attempting to get onto the floor of the 1972 Republican National Convention during his bid to unseat then-President Nixon on an anti-Vietnam War platform. He ultimately was blocked by a rule written by his friend and law school debate partner, John Ehrlichman, that said a candidate could not get to the floor with fewer than 25 delegates. Mr. McCloskey had one.
Still, Mr. McCloskey loved to say he finished second.
While in office, Mr. McCloskey also was known for befriending Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and criticized Israeli influence on American politics. The congressman was the first to demand Nixon’s impeachment, and the first to demand a repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that allowed the Vietnam War.
But his enduring legacy is the Endangered Species Act, which protects species designated as endangered or threatened and conserves the ecosystems on which they depend. McCloskey co-wrote the legislation in 1973, after a campaign by young people empowered by Earth Day activities successfully unseated seven of 12 Congress members known as “The Dirty Dozen” for their anti-environment votes.
“On that day, the world changed,” McCloskey recalled in 2008. “Suddenly, everybody was an environmentalist.”