PORTLAND, Ore. — Former Sen. Bob Packwood, a moderate Oregon Republican whose reputation as a champion of women’s rights was tainted late in his career by a sexual harassment scandal, has died. He was 93.
Packwood’s death Saturday was announced in an obituary sent to media outlets by his family. The release didn’t include additional details.
As the scandal unfolded, Packwood initially refused to quit the chamber in which he had served for 27 years, saying he didn’t want to be remembered only for that.
Before the #MeToo era, Packwood stood out as an example of private behavior undermining a man’s public image. He previously had been praised by Planned Parenthood and others.
The great-grandson of a member of the 1857 Oregon Constitutional Convention, Packwood established himself as a social moderate and fiscal conservative who often voted across party lines. He considered running for president in 1980.
Elected to the Senate in 1968, Packwood was best known as the leading Republican advocate of abortion rights — at a time when the position had bipartisan support — and was widely admired by women’s groups throughout the country until the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation into the allegations of sexual and official misconduct in 1993.
More than two dozen women, former employees and acquaintances, accused him of making unwanted or uninvited sexual advances.
The allegations remained the target of an ethics inquiry that widened to include other alleged acts of official misconduct. He resigned in September 1995, and went on to start a lucrative lobbying business in Washington.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who replaced Packwood in 1996, said that although he should be praised for his record on abortion rights and tax reform, how Packwood treated women overshadows it all.
“His horrible history as documented in his own diaries will forever overshadow that public record. Simply put, historians’ first line about Bob Packwood must include those women who he abused and assaulted for years and years,” Wyden said in a statement.
As chair and then ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Packwood was a master of cutting deals and forging compromises needed to pass tax legislation through Congress. He was most proud of the lead role he played in a sweeping tax reform of 1986 that lowered the top income tax bracket and eliminated many itemized deductions.
Over his career, he was described as a blunt, independent, outspoken politician who was a boat-rocker, loose cannon, skilled partisan, and — for most of his career — political survivor.
“I think they probably all ring true,” Packwood told the Associated Press in December 1992.
“I would like to think that I am nobody’s lackey. 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,” he said.
Packwood won his first Senate election at age 36, narrowly defeating Democratic Sen. Wayne L. Morse, an Oregon legend who had held the seat for 23 years. He quickly grabbed attention as a rising star in the GOP. By 1980, he was elected chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
But he lost the seat when the White House backed a competitor after Packwood publicly accused President Reagan of alienating women, African Americans and Jews.
Just two weeks after Packwood’s reelection in 1992, the Washington Post printed allegations from former female employees and acquaintances that the senator had subjected them to uninvited sexual advances.
The Senate Ethics Committee also investigated allegations that Packwood solicited jobs from lobbyists for his ex-wife, used his staff to try to threaten the female accusers into keeping quiet and obstructed the investigation by altering his personal diaries.
The Senate held two days of extraordinary debate in 1993 over whether Packwood should have to comply with an Ethics Committee subpoena for his diaries, in which he reportedly made entries relevant to the investigation. The Senate voted 94 to 6 to enforce the subpoena.
Packwood took the case to federal court and lost, ending when Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist refused the senator’s request for the high court to intercede.
Packwood launched his lobbying business, Sunrise Research Corp., in 1997. By 1999, the firm was grossing $1.5 million a year. His business slowed in later years, but he told a City Club of Portland audience in 2010 that he was still spending about half his time in Washington lobbying for a number of clients.
It was interesting work, Packwood told the audience, according to the Oregonian, but “it is not as much fun as being in the Senate.”
As Congress became increasingly partisan after his departure, Packwood continued to advocate a centrist tack and in a 2010 speech called for Oregon to create nonpartisan elections.
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