The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer.
While looking for something to read during this period of COVID-19 social distancing, I found John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Profiles in Courage,” in the large stack by my bed.
To those not familiar with JFK’s 1956 biography, it profiles eight senators—including better-known Sam Houston and Daniel Webster, as well as the lesser-known Edmund G. Ross. They became anathema to their political party and most of their constituents. They either lost their Senate seats or were badly damaged politically. I was drawn to the book because of what I perceive as the lack of political courage in the Senate today.
Recently, I was dismayed to learn of the deaths this month of two former members of Congress with whom I had worked closely, admired and considered friends: Amo Houghton and Richard Hanna.
Both New York Republicans, they bucked the rightward march of the party until they couldn’t take it anymore. Neither lost their seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, but left after casting key votes on issues that roiled many Republicans in and out of Congress.
Both Houghton and Hanna would be candidates for inclusion in JFK’s “Profiles in Courage,” if he were writing it today.
Houghton was 93 when he died March 4, having served in the House for nearly two decades, leaving in 2004. I met him while lobbying for the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teacher’s union, in Washington, D.C. He had been president of Corning Glass, his family’s glass company, and didn’t run for Congress until he was 60 years old.
Houghton was a strong supporter of public education, unions and reproductive rights. He always looked for ways to work across the aisle with Democratic colleagues. He was a founder of the Republican Main Street Partnership, an organization that was home to the dwindling number of moderates in the Congress. The NEA was an early supporter of that policy organization.
Upon my retirement from the NEA in 2009, he wrote to me a letter which hangs, framed on my home office wall. It says in part: “I just wanted to tell you what an enormous contribution you have made to all of us. You are just one of those strong, sensitive people who is willing to walk in the second rank and let others take the claim.” He goes on: “I’d like to feel that the union movement, as I’ve always believed … is an essential part of the operating coalition of this country.”
Richard Hanna died March 15 at age 69. Like Houghton, he was from upstate New York, but served just three terms in the House, leaving in 2016. He immediately set about defying the right wing of his party, supporting same-sex marriage, abortion and LGBTQ rights.
“I never left the Republican Party that I originally joined. I can only say that they’ve left me. It’s really gone to the far extremes on social issues. They’ve become judgmental and sanctimonious and authoritarian on their approach to people,” he once said in an interview.
As a volunteer for Planned Parenthood—and when I was still a Republican—I worked with him on many issues that were not popular with the party. I had the honor of presenting Hanna with Planned Parenthood’s Senator Barry Goldwater Award several years ago, acknowledging his deep commitment to public policies furthering women’s health and reproductive freedom.
Both men were among the last of a dying breed: Republicans who followed their consciences, rejected their party’s divisive culture and anti-union wars, and always looked for common ground. I am proud to have known these courageous men. RIP.
