Fred Harris, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma, presidential candidate and populist who championed Democratic reform during the turbulent 1960s, died Saturday. He was 94 years old.
Harris’ wife, Margaret Elliston, confirmed his death to The Associated Press. It was not immediately clear where he died, but he had lived in New Mexico since 1976 and was a resident of Corrales at the time of his death.
“Fred Harris passed away peacefully early this morning from natural causes. He was 94 years old. He was a wonderful and loved man. His memory is a blessing,” Elliston said in a text message. spoke.
Harris served in the Senate for eight years, first elected in 1964 to fill a vacancy, and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1976.
Harris, who chaired the Democratic National Committee in 1969 and 1970, was tasked with healing the party’s wounds from the 1968 national convention, which ended in chaos and clashes between protesters and police in Chicago. I worked hard to.
She spearheaded rule changes to include more women and minorities in convention delegates and leadership positions.
“I think it worked wonders,” Harris said of her time as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004. “The choice has become more legitimate and democratic.”
“The Democratic Party was not democratic, many of the delegates were pretty much controlled by or controlled by the bosses, and there was terrible discrimination against African Americans in the South,” he said.
Harris ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, resigning after a poor early campaign, including a fourth-place finish in New Hampshire. Jimmy Carter, a more moderate, was elected president.
Harris moved to New Mexico that year and became a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico. He has written and edited more than a dozen books, primarily on politics and Congress. In 1999, he expanded his writing with a mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma.
Throughout her political career, Harris has been a leading liberal voice for civil rights and anti-poverty programs that support minorities and disadvantaged people.
“Democrats everywhere have recognized Fred’s unparalleled integrity and established his core progressive values of equity and opportunity to thrive as core tenets of our party,” the New Mexico Democratic Party said in a statement. Fred will be remembered as a trailblazer.”
With his first wife, LaDonna, a Comanche, he also became active in Native American issues.
“I’ve always called myself a populist or a progressive,” Harris said in a 1998 interview. “I’m against concentration of power. I don’t like the power of money in politics. I think we should have programs for the middle class and the working class.”
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham praised his service to our common state and nation.
“In addition to being an exceptional politician and professor, he was a polite and honorable man who treated everyone with warmth, generosity and humor,” she said in a statement. . “Sen. Harris has been a leadership lesson for public servants to emulate now and in the future.”
Harris was a member of the National Advisory Commission on Civil War, known as the Kerner Commission, appointed by then-President Lyndon Johnson to investigate urban riots in the late 1960s.
The commission’s landmark 1968 report declared that “our nation is moving toward a two-society, one black and one white, a separate and unequal society.”
Thirty years later, Harris co-authored a report concluding that the commission’s “prophecies have come true.”
A report by Harris and Lynne A. Curtis, president of the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, which continues the work of the committee, states, “The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. Minorities suffer disproportionately.”
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said Harris has made a name for herself in Congress as a “fervent populist.”
“It resonates with people…the idea of ordinary people versus elites,” Ornstein said. “Fred Harris had a real ability to articulate the concerns of especially the downtrodden.”
In 1968, Harris co-chaired then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign. They used the treaty to pressure Humphrey to break with Johnson on the Vietnam War. But Humphrey waited until the final stages of the campaign, narrowly losing to Republican Richard Nixon.
“’68 was the worst year of my life. We murdered Martin Luther King Jr., we murdered Sen. Robert Kennedy, and then we had this terrible convention.” Harris said in 1996.
“I left the conference feeling really disappointed because of the terrible chaos, the way it was handled, and the failure to adopt a new peace platform.”
After assuming her post in the Democratic leadership, Harris appointed a commission to recommend reforms to the process for selecting delegates and presidential candidates. While he praised the increase in openness and diversity, he said there were side effects. But one of the consequences of that is that today’s treaties ratify treaties. So it’s difficult to make it interesting. ”
“My own opinion is that we should reduce the number of days to a few days. But as a way to adopt the platform, as a kind of pep rally, as a way to bring people together in some kind of coalition building, “I think it’s worth having,” he said.
Harris was born on November 13, 1930, in a two-room farmhouse near Walters in southwestern Oklahoma, about 25 miles from the Texas line. The house had no electricity, indoor toilet, or running water.
At age 5, he worked on a farm and received 10 cents a day for spinning horses around to power a hay hauler.
He worked part-time as a janitor and printer’s assistant to help with his education at the University of Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and history in 1952. He received his law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1954 and then moved to Lawton to practice.
He was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate in 1956 and served for eight years. He began his career in national politics in 1964 as a candidate to replace Senator Robert S. Carr, who died in January 1963.
Harris won the Democratic nomination in a runoff against J. Howard Edmondson, who resigned from the governor’s office to fill Carr’s vacancy until the next election. In the general election, Harris defeated an Oklahoma sports legend: Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, who coached OU football for 17 years.
Harris won a six-year term in 1966, but left the Senate in 1972 after doubts arose about her ability to be reelected as a left-leaning Democrat.
Harris married his high school sweetheart LaDonna Vita Crawford in 1949 and they had three children, Kathryn, Byron, and Laura. After the couple divorced, Harris married Margaret Elliston in 1983. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available Saturday.
