Fred Harris, a former US senator from Oklahoma, presidential candidate and populist who championed Democratic Party reforms during the turbulent 1960s, died Saturday. He was 94 years old.
Harris's wife, Margaret Elliston, confirmed his death to the Associated Press. He had been living in New Mexico since 1976.
“Fred Harris passed away peacefully this morning of natural causes. He was 94 years old. He was a wonderful and beloved man. His memory is a blessing,” Elliston said in a text message.
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Harris served for eight years in the Senate, first winning the Senate to fill a vacancy in 1964, and making an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1976.
Democratic New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said, “I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing today of my longtime friend Fred Harris.” wrote In a post on social media. “Harris was a towering presence in politics and academia, and her work over many decades improved New Mexico and the nation. She will be greatly missed.”
Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico Said A statement said “New Mexico and our nation have lost a giant,” calling him a “tireless champion of civil rights, tribal sovereignty, and working families.”
As chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1969 and 1970, Harris was tasked with helping heal the party's wounds. The stormy national conference of 1968 When there was a clash between protesters and police in Chicago.
She initiated rule changes that led to more women and minorities entering convention delegates and leadership positions.
“I think it's worked wonderfully,” Harris said, recalling 2004, when he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. “It has made the selection more legitimate and democratic.”
He said, “The Democratic Party was not democratic, and many delegations were largely boss-controlled or dominated. And in the South, there was terrible discrimination against African Americans.”
Harris ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, resigning after a poor showing in early contests, including a fourth-place victory in New Hampshire. The more moderate Jimmy Carter won the presidency.
Harris moved to New Mexico that year and became a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico. He wrote and edited more than a dozen books, mostly on politics and Congress. In 1999 he broadened his writing with a mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma.
Throughout her political career, Harris was a leading liberal voice for civil rights and anti-poverty programs to help minorities and the disadvantaged. With his first wife, LaDonna, a Comanche, he was also active in Native American issues.
“I've always called myself a populist or a progressive,” Harris said in a 1998 interview. “I'm against concentrated 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.”
“Today 'populism' is often a dirty word because of the power some leaders wield,” Heinrich said in a statement Saturday. “But Fred represented a different brand of populism – one that was never mean or exclusionary. Instead, Fred focused his work and attention on regular people who are often ignored by the political class.”
Harris was a member of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the so-called Kerner Commission, appointed by then-President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the urban riots of the late 1960s.
The commission's groundbreaking report in 1968 declared, “Our country is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.”
Thirty years later, Harris co-authored a report that concluded that the commission's “predictions have come true.”
Milton S., who continued the commission's work. Eisenhower Foundation President Harris and Lynn A. “The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and minorities are being disproportionately harmed,” the Curtis report said.
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said Harris rose to prominence in Congress as a “fierce populist”.
“It resonates with people…the notion of the average person versus the elite,” Ornstein said. “Fred Harris had a real ability to express those concerns, especially those of the disadvantaged.”
In 1968, Harris served as co-chairman of the presidential campaign of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He and others pressured Humphrey to use the conference to break with Johnson on the Vietnam War. But Humphrey waited to do so until the end of the campaign and lost by a narrow margin to Republican Richard Nixon.
Harris said in 1996, “That was the worst year of my life, '68. We had Dr. Martin Luther King killed. We had my Senate seatmate Robert Kennedy killed and then we had this terrible convention.”
“I left the conference – really disappointed – because of the terrible dislocations and the way they were dealt with and the failure to adopt a new peace platform.”
After assuming leadership of the Democratic Party, Harris appointed a commission that recommended improvements to the processes for selecting delegates and presidential nominees. While appreciative of greater openness and diversity, he said it has had a side effect: “It's quite good. But one consequence of that is that conferences today are approving conferences. So it's harder to make them interesting.”
“My own view is that they should be shortened to a few days. But I think they should still be used as a way to embrace a platform, as a kind of pep rally, as a way to bring people together.” Worth keeping in form. A kind of coalition building,'' he said.
Harris was born on November 13, 1930, in a two-room farmhouse near Walters, southwestern Oklahoma, about 15 miles from the Texas line. The house had no electricity, indoor toilet or running water.
At the age of 5 he was working on a farm and received 10 cents a day for turning a horse to supply power to a hay baler.
He worked part-time as a janitor and printer's assistant to help fund his education at the University of Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science and history in 1952. He received a law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1954 and then moved to Lawton to practice.
In 1956, he won election to the Oklahoma State Senate and served for eight years. In 1964, he met Senator Robert S. Began his career in national politics in the race to replace George W. Kerr, who died in January 1963.
Harris J. Won the Democratic nomination in a runoff election against Howard Edmondson, who left the governorship to fill Kerr's vacancy until the next election. In the general election, Harris defeated Oklahoma sports legend Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, who had coached OU football for 17 years.
Harris won a six-year term in 1966 but left the Senate in 1972 when there were doubts that as a left-wing Democrat she could win re-election.
Harris married his high school sweetheart, LaDonna Vita Crawford, in 1949, and they had three children, Katherine, Byron, and Laura. After the couple divorced, Harris married Margaret Elliston in 1983. A full list of survivors was not immediately available Saturday.