Fred Harris, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma, presidential hopeful and populist who championed Democratic Occasion reforms within the turbulent Nineteen Sixties, died Saturday. He was 94.
Harris’ spouse, Margaret Elliston, confirmed his dying to The Related Press. He had lived in New Mexico since 1976.
“Fred Harris handed peacefully early this morning of pure causes. He was 94. He was an exquisite and beloved man. His reminiscence is a blessing,” Elliston mentioned in a textual content message.
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Harris served eight years within the Senate, first profitable in 1964 to fill a emptiness, and made unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1976.
“I’m deeply saddened to be taught of the passing of my longtime buddy Fred Harris at the moment,” Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wrote in a publish to social media. “Harris was a towering presence in politics and in academia, and his work over many a long time improved New Mexico and the nation. He can be drastically missed.”
Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico mentioned in a press release that “New Mexico and our nation have misplaced an enormous,” describing him as a “tireless champion of civil rights, tribal sovereignty and dealing households.”
It fell to Harris, as chairman of the Democratic Nationwide Committee in 1969 and 1970, to assist heal the get together’s wounds from the tumultuous nationwide conference in 1968 when protesters and police clashed in Chicago.
He ushered in rule modifications that led to extra ladies and minorities as conference delegates and in management positions.
“I feel it is labored splendidly,” Harris recalled in 2004, when he was a delegate to the Democratic Nationwide Conference in Boston. “It is made the choice way more reputable and democratic.”
“The Democratic Occasion was not democratic, and most of the delegations had been just about boss-controlled or -dominated. And within the South, there was horrible discrimination in opposition to African People,” he mentioned.
Harris ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, quitting after poor showings in early contests, together with a fourth-place win in New Hampshire. The extra average Jimmy Carter went on to win the presidency.
Harris moved to New Mexico that 12 months and have become a political science professor on the College of New Mexico. He wrote and edited greater than a dozen books, totally on politics and Congress. In 1999 he broadened his writings with a thriller set in Despair-era Oklahoma.
All through his political profession, Harris was a number one liberal voice for civil rights and anti-poverty packages to assist minorities and the deprived. Alongside along with his first spouse, LaDonna, a Comanche, he additionally was energetic in Native American points.
“I’ve at all times referred to as myself a populist or progressive,” Harris mentioned in a 1998 interview. “I am in opposition to concentrated energy. I do not like the facility of cash in politics. I feel we should have packages for the center class and dealing class.”
“In the present day ‘populism’ is usually a unclean phrase due to how sure leaders wield energy,” Heinrich mentioned in his assertion Saturday. “However Fred represented a distinct model of populism — one which was by no means imply or exclusionary. As a substitute, Fred centered his work and a focus on common people who find themselves typically neglected by the political class.”
Harris was a member of the Nationwide Advisory Fee on Civil Problems, the so-called Kerner Fee, appointed by then-President Lyndon Johnson to analyze the city riots of the late Nineteen Sixties.
The fee’s groundbreaking report in 1968 declared, “our nation is shifting towards two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”
Thirty years later, Harris co-wrote a report that concluded the fee’s “prophecy has come to cross.”
“The wealthy are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and minorities are struggling disproportionately,” mentioned the report by Harris and Lynn A. Curtis, president of the Milton S. Eisenhower Basis, which continued the work of the fee.
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute mentioned Harris rose to prominence in Congress as a “fiery populist.”
“That resonates with folks…the notion of the common individual in opposition to the elite,” Ornstein mentioned. “Fred Harris had an actual potential to articulate these considerations, significantly of the downtrodden.”
In 1968, Harris served as co-chairman of the presidential marketing campaign of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He and others pressed Humphrey to make use of the conference to interrupt with Johnson on the Vietnam Warfare. However Humphrey waited to take action till late within the marketing campaign, and narrowly misplaced to Republican Richard Nixon.
“That was the worst 12 months of my life, ’68. We had Dr. Martin Luther King killed. We had my Senate seatmate Robert Kennedy killed after which we had this horrible conference,” Harris mentioned in 1996.
“I left the conference — due to the horrible problems and the way in which they’d been dealt with and the failure to undertake a brand new peace platform — actually downhearted.”
After assuming the Democratic Occasion management publish, Harris appointed commissions that really useful reforms within the procedures for choosing delegates and presidential nominees. Whereas lauding the higher openness and variety, he mentioned there had been a facet impact: “It is a lot to the great. However the one results of it’s that conventions at the moment are ratifying conventions. So it is onerous to make them attention-grabbing.”
“My very own thought is that they should be shortened to a few days. However they’re nonetheless value having, I feel, as a approach to undertake a platform, as a sort of pep rally, as a approach to get folks collectively in a sort of coalition-building,” he mentioned.
Harris was born Nov. 13, 1930, in a two-room farmhouse close to Walters, in southwestern Oklahoma, about 15 miles from the Texas line. The house had no electrical energy, indoor rest room or operating water.
At age 5 he was engaged on the farm and obtained 10 cents a day to drive a horse in circles to produce energy for a hay bailer.
He labored part-time as a janitor and printer’s assistant to assist for his training at College of Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor’s diploma in 1952, majoring in political science and historical past. He obtained a regulation diploma from the College of Oklahoma in 1954, after which moved to Lawton to apply.
In 1956, he received election to the Oklahoma state Senate and served for eight years. In 1964, he launched his profession in nationwide politics within the race to interchange Sen. Robert S. Kerr, who died in January 1963.
Harris received the Democratic nomination in a runoff election in opposition to J. Howard Edmondson, who left the governorship to fill Kerr’s emptiness till the subsequent election. Within the normal election, Harris defeated an Oklahoma sports activities legend — Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, who had coached OU soccer for 17 years.
Harris received a six-year time period in 1966 however left the Senate in 1972 when there have been doubts that he, as a left-leaning Democrat, may win reelection.
Harris married his highschool sweetheart, LaDonna Vita Crawford, in 1949, and had three youngsters, Kathryn, Byron and Laura. After the couple divorced, Harris married Margaret Elliston in 1983. A whole listing of survivors was not instantly accessible Saturday.
