Former senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, whose liberal Republican politics during five terms in Congress made him an increasingly rare breed in his party, and who used his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee to denounce what he considered the “madness” of excessive defense spending, died Aug. 7 at a care facility in Portland.
He was 89. He had congestive heart failure, among other ailments, said his son Mark Jr.
As a Navy officer during World War II, Mr. Hatfield saw the devastation wrought by atomic warfare in the Japanese city of Hiroshima. That experience, coupled with his Baptist faith, was a defining force in shaping Mr. Hatfield’s political views during nearly half a century in elected office.
He became an opponent of abortion, the death penalty and war — a “consistently pro-life” politician, said Oregon political scientist Bill Lunch, “who took the religious injunction not to do harm to others seriously.”
During his three decades on Capitol Hill, Mr. Hatfield was one of the Senate’s most unwavering pacifists. He joined George S. McGovern (D-S.D.) in sponsoring a 1970 amendment to bring U.S. troops home from Vietnam; spearheaded an effort with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) to freeze the nuclear arms race; and, in 1990, was one of only two Republican senators (the other was Charles E. Grassley of Iowa) to vote against going to war in the Persian Gulf.
When Mr. Hatfield announced his retirement in the mid-1990s, he used the occasion to criticize President Bill Clinton’s plan to send U.S. forces to intervene in Bosnia’s civil war. “I do not believe we can solve 800 years of history by sending our troops over there,” he said.
Mr. Hatfield never voted for a military authorization bill. As head of appropriations from 1981 to 1987, he was one of the most powerful dissenters against President Ronald Reagan’s political agenda. He redirected money from Reagan’s Pentagon budget to social safety-net programs and urged Democrats to join him in fighting the “Star Wars” program.
“There is to me a direct ratio between the increase of our arsenals and the diminishing sense of national security,” he told the Christian Science Monitor in 1982.
“There comes a time in a nation’s life when additional money spent for rockets and bombs, far from strengthening national security, will actually weaken national security — when there are people who are hungry and not fed, people who are cold and not clothed.”
Mr. Hatfield, a critic of extremism across the political spectrum, carved a centrist path on divisive issues such as the environment. An early supporter of the Endangered Species Act and federally protected wilderness, he later drew the scorn of preservationists for defending the logging industry during the bitter timber wars of the 1980s and ’90s.
His voting record played well in Oregon, a state with left-leaning cities and conservative rural communities. His popularity was boosted by his seniority in Washington and his ability to funnel billions of dollars to Oregon for hospitals, transportation infrastructure and higher education.
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