Fred Harris, former US Senator OklaA populist hopeful who championed Democratic Party reforms in the turbulent 1960s, he died on 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 lived there New Mexico Since 1976 and was a resident of Corrales at the time of his death.
“Fred Harris passed peacefully early this morning of 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.
Harris served eight years in the Senate, first winning a vacancy in 1964, and an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 1976.
Harris, as chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1969 and 1970, decided to help the party heal from the tumultuous 1968 national convention in Chicago, where protestors and police clashed.
It led to rule changes that led to more women and minorities as convention delegates and in leadership positions.
“I think it’s worked tremendously,” Harris recalled in 2004, when he was a representative. Democratic National Convention in boston “It has made the election much more legitimate and democratic.”
“The Democratic Party was not democratic, and many of the delegations were leaders or superiors. And in the South, there was tremendous discrimination against African Americans,” he said.
Harris ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, dropping out after poor showings in the primary contests, finishing fourth in New Hampshire. The more moderate Jimmy Carter he went on to win 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 about politics and Congress. In 1999 he expanded his writing with a mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma.
Throughout his political career, Harris was a vocal advocate of civil rights and anti-poverty programs to help minorities and the poor.
“Democrats everywhere will remember Fred for his unparalleled integrity and as a pioneer in establishing the core progressive values of equity and opportunity for prosperity as our party’s core principles,” the New Mexico Democratic Party said in a statement.
Along with his first wife, LaDonna, a Comanche, he was also active in Native American affairs.
“I’ve always called myself a populist or a progressive,” Harris said in a 1998 interview. “I am 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.”
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham praised his work for their shared situation and nation.
“Besides being a great politician and teacher, he was a decent and honorable man who treated everyone with warmth, generosity and good humor,” he said in a statement. “Sen. Harris was a lesson in leadership that public servants would emulate now and forever.
Harris was a member of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disturbances, also known as the Kerner Commission, which was appointed by then-President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the urban riots of the late 1960s.
The commission’s ground-breaking report in 1968 stated, “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and distinct.”
Thirty years later, Harris wrote a report that concluded the committee’s “prophecy has been fulfilled.”
“The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and minorities are suffering disproportionately,” said Harris and Lynn A. Curtis, president of the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, in a report that followed up on the committee’s work.
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said Harris stood out in Congress as a “fiery populist.”
“That resonates with people … the notion of the common man versus the elite,” Ornstein said. “Fred Harris had a real ability to articulate those concerns, especially the oppressed.”
In 1968, Harris served as co-chairman of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign. He and others pressured Humphrey to break with Johnson on the Vietnam War. But Humphrey waited until late in the campaign to do so, narrowly losing to Republican Richard Nixon.
“This was the worst year of my life, ’68. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. We killed Senator Robert Kennedy and then we had this terrible convention,” Harris said in 1996.
“I left the convention – because of the terrible disturbances and the way they were handled and the failure to adopt a new peace platform – very sad.”
After assuming leadership of the Democratic Party, Harris appointed committees that recommended reforms in the procedures for selecting representatives and presidential candidates. Despite praising greater openness and diversity, he said there has been a side effect: “It’s for the better. But the only consequence of this is that today’s agreements are confirming agreements. So it’s hard to make them interesting.”
“My opinion is that they should be shortened to a couple of days. But they’re still worth it, I think, as a way to take a platform, as a kind of pep rally, as a way to bring people together in a kind of coalition building,” he said.
Harris was born on November 13, 1930, in a two-room farmhouse near Walters, in southwestern Oklahoma, 15 miles from the Texas line. The house had no electricity, indoor toilets or running water.
At age 5 he was working on the farm and was paid 10 cents a day to drive a horse in circles to power a hay bale.
He worked part-time as a janitor and printer’s assistant to support his education at the University of Oklahoma. He graduated in 1952, studying political science and history. He received his law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1954 and went to practice in Lawton.
In 1956, he won election to the Oklahoma state Senate and served for eight years. In 1964, he entered national politics in the race to replace Senator Robert S. Kerr, who died in January 1963.
Harris won the Democratic nomination in the election against J. Howard Edmondson, who resigned from the governorship to fill Kerr’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 when, as a left-leaning Democrat, there were doubts he could win re-election.
Harris married his high school sweetheart, LaDonna Vita Crawford, in 1949 and had three children, Kathryn, Byron, and Laura. After the couple divorced, Harris married Margaret Elliston in 1983. A full list of survivors was not immediately available Saturday.
