Turkey’s ’best friend’ in US Senate dead at 92

WASHINGTON – Daily News with wires
Monday, June 28, 2010

Vocal Turkey supporter Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving member of the U.S. Congress, died at the age of 92 after almost six decades in office, U.S. television reported early Monday.

The reports quoted Byrd’s spokesman as saying the senator had died peacefully at approximately 3 a.m. at Inova Fairfax Hospital. No specific cause of death was revealed.

The senator, a Democrat, was admitted to a Washington-area hospital late last week and doctors had described his condition as “seriously ill,” his office said Sunday.

Byrd went to the hospital suffering from what was believed to be heat exhaustion and severe dehydration as a result of the extreme temperatures in Washington, where it reached 37 degrees Celsius over the weekend, his aides said.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a fellow West Virginian in the Senate, said it was his “greatest privilege” to serve with Byrd. “I looked up to him, I fought next to him and I am deeply saddened that he is gone,” Rockefeller said.

Armenia filibuster

Byrd had served in Congress since Jan. 3, 1953. In November, he broke the record for congressional service that had been established by Democrat Carl Hayden of Arizona, who served in the House and Senate from 1912 to 1969.

During his long career, Byrd threw his full support behind foreign issues regarding Turkey, leading a successful three-day filibuster in 1990 against a resolution brought by Sen. Bob Dole to recognize Armenian genocide claims.

A filibuster refers to any delaying or obstructive tactics used to prevent a measure from being brought to a vote. The most common form of filibuster occurs when a senator attempts to delay or entirely prevent a vote on a bill by extending the debate on the measure, but other dilatory tactics exist. The rules permit a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless “three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn” (usually 60 out of 100 senators) brings debate to a close by invoking cloture.

The Senate refused by a 49-49 vote to break Byrd’s filibuster against Sen. Dole’s resolution.

An enthusiastic supporter of U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2008 White House bid, Byrd had expressed regret for his past membership in the Ku Klux Klan and his participation in the 83-day filibuster to delay the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed racial segregation. He later apologized for both actions, saying intolerance has no place in America.

Serving first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate, Byrd is the only person ever elected to nine full Senate terms.

In comportment and style, he often seemed a throwback to the courtly 19th century. He could recite poetry, quote the Bible, discuss the Constitutional Convention and detail the Peloponnesian Wars – and frequently did in Senate debates. Yet there was nothing courtly about his exercise of power.

“Bob is a living encyclopedia, and legislative graveyards are filled with the bones of those who underestimated him,” former House Speaker Jim Wright, a Democrat from Texas, once said in remarks Byrd later displayed in his office.

Democrats’ No. 2

In 1971, Byrd ousted Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts as the Democrats’ second in command. He was elected majority leader in 1976 and held the post until his party lost control of the Senate four years later. He remained his party’s leader through six years in the minority and then spent another two years as majority leader.

Byrd stepped aside as majority leader in 1989 when Democrats sought a more contemporary spokesman. His consolation prize was the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee, with control over almost limitless federal spending.

Within two years, he surpassed his five-year goal of making sure more than $1 billion in federal funds was sent back to West Virginia, money used to build highways, bridges, buildings and other facilities, some named after him.

In 2006 vote, Byrd won an unprecedented ninth term in the Senate with 64 percent of the vote, just months after surpassing South Carolinian Strom Thurmond’s record as the congressional body’s longest-serving member.

But Byrd also seemed to slow after the death of Erma, his wife of almost 69 years, in 2006. Frail and wistful, he used two canes to walk and experienced several health scares in recent years, including an extended hospitalization last year that prompted speculation of his looming retirement, which never materialized.

By 2009, aides were bringing him to and from the Senate floor in a wheelchair. In November, he surrendered his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee.

Byrd’s lodestar was protecting the Constitution; he frequently pulled out a dog-eared copy of it. Unlike other prominent Senate Democrats who voted to authorize the war in Iraq, Byrd stood firm in opposition. “The people are becoming more and more aware that we were hoodwinked, that the leaders of this country misrepresented or exaggerated the necessity for invading Iraq,” he said.

Byrd was an early supporter of the Vietnam War, and his 14-hour, 13-minute filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act remains one of the longest ever. His views gradually moderated, particularly on economic issues. His love of Senate traditions inspired him to write a four-volume history of the chamber.