Inouye had strong ties to Ariz. greats

When veteran U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye died Monday at age 88, Capitol Hill lost another link to Arizona’s legendary U.S. Sen. Carl Hayden.

Inouye, D-Hawaii, was the last sitting senator to have served with Hayden, a Democrat born in 1877 who served seven Senate terms from 1927 to 1969. Hayden, who also became Arizona’s first congressman in 1912 and is considered a giant in the state’s political history, held the record as the longest-serving member of Congress — 20,773 days, or nearly 57 years — until the late U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., broke it in November 2009.

At the time of Byrd’s achievement, Inouye recalled frequently going to lunch with the “powerful and gracious” Hayden, who died in 1972 at age 94. Inouye joined the Senate in 1963 and was the chamber’s most-senior member at the time of his death.

“We both entered the Congress when our states were in their in- The Arizona Republic fancy and shared the bond of being our state’s first elected members of Congress,” Inouye told

in 2009. “He brought a firm but kind demeanor to his dealings, and I am humbled to have shared some of his time in the Senate.”

When Inouye appeared in Phoenix for an Oct. 17 campaign event for Democratic Senate candidate Richard Carmona, he reflected on his bipartisan friendship with another famous senator from Arizona: Republican Barry Goldwater, the 1964 presidential nominee who died in 1998. Inouye and the five-term Goldwater both sat on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

He said though he and Goldwater hailed from different parties, they were “buddies.” They would give each other their proxy, allowing them to vote for each other in committee if one was absent.

“That’s how much we trusted each other, and that’s what should be restored in Washington again,” Inouye told the crowd at American Legion Post 41. In other developments: » U.S. Sen. John McCain, RAriz., observed Inouye’s death with a Twitter message, calling his late colleague, a Medal of Honor recipient, “a genuine hero of the Greatest Generation and a friend and role model to all of us in the Senate.”

» McCain and U.S. Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., are objecting to the inclusion of torture scenes in “Zero Dark Thirty,” a forthcoming fictionalized Hollywood movie about the pursuit of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. In a letter to Sony Pictures Entertainment, the three senators said the film is “grossly inaccurate and misleading” in suggesting that torture tactics produced information that contributed to bin Laden’s killing.

» Outgoing U.S. Rep. Ben Quayle, R-Ariz., said goodbye to his U.S. House colleagues last week in a four-minute floor speech. “I ran for office not for a title, not for some unhealthy desire to be the center of attention, but to serve my fellow citizens,” said Quayle, who lost in his primary. “And to be a part of a movement that would re-establish the belief that our country’s greatness comes from its people, and not from the government.”