As Congress's approval rating limped toward zero this summer amid unremitting partisan combat over the national debt, many Americans fondly remembered moderate politicians who once bridged the ideological gap. Mark Hatfield, a Republican senator from Oregon, was such a figure. During a 30-year career in the Senate, he won Democratic admirers as a champion for medical research and as a fierce opponent of war and nuclear weapons, while fellow Republicans appreciated his libertarian side, Baptist faith and steadfast opposition to abortion.
Hatfield, MA '48, died August 7 in Portland, Ore., of congestive heart failure and other illness. He was 89.
A veteran of World War II, Hatfield represented Oregon in the era spanning the Vietnam War to the intervention in Bosnia, but he never once voted in favor of a military authorization bill. He had been among the first Americans to see the scorched ruins of Hiroshima, an experience that permanently affected his feelings about military force.
On other matters, Hatfield was open to collaboration and compromise. Sen. Ron Wyden, '71, recalls that his Oregon congressional colleague "was constantly trying to find ways to bring people together and promote reconciliation, rather than get lost in brawls and infighting."
Born in 1922 in Dallas, Ore., to a railroad blacksmith and a schoolteacher, Hatfield attended Willamette University before joining the Navy in 1943. He piloted landing craft at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, among other places, and served briefly in Indochina after the war was over. After earning his master's degree in political science at Stanford, he returned to Oregon to launch his political career.
Hatfield won a seat in the state legislature in 1950, while teaching political science at Willamette. After becoming governor in 1959, he leapt to national prominence as one of the first influential Republicans to oppose the Vietnam War. That stance, galvanized by his military experience, helped vault Hatfield to the Senate in 1967. Though he spent the next 30 years working across the country in Washington, D.C., Hatfield kept Oregon at the forefront of his mind, bringing home federal dollars and working to protect the Columbia River Gorge.
Hatfield is survived by his wife, Antoinette Kuzmanich Hatfield, MA '55; two sons, Mark and Charles; two daughters, Elizabeth Keller and Theresa Cooney; and seven grandchildren.
Scott Bland, ’10, is a reporter at National Journal.
