Pete McCloskey, GOP congressman who once challenged Nixon, dies at 96
FRESNO, California — Pete McCloskey — a pro-environment, pro-war Republican who co-authored the Endangered Species Act and co-founded Earth Day — has died. He was 96.
McCloskey, a fourth-generation Republican “in the mold of Teddy Roosevelt,” he often said, represented the 12th Congressional District for 15 years and ran for president in 1972 against incumbent Richard Nixon. He battled party leaders while serving seven terms in Congress and publicly disavowed the Republican Party in his later years.
He died at home on Wednesday, according to Lee Houskeeper, a family friend.
Years after leaving Washington, McCloskey made one last bid for elective office in 2006, when he challenged Richard Pombo of Northern California’s 11th District in a primary race that McCloskey described as “a battle for the soul of the Republican Party.” . After losing to Pombo, who had spent most of his term in Washington trying to overturn the Endangered Species Act, he endorsed Democrat Jerry McNerney, the eventual winner.
“It was foolish to run against him (Pombo), but we had no one else to do it, and I couldn’t bear what a…—– they were going to be,” said the outspoken former colonel of the Marines. said of the modern Republican Party in a 2008 interview with The Associated Press.
McCloskey cited disillusionment with influence peddling and ethical scandals under the George W. Bush administration as reasons why he switched parties in 2007 at the age of 79. “A pox on them and their values,” he wrote in an open letter announcing the move to his supporters.
“McCloskey was a rarity in American politics – his actions were guided by his sense of justice, not political ideology,” Houskeeper said. “He hated inequality and did not hesitate to hire members of his own political party.”
Born in Loma Linda, California, on September 29, 1927, as Paul Norton McCloskey Jr., he graduated from South Pasadena High School, where the second baseman entered the school’s baseball hall of fame, although he self-deprecatingly called himself ” maybe the worst player on the baseball team.”
He earned a law degree from Stanford University and founded an environmental law firm in Palo Alto before transitioning to public office. In 1967, he defeated fellow Republican Shirley Temple Black and Democrat Roy Archibald in a special election for San Mateo County’s congressional seat.
The left-leaning McCloskey had a thunderous presence in Washington and tried to get onto the floor of the 1972 Republican National Convention during his bid to unseat then-President Nixon on an anti-Vietnam war platform. He was ultimately blocked by a rule from his friend and law school debate partner, John Ehrlichman, who said a candidate could not speak with fewer than 25 delegates. McCloskey had one.
Still, McCloskey liked to say he finished second.
He would later visit Ehrlichman in prison, where Nixon’s former counsel served a year and a half for conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice in the Watergate burglary that led to the president’s resignation.
During his time in office, McCloskey was also known for his friendship with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and for his criticism of Israeli influence on American politics. The congressman was the first to demand Nixon’s impeachment, and the first to demand a repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that made the Vietnam War possible.
But its lasting legacy is the Endangered Species Act, which protects species listed as threatened or endangered and preserves the ecosystems on which they depend. McCloskey co-wrote the legislation in 1973, after a campaign of young people, supported by Earth Day activities, successfully unseated seven of the 12 members of Congress, known as “The Dirty Dozen,” for their anti-environmental votes.
“On that day, the world changed,” McCloskey recalled in 2008. “Suddenly everyone was an environmentalist. My Republican colleagues started asking me for copies of old speeches I had given on water and air quality.”
“Pete, a fierce champion of endangered species, ironically became one,” says Earth Day co-organizer Denis Hayes, about the rarity of a “green, anti-war Republican.”
After fifteen years in the House of Representatives, he lost his chance for a seat in the Senate to Republican Pete Wilson, who would later become governor of California. He moved back to rural Yolo County and enjoyed the life of a farmer and part-time lawyer.
“You know, if people call you ‘Congressman’ all the time, you’re going to end up thinking you’re smarter than you are,” he said.
McCloskey couldn’t stay quiet forever, though.
In 2006, after his failed race against Pombo, he helped form the Revolt of the Elders Coalition, a group of retired Republican congressmen who pushed to give soldiers more money for college, undo measures that made it harder to conduct ethical investigate and oppose violations. who had received funding from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, including Pombo.
“If at the age of eighty you can do something that has a positive effect on our country, then you should be proud of that. Otherwise, growing older has no redeeming value,” he said.
McCloskey is survived by his wife Helen – his longtime press secretary whom he married in 1978 – and four children by his first wife: Nancy, Peter, John and Kathleen.
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This story contains biographical information compiled by former AP writer Tracie Cone.