Rep. Philip M. Crane said the conservative credo was “to maximize free choice and minimize trespass.” This photo was taken in 1980. (AP/AP)
Philip M. Crane, an Illinois Republican who cast himself as a standard-bearer for conservatism, promoting limited government and low taxes during 35 years in Congress and as a presidential hopeful in 1980, died Nov. 8 at a daughter’s home in Jefferson, Md. He was 84.
The cause was complications from lung cancer, said Kirt Johnson, his former congressional chief of staff.
Mr. Crane was elected to the House of Representatives in a 1969 special election to fill the seat vacated by another Republican, future secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had taken a job in the Nixon administration.
Mr. Crane held the seat in the northern suburbs of Chicago until his 2004 defeat by Democrat Melissa Bean. At the time, he was the longest-serving House Republican.
A former history professor with clean-cut good looks, he had entered Republican politics in the 1960s and worked for the presidential campaign of Barry M. Goldwater, the Arizona senator who lost to Lyndon B. Johnson in a landslide but was credited with invigorating the conservative movement.
“For a long time, I had taken a rather dim view of politics and politicians,” Mr. Crane once told an interviewer. “But in 1964 Goldwater’s campaign led me to believe that not all politicians are snake-oil salesmen.”
Mr. Crane described himself as a “conservative first and a Republican second” and promoted in Congress and on the hustings what he regarded as the core conservative philosophy: “to maximize free choice and minimize trespass.”
He sought to energize congressional conservatives in the early 1970s by helping found the Republican Study Committee, which describes itself as an “ideological rallying point” where members can organize their efforts. From 1977 to 1979, Mr. Crane was chairman of the American Conservative Union, which was founded after Goldwater’s failed presidential campaign and became an influential advocacy group.
In Congress, Mr. Crane was not widely associated with particular pieces of legislation but was an outspoken advocate for free-trade agreements such as NAFTA and GATT as well as measures that eased trade with Africa and the Caribbean.
During the Carter administration, he helped lead opposition to the treaties that transferred control of the Panama Canal from the United States to the Panamanian government in what many conservatives described as a “giveaway.”
In 1978, Mr. Crane became the first Republican to enter the 1980 race for the presidency. He had supported Ronald Reagan’s previous bid for the White House and said that he thought the former California governor, who was two decades his senior, might not run that year.
When Reagan joined the race, Mr. Crane faced complaints that his candidacy would split the conservative vote — an outcome that he said he would not allow. Amid campaign debt and an exodus of staffers, Mr. Crane withdrew from the race and supported Reagan, who won the first of his two presidential terms that year.
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In Congress, Mr. Crane rose to become a top member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. He chaired the subcommittee on trade but was not selected, as he hoped he would be, for the committee chairmanship after the 2000 election.
Months earlier, he announced that he would seek treatment for alcoholism, a dependence he attributed in part to his grief after the death of a daughter, Rachel Crane, from cancer in 1997 and to his efforts to abruptly stop smoking.
During his 2004 campaign, he emphasized his seniority in Congress while fighting charges from Bean, his Democratic challenger, that he had done too little on behalf of his district. Bean won, 52 to 48 percent.
Philip Miller Crane was born Nov. 3, 1930, in Chicago. He credited his father, a physician, with instilling in him his conservative beliefs.
In 1952, the younger Mr. Crane received a bachelor’s degree in history and psychology from Hillsdale College in Michigan. After Army service, he received a master’s degree in 1961 and a PhD in 1963, both in history from Indiana University. He taught there and at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., before focusing on his political career.
He wrote several books, including “The Democrat’s Dilemma” (1964), “The Sum of Good Government” (1976) and “Surrender in Panama” (1978). Mr. Crane also penned a Christmas song, “Little Sandy Sleighfoot”; a Jimmy Dean recording of the song sold 300,000 copies.
Mr. Crane’s wife of 53 years, the former Arlene Johnson, died in 2012. Survivors include seven children, Rebekah Crane of Jefferson, Md., Susanna Crane of Falls Church, Va., Sarah Crane of Winchester, Va., Catherine Hott of Berryville, Va., Jennifer Oliver of Boyce, Va., Carrie Crane of Severna Park, Md., and George Crane of Leesburg, Va.; a sister; two brothers, including Daniel B. Crane, an Illinois Republican who served in the House from 1979 to 1985; and nine grandchildren.
When Mr. Crane withdrew from the 1980 presidential race, he remarked that “one must acknowledge that in this life there are no final victories or defeats.”
“Standard-bearers will come and standard-bearers will go,” he said, “but the war is everlasting.”