Former longtime Utah Senator Orrin Hatch dies at the age of 88

Source: The Hill | April 23, 2022 | Caroline Vakil

Retired Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), former president pro tempore of the Senate and the longest serving Republican senator in history, died at the age of 88 years old on Saturday in Salt Lake City, his foundation announced.

The cause of death was not immediately clear from the foundation’s announcement.

“Senator Orrin G. Hatch personified the American Dream,” Matt Sandgren, executive director of the Hatch Foundation, said in a statement.

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Hatch served in the Senate for 42 years, representing Utah in the upper chamber from 1977 until 2019, including a stint as president pro tempore of the Senate between 2015 and 2019.

He chaired several key Senate committees, including the Judiciary Committee, Finance Committee and what is now known as the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Over 750 pieces of legislation either sponsored or cosponsored by Hatch were signed into law, and he “held the distinction of having passed more legislation into law than any other Senator alive,” according to his foundation.

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In his farewell speech in the Senate in 2018, Hatch gave a somber warning to his colleagues that the upper chamber was “in crisis.”

“The last several years I have seen the abandonment of regular order … Gridlock is the new norm. And like the humidity here, partisanship permeates everything we do,” Hatch said at the time.

“All the evidence points to an unsettling truth: The Senate, as an institution, is in crisis, or at least may be in crisis,” he added.

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  • Consistent April 23, 2022 at 10:26 pm #53264

    Consistent April 23, 2022 at 10:33 pm #53265

    EVERYDAY April 24, 2022 at 2:34 pm #53267

    Mr. Hatch is being trashed on social media as being a Trump supporter and I don’t think he really was. He tried to get along, but I suspect he wasn’t happy with Trump as president and that, plus age and maybe not so good health, caused him to retire.

    Hatch was an old school Republican. Conservative on most issues, particularly social ones. But he also was willing to reach across the aisle and try to work out compromises — something we don’t see much of today. I didn’t know he was friends with Ted Kennedy. Just like Ronald Reagan who was close to Tip O’Neil, that friendship helped to get things done — maybe not everything both sdes wanted, but at least something.

    Rest in peace, Mr. Hatch.

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