Orrin Hatch, Longest-Serving Republican Senator, Dies at 88

(Bloomberg) -- Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history and a steadfast conservative who also crossed the aisle to work on legislation with liberal Democrats, has died. He was 88.

Hatch died on Saturday in Salt Lake City, the Hatch Foundation said in a statement. It didn’t provide a cause of death.

First elected to the Senate in 1976, Hatch was a hard-line backer of conservative causes such as tax cuts, gun rights, opposition to abortion, and a balanced-budget constitutional amendment. Over the years, he served as chairman of three Senate committees: Finance; Judiciary; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Hatch didn’t run for re-election in 2018 and retired in 2019. Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won the subsequent election to replace him.

Hatch titled his 2002 autobiography “Square Peg” as an acknowledgment that he was far from a traditional conservative. He was known for his cordiality toward all on Capitol Hill and his legislative collaborations with liberals such as Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who was one of his closest friends.

“This is how Congress — and the country — works,” Hatch wrote in his book. “Good legislation emerges when all views are heard, and the best ideas, regardless of origin, are put into effect. Working with the other side is not only politically necessary but beneficial for everyone.”

Conservative Values

From his first Senate term, Hatch was a crusader for conservative values. He proposed a constitutional ban on abortion and voted against the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have invalidated laws that discriminate on the basis of sex.

He backed a proposed constitutional amendment to ban burning the American flag as a form of political protest. He worked to restrict class-action and medical-malpractice lawsuits, and called for replacing former President Barack Obama’s health-care law and rewriting the tax code.

During Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Hatch urged socially conservative GOP convention delegates from Utah to put aside their concerns about the candidate because of the importance of appointing Republican-leaning justices to the Supreme Court. “He deserves our support,” the senator said.

Even so, Hatch occasionally voted in favor of legislation supported by Democrats. He was the only Republican to support federal funding for AIDS education in 1988, and in 2001 he became one of the few Republican advocates of stem-cell research.

Disabilities Act

He and Kennedy co-sponsored the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, protecting disabled people from discrimination, and the two worked together in 1997 to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program, providing coverage for children of the working poor.

In 2013, Hatch was one of 14 Senate Republicans who voted for a comprehensive immigration plan that would have created a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. The House didn’t take up the bill, and in 2015 Hatch introduced a bill calling for more than doubling the number of visas for highly skilled workers.

Orrin Grant Hatch was born on March 22, 1934, in Homestead Park, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1959 and earned a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1962. Hatch practiced law in Pittsburgh, then moved to Salt Lake City to be near his wife’s family.

He won his Senate seat in 1976 in his first run for public office. Hatch became the longest-serving Republican senator in February 2017. As Senate president pro tempore starting in 2015, he was third in line to the presidency.

Hatch moonlighted as a songwriter, and some of his songs were used in the soundtracks of movies including “Ocean’s Twelve,” “Rat Race” and “Stuart Little 2.”

Hatch married Elaine Hansen in 1957. They had six children, who he called his “Hatchlings.”

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