Former US Sen. Jim Inhofe, defense hawk who called human-caused climate change a ‘hoax,’ dies at 89
OKLAHOMA CITY — Former Sen. Jim Inhofe, a conservative firebrand known for his strong support for defense spending and his denial that human activity is responsible for most of climate change, has died. He was 89.
Inhofe, an influential figure in Oklahoma politics for more than 60 years, died Tuesday morning after suffering a stroke during the July 4 holiday, his family said in a statement.
Inhofe, who was elected to a fifth term in the Senate in 2020, resigned early 2023.
Inhofe frequently criticized the mainstream science that human activity contributed to changes in the Earth’s climate, once calling it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
In February 2015, with temperatures in the nation’s capital below freezing, Inhofe brought a snowball to the Senate floor. He threw it into the air before claiming that environmentalists were turning their attention to global warming because the weather was getting colder. “It’s very, very cold out. Very unusual,” Inhofe said.
As Oklahoma’s senior senator, Inhofe was a staunch supporter of the state’s five military installations and an outspoken advocate of congressional earmarks. The Army veteran and licensed pilot, who flew to and from Washington himself, secured federal money to fund local road and bridge projects and criticized House Republicans who in 2010 sought a one-year moratorium on such hobby projects.
“Defeating an earmark doesn’t save a dime,” Inhofe told the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce in August. “It just means it goes right back into the bureaucracy in the budget process.”
He was an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, praising him for his “incredible support of our #MAGA agenda” and backing the senator’s 2020 re-election campaign. During the Trump administration, Inhofe served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee following the death of Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
In March 2009, Inhofe captured the nation’s attention by introducing a law that prevented prisoners from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay from being transferred “anywhere on U.S. soil.”
Closer to home, Inhofe helped secure millions of dollars to clean up a former mining center in northeastern Oklahoma that had been on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list for decades. In a massive buyout program, the federal government purchased homes and businesses in the 40-square-mile (104-square-kilometer) Tar Creek region, where children were consistently tested for dangerous levels of lead in their blood.
“This is an example of a government program that is created for a specific purpose and then disbanded after the job is done. This is how government should work,” Inhofe said in December 2010, as the project neared completion.
In 2021, Inhofe defied some in his party by voting to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, saying that to do otherwise would violate his oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. He voted against convicting Trump at both impeachment trials.
Inhofe was born James Mountain Inhofe on November 17, 1934, in Des Moines, Iowa. He grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tulsa in 1959. He served in the Army from 1956 to 1958 and was a businessman for three decades, including as president of Quaker Life Insurance Co.
His political career began in 1966, when he was elected to the state House of Representatives. Two years later, he won a Senate seat in Oklahoma, which he had held during unsuccessful bids for governor in 1974 and for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976. He then won three terms as mayor of Tulsa, beginning in 1978.
Inhofe won two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1980s before throwing his hat into the fray in a bitter U.S. Senate race when longtime Sen. David Boren stepped down in 1994 to become president of the University of Oklahoma. Inhofe defeated then-U.S. Rep. Dave McCurdy in a special election that year to serve the final two years of Boren’s term and was re-elected five times.
Inhofe lived up to his reputation as a tough campaigner in his 2008 re-election bid against Democrat Andrew Rice, a 35-year-old senator and former missionary. Inhofe argued that Rice was “too liberal” for Oklahoma and ran television ads that critics said contained anti-gay undertones, including one showing a wedding cake with two plastic grooms on it and a photo of Rice as a young man in a leather jacket.
Rice, who has two children with his wife and received his master’s degree from Harvard University Divinity School, accused Inhofe of distorting his reputation and attacking his character.
Inhofe’s bullish personality was also visible outside of politics. He was a commercially qualified pilot and flight instructor with more than 50 years of flying experience.
He made an emergency landing in Claremore in 1999 after his plane lost a propeller, an incident later attributed to an installation error. In 2006, his plane spun out of control upon landing in Tulsa; he and an assistant escaped injury, although the plane was severely damaged.
In 2010, Inhofe landed his small plane on a closed runway at a rural airport in South Texas while flying himself and others to a home he owned on South Padre Island. The runway workers rushed to the scene, and Inhofe agreed to undergo a remedial training program rather than face possible legal action.
“I’m 75 years old, but I still fly upside down in airplanes,” Inhofe said in August 2010. “I don’t know why it is, but I have no pain anywhere and I don’t feel any different than I did five years ago.”
Inhofe is survived by his wife, Kay, three children and several grandchildren. A son, Dr. Perry Dyson Inhofe II, died in November 2013 at age 51 when the twin-engine plane he was flying crashed a few miles north of Tulsa International Airport.