Mark Hatfield - WikiHQ

Mark Odom Hatfield (July 12, 1922 – August 7, 2011) was an American politician and educator from the state of Oregon. A moderate Republican, he served eight years as the 29th governor of Oregon, followed by 30 years as one of its United States senators, including time as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. A native Oregonian, he served in the United States Navy in the Pacific Theater during World War II after graduating from Willamette University. After the war he earned a graduate degree from Stanford University before returning to Oregon and Willamette as a professor.

While still teaching, Hatfield served in both houses of the Oregon Legislative Assembly. He won election to the Oregon Secretary of State's office at the age of 34 and two years later was elected as the 29th Governor of Oregon. He was the youngest person to serve in either of those offices, and served two terms as governor before election to the United States Senate. In the Senate he served for thirty years, the longest tenure of any Senator from Oregon. At the time of his retirement, he was seventh most senior Senator and the second most senior Republican. In 1968, he was considered a candidate to be Richard Nixon's running mate for the Republican Party presidential ticket.

Hatfield served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations on two occasions. With this role, he was able to direct funding to Oregon and research-related projects. Numerous Oregon institutions, buildings and facilities are named in his honor, including the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, the Mark O. Hatfield Library at Willamette University (his alma mater), the Hatfield Government Center light-rail station in Hillsboro, the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government in the College of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University, and the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. Outside of Oregon, a research center at the National Institutes of Health was named after him for his support of medical research while in the Senate. Hatfield died in Portland on August 7, 2011, after a long illness.

Early life

Hatfield was born in Dallas, Oregon, on July 12, 1922, the only child of Dovie E. (Odom) Hatfield, a schoolteacher, and Charles Dolen Hatfield, a blacksmith for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Hatfield's father was from California and his mother from Tennessee. In the late 1930s Hatfield worked as a tour guide at the new Oregon State Capitol Building in Salem, using his key to enter the governor's office, where he sat in the governor's chair. Hatfield was not held criminally liable for the crash, but was found civilly liable to the family. While attending Willamette, Hatfield became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega and Kappa Gamma Rho, which he later helped become a chapter of Beta Theta Pi. (In 1964, Hatfield was elected to the National position of Third Vice President of Alpha Phi Omega). In college he also worked part-time for then Oregon Secretary of State Earl Snell, where he learned how to build a political base by sending out messages to potential voters after reading about life changes posted in newspapers, such as deaths and graduations.

Hatfield joined the U.S. Navy after graduation, he spent one year at Willamette's law school, but decided politics or teaching better suited him.

Hatfield then enrolled at Stanford University, where he obtained a master's degree in political science in 1948. He defeated six others for the seat at a time when state assembly elections were still determined by county-wide votes. At the time he was the youngest legislator in Oregon and still lived at his parents' home. Hatfield would teach early-morning classes and then walk across the street to the Capitol to legislate. This earned him a spot as a delegate at the Republican National Convention that year. While in the legislature, he continued to apply the grassroots strategy he learned from Earl Snell, but expanded it to cover the entire state to increase his political base. He took office on January 7, 1957, and remained until he resigned on January 12, 1959.

For his first run for Governor of Oregon in 1958, the Republican Party opposed his candidacy going into the primary election. In July 1958, after the primary election, Hatfield married Antoinette Kuzmanich, a counselor at Portland State College (now Portland State University). This tactic backfired as the press denounced the comments, as did Holmes and other Democrats. He was the youngest governor in the history of Oregon at that point in time at the age of 36. He faced Oregon Attorney General Robert Y. Thornton in the general election, winning with 345,497 votes to Thornton's 265,359. and later became only the second governor up to that point in the state's history to serve two full-terms. He advocated a moderate approach for the party and opposed the extreme conservatism associated with Goldwater and his supporters. He preferred the use of economic sanctions to end the war. While governor he worked to begin the diversification of the state's economy, such as recruiting industrial development and holding trade missions. A graduate level school in the Portland area (Portland State was still a college with no graduate programs at this time) was seen by business leaders as essential to attracting new industries and by Tektronix as needed to retain highly skilled workers. At that time the war was supported by 75 percent of the public, and was also supported by Hatfield's opponent in the November election. Hatfield was considered too liberal by many conservatives and Southern moderates, and Nixon chose the more centrist Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew.

As a senator Hatfield took positions that made him hard to classify politically. In the Summer of 1969, he had told Murray Rothbard that he had "committed himself to the cause of libertarianism." Rothbard remarked concerning Hatfield, "obviously his voting record is not particularly libertarian – it's very good on foreign policy and the draft, but it's not too great on other things", adding that "in the abstract, at least, he is very favorable to libertarianism." As a prominent evangelical Christian, he opposed government-sponsored school prayer and supported civil rights for minorities. Hatfield voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, as well as to override President Reagan's veto, for the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court and the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday. Hatfield voted against the Supreme Court nominations of Clement Haynsworth and George Harrold Carswell, but voted in favor of the nominations of William Rehnquist, Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Hatfield was the only Senator who voted for both Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas. Regarding political solutions, Hatfield believed that they were found in the center.

thumb|right|Senator Hatfield in 1977

In 1970, with Senator George McGovern (D-South Dakota), he co-sponsored the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, which called for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. In 1973 he explained to the Eugene Register-Guard his "Neighborhood Government Act," which he repeatedly introduced in Congress. It would have permitted Americans to divert their personal federal tax money from Washington to their local community. He explained that his long-term goal was to have all social services provided at the neighborhood level.

Hatfield appeared alongside Frank Church, Charles Goodell, Harold Hughes, and George McGovern on a bipartisan broadcast concerning the Vietnam War on May 12, 1970. The broadcast specifically concerned the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, and was primarily for the purpose of promoting it. The Amendment had not yet reached the Senate, where it eventually failed on September 1 of the same year. The Senators primarily discussed issues of the Constitution in relation to the war, as Senator McGovern began with, "There is no way under the Constitution by which the Congress of the United States could act either to continue this war or to end it, except by a decision on whether we will appropriate funds to finance the war."

thumb|left|Senator Hatfield in 1986

In 1981, Hatfield served as the chairman of the Congressional Joint Committee on Presidential Inaugurations, overseeing the first inauguration of Ronald Reagan in January of that year.

On December 2, 1981, Hatfield was one of four senators to vote against an amendment to President Reagan's MX missiles proposal that would divert the silo system by $334 million as well as earmark further research for other methods that would allow giant missiles to be based. The vote was seen as a rebuff of the Reagan administration.

In the 1980s, Hatfield co-sponsored nuclear freeze legislation with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, as well as co-authoring a book on the topic. He also advocated for the closure of the N-Reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Site in the 1980s, though he was a supporter of nuclear fusion programs. The N-Reactor was used for producing weapons grade plutonium while producing electricity. such as military spending and the ban on travel to Cuba, while often siding with them on environmental and conservation issues. Senator Hatfield supported increased logging on federal lands. He was the lone Republican to vote against the 1981 fiscal year's appropriations bill for the Department of Defense. He was rated as the sixth most respected senator in a 1987 survey by fellow senators. In 1991, Hatfield voted against authorizing military action against Iraq in the Gulf War, one of only two members of his party to do so in the Senate. Most famously, in 1995, Hatfield was the deciding vote against a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Hatfield compared the balanced budget amendment to President Reagan's tax cuts, claiming that both were examples of "imagery versus substance".

Scandal and rebukes

Hatfield was sometimes called "Saint Mark" because of his squeaky-clean reputation, Tsakos had been lobbying Hatfield, then Appropriations Committee chairman, to support a trans-Africa oil pipeline megaproject. The Hatfields apologized and donated $55,000 to a Portland hospital. The Senate Ethics Committee investigated and decided to take no action. However, after Hatfield's death, an FBI report released under Freedom of Information law revealed that Tsakos had been indicted for bribery and had offered to plead guilty to lesser charges (though this never occurred), and that the Department of Justice had decided against charging Hatfield in the case.

In 1991, it was also revealed that Hatfield had failed to report a number of expensive gifts from the president of the University of South Carolina, James B. Holderman. Again, he apologized. But the Senate Ethics Committee rebuked Hatfield for the latter act.

thumb|right|Mark O. Hatfield Research Center at OHSU

His final re-election campaign came in 1990 against businessman Harry Lonsdale. Lonsdale aggressively went after Hatfield with television attack ads that attacked Hatfield as out of touch on issues such as abortion and timber management and accused the incumbent of being too closely allied with special interest groups in Washington. Lonsdale's tactics moved him even with, and then ahead of Hatfield in some polls. Hatfield, who had typically stayed above the fray of negative campaigning, responded in kind with attack ads of his own.

Length of service

In 1993, he became the longest-serving senator from Oregon, surpassing the record of 9,726 days in office previously held by Charles McNary. In 1995, Hatfield was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against the proposed balanced budget amendment, and was the deciding vote that prevented the passage of the bill. In 1996 the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, a group he served on previously, granted him their Distinguished Service Award.

Hatfield retired in 1996, having never lost an election in 46 years and 11 campaigns as an elected official. During his tenure he gained billions of dollars in the form of federal appropriations for projects in Oregon. environmental protection of wilderness areas and scenic rivers, They received only minor injuries, but the experience led them to advocate for seat belts to be required on buses.

Awarded an honorary degree from Linfield College in 1971.
Hatfield Marine Science Center at Oregon State University
Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University
The Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland
Mark O. Hatfield Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU)
The Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness
Mark O. Hatfield Institute for International Understanding at Southwestern Oregon Community College
Hatfield Government Center station at the western terminus of the MAX Blue Line light rail in Hillsboro
Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland
The Mark Hatfield trailhead at the western end of the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail in the Columbia River Gorge;
The Mark Hatfield Award for clinical research in Alzheimer's disease
The Mark O. Hatfield Leadership Award presented by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities
The Mark O. Hatfield Distinguished Historians Forum, speaker series presented by the Oregon Historical Society.

From February 2000 to May 2008 Hatfield served on the board of directors for Oregon Health & Science University. His papers and book collection are stored in the Willamette University Archives and Special Collections, inside the Mark O. Hatfield Library. Senator Hatfield merited his own chapter in Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation.

In 2014, a 90-minute documentary about Hatfield's life and career called The Gentleman of the Senate: Oregon's Mark Hatfield was released.

Hatfield was admitted to the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Hospital at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland in November 2010 for observation after his health began to decline. Mark Hatfield died at a care facility in Portland on August 7, 2011, after several years of illness. A specific cause of death was not immediately given.

Works authored

A selection of items Hatfield authored or contributed to:

Author

Not Quite So Simple (1968),
Conflict and Conscience (1971),
Between a Rock and a Hard Place (1976),
Against the Grain: Reflections of a Rebel Republican (2000),

Contributor

Amnesty?: The Unsettled Question of Vietnam (1973),
Social Power and Political Freedom (1980), (introduction)
Freeze! How You Can Help Prevent Nuclear War (1982), (with Edward Kennedy)
Real Christianity (1982), (introduction)
What About the Russians: A Christian Approach to US-Soviet Conflict (1984),
Vice Presidents of the United States: 1789-1993 (1997), (editor)

References

External links

Hatfield tribute page from Willamette University
Hatfield Records from the Oregon State Archives
Mark O. Hatfield (1922–2011) from the Oregon Historical Society
Hatfield voting record from the Washington Post
Hatfield retrospective from George Fox University
Hatfield Speech : Peace Through Strength is a Fallacy US Congressional Record August 2, 1989