Bob Packwood, the Oregon Republican who shaped national tax policy and championed abortion rights in the Senate before his career collapsed under allegations of sexual harassment, died Saturday at 93.
Packwood served 27 years in the Senate after his election in 1968, building a reputation as a political operator willing to break ranks with his party. He was best known as the leading Republican advocate for abortion access, earning widespread praise from women's groups and Planned Parenthood. Yet his legacy would be overtaken by the very scandal that upended his final years in office.
In 1993, the Senate ethics committee opened an investigation into accusations from more than two dozen women, including former employees and acquaintances, who alleged Packwood made unwanted sexual advances. Rather than immediately resign, Packwood initially fought to stay, insisting he did not want to be remembered solely for the controversy. He ultimately stepped down in September 1995 and later built a lucrative lobbying career in Washington.
As chair and then ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Packwood was instrumental in brokering the sweeping 1986 tax reform that lowered top income brackets and eliminated many deductions. Colleagues viewed him as a skilled dealmaker and partisan scrapper, qualities he embraced when asked to characterize his own approach to politics in a 1992 interview.
"I would like to think that I am nobody's lackey," Packwood told the Associated Press. "I try to reach conclusions independently and then I'm willing to fight for those conclusions, if necessary, having to fight against my party or my party's president."
The great-grandson of a delegate to Oregon's 1857 Constitutional Convention, Packwood positioned himself as a social moderate and fiscal conservative who rejected the increasingly partisan direction Congress took after his departure. In a 2010 speech in Portland, he called for Oregon to adopt nonpartisan elections.
When asked about the harassment scandal in a 2002 interview with the Salem Statesman Journal, Packwood suggested he had moved past it.
"You cannot go through the rest of life and say look what happened," he said. "Pretty soon you become a bore to your friends."
Senator Ron Wyden, the Democrat who replaced Packwood in 1996, rejected that framing in a statement following his death.
"His horrible history as documented in his own diaries will forever overshadow that public record," Wyden said. "Simply put, historians' first line about Bob Packwood must include those women who he abused and assaulted for years and years."
Packwood was married to Elaine Franklin, his former chief of staff who became a political consultant in Portland. The couple maintained homes in both the Portland area and Washington.
Author James Rodriguez: "Packwood's career was a stark reminder that public achievement cannot erase private wrongdoing, no matter how much time passes."
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