Pete Stark, a congressman for 40 years, dies at 88.
Former California Rep. Pete Stark, a feisty liberal who protested wars and helped to reshape the health care system, died Friday at his home in Maryland, his family said. He was 88.
The laws and policies he helped craft during his 40year career in Congress ultimately changed the machinery of U.S. health care. He created the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, best known as COBRA, which allows workers to continue receiving health coverage for a period of time after they leave a job. Stark also helped craft the Affordable Care Act, the signature policy change of the Obama administration.
Even before he ran for Congress, Stark established himself as an audacious, forwardthinking, and sometimes divisive figure.
Working as a banker in the 1960s, he took stances that seemed radical at the time, but resonate today: Stark provided free employee child care and worker buses, making it easier for his largely African American employee
force at the Oakland branch to get promotions and move to branches in Walnut Creek.
He came to politics as a rebel, turning against his Wisconsin Republican roots and registering as a Democrat, before unseating Rep. George P. Miller in California’s 8th Congressional District. By that time, Stark was fiercely populist and antiwar.
“Pete Stark gave decades of public service to East Bay residents as a voice in Congress for working people,” his successor, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of Dublin, said on Friday. “His knowledge of policy, particularly regarding health care, and his opposition to unnecessary wars demonstrated his deep care for his constituents. Our community mourns his loss.”
After serving 20 terms in office, Stark lost a bid for reelection to Swalwell in 2012.
In an obituary circulated Friday, family members remembered him as a “persistent supporter” of LGBTQ rights, a champion for foster children and the first openly atheist member of Congress. They also recalled how, before his days in Washington, he hung a giant peace sign on the headquarters of his bank, Security National, to decry the fighting in Vietnam.
Stark is survived by his wife, Deborah Roderick Stark, and his first wife, Eleanor Brumder Stark, as well as seven children, eight grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren. Donations can be made in his honor to the Congressman Pete Stark Health Policy Internship program via the National Academy of Social Insurance.