David Ferdinand Durenberger (August 19, 1934 – January 31, 2023) was an American politician and attorney from Minnesota who served as a Republican member of the United States Senate from 1978 to 1995. He left the Republican Party in 2005 and became a critic of it, endorsing Democratic presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in 2016 and 2020, respectively. He was a Roman Catholic of German and Polish descent. His father was the athletic director and a coach at College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, and the family lived on campus. He attended the University of Minnesota Law School and earned his Juris Doctor in 1959. At St. John's he was the top-rated cadet in his Reserve Officers' Training Corps class, and after college was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps in 1956 and a captain in the United States Army Reserve from 1957 to 1963. When Durenberger joined it was headed by Harold LeVander. The firm took the name LeVander, Gillen, Miller and Durenberger. Durenberger was reelected in 1982 and again in 1988, defeating Mark Dayton and Minnesota Attorney General Skip Humphrey, respectively.

In the 99th Congress, Durenberger chaired the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence He voted to confirm Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Misuse of public funds

In 1990, the senate voted 96–0 to censure Durenberger for ethics violations related to evading limits on $100,000 in speaking fees and using his condominium in Minneapolis to collect $40,000 in travel reimbursements. The Minnesota Supreme Court indefinitely suspended Durenberger's Minnesota law license on January 11, 1991, pursuant to a stipulation. It reinstated his license on March 22, 2000.

Durenberger did not run for reelection in 1994 and was succeeded by Rod Grams. In 1995, he pleaded guilty to charges of misuse of public funds while in office and was sentenced to one year of probation.

Post-Senate life

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In a 2005 interview, Durenberger said he no longer supported the Republican Party but did not support the Democratic Party either. He also said that Democrats are better equipped to handle health care and that President George W. Bush was wrong about the Iraq War. In 2010, Durenberger endorsed his former chief of staff, Independence-Alliance Party member Tom Horner, for governor.

Durenberger chaired the National Institute of Health Policy (NIHP) and was a Senior Health Policy Fellow at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He served on the board of National Coalition on HealthCare. He has also served on national health commissions and boards, including the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and Board of the National Commission on Quality Assurance (NCQA), and the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

Durenberger endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president in 2020. He was a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One.

Personal life

Durenberger's first wife, Judith, whom he married in 1962, died of cancer in 1970. He married his second wife, Penny, in 1971; they separated in 1985 and divorced in 1993. Durenberger married his third wife, Susan, in 1995.

Writings

A collection of Durenberger's senatorial files is held by the Minnesota Historical Society. It documents his three terms in the United States Senate and is strongest in its documentation of the third (1989–95). The papers are perhaps most significant for the information they contain about his interest in, and legislative activities regarding, health policy and health care reform issues.

Durenberger's books include When Republicans were Progressive, which traces the history of Minnesota's Republican party from the era of Stassen, a moderate Republican governor who took office in 1939, to the ascent of a more conservative strain within the party in the late 1980s (Durenberger lamented the polarization of more recent politics); Neither Madmen nor Messiahs: A Policy of National Security for America (1984), on defense policy; and Prescription for Change (1986), on health care reform.

See also

  • List of American federal politicians convicted of crimes
  • List of federal political scandals in the United States
  • List of United States senators expelled or censured

References

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