Former Senate Ag chair Richard Lugar dies at 87

Former Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar was mostly known as a Republican foreign policy sage who led efforts to help the former Soviet states dismantle and secure much of their nuclear arsenal, but he also twice served as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee from 1995 to 2001 and briefly again in part of 2001. A soft-spoken and thoughtful former Rhodes Scholar, Lugar dominated Indiana politics during his 36 years in the U.S. Senate.

Lugar, whose reputation for working with Democrats cost him his final campaign, died April 28. He was 87. 

Lugar died at the Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute in Virginia from complications related to chronic inflammatory demylinating polyneuropathy, or CIPD, a rare neurological disorder, the Lugar Center in Washington said in a statement announcing his death. The statement said his wife, four sons, and their families were with him “throughout his short illness at the hospital.”

As chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Lugar built bipartisan support for the 1996 farm bill, which led to reforms such as ending 1930s-era federal production controls and improving the Conservation Reserve Program. He worked to initiate a biofuels research program to help increase U.S. utilization of ethanol and combustion fuels, and led initiatives to streamline the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reform the food stamp program, and preserve the federal school lunch program.

Former colleagues of Lugar offered words of tribute and condolences, including current Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-KS.

“Dick Lugar was a champion for Indiana and for agriculture,” Roberts said in a statement. “We worked together on many issues, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, farm bills and nutrition. He was always a person you wanted in your corner. Most important, he was my friend. My thoughts and prayers are with Charlene and his family and friends.”

Committee Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow, D-MI, said via Twitter, “Saddened by the passing of my friend and former colleague Richard Lugar. As ag committee chair and a farmer, he championed modern farm policy, renewable energy and feeding the hungry at home and abroad. He was a principled and honest statesmen—the kind envisioned by our Founders.”

Lugar served for decades on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, twice as chairman, where he helped steer arms reduction pacts for the presidential administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, supported an expansion of NATO and favored aid to Nicaragua’s Contra rebels.

Former Indiana Governor and current Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, who spent more than a decade as chief of staff to Lugar, said, “The world is safer from nuclear danger because of him. And so many of us, while falling far short of the standards he set, are vastly better people because of him.”

Lugar tried to translate his foreign policy expertise into a 1996 presidential run, where his slogan was “nuclear security and fiscal sanity.” But his campaign for the GOP nomination went badly from the start. His kickoff rally began just hours after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, and he struggled to build name recognition and support.

Obama frequently cited his work with Lugar during the 2008 presidential campaign as evidence of his bipartisanship and foreign policy experience. Lugar endorsed John McCain but didn’t distance himself from Obama, saying, “I’m pleased that we had the association that Sen. Obama described.”

That changed by the time of Lugar’s 2012 re-election campaign. His tea party-backed challenger, Richard Mourdock, maintained that, “Lugar has clearly lost his way on issues like our raising the debt limit, wasteful earmark spending and massive bailouts of private companies at taxpayer expense.”

Lugar’s campaign ads highlighted his votes against Obama’s “bankrupting” budgets, and the senator said his relationship with Obama was “overhyped.”

But those attacks on his conservatism—combined with voter wariness about his age and long Washington tenure and questions about him not owning a home in Indiana since the late 1970s—led to Lugar’s first defeat since 1974, as Mourdock grabbed 60 percent of the GOP primary vote.

In conceding defeat, Lugar said he knew some of his positions had been considered “heretical” by some, including his opposition to a ban on earmarks and support for immigration reform.

“I believe that they were the right votes for the country, and I stand by them without regrets,” he said.

After Lugar’s defeat, Sen. Sam Nunn, the Democratic senator with whom he worked on nuclear disarmament, suggested that many people may have misinterpreted Lugar’s positions as they accused him of being too liberal.

Born April 4, 1932, in Indianapolis, Lugar became an Eagle Scout and graduated at the top of his classes at both Indianapolis Shortridge High School and at Denison University in Ohio. At Denison, he played cello and was the student body co-president with his future wife, Charlene. They married in 1956, and he became a Navy officer, spending time as an intelligence aide for the chief of naval operations. He moved back to Indianapolis in 1960 to help run the family’s food machinery manufacturing business.

Lugar’s political career began with his election to the Indianapolis school board in the early 1960s. It was there that he caught the eye of city GOP leaders, who encouraged him to run for mayor in 1967.

He served two terms at the city’s helm, leading the unification of Indianapolis and its suburban communities in Marion County, which solidified the city’s tax base and added so many Republican voters that Democrats weren’t able to win the mayor’s office again for more than 30 years. He was referred to as “Richard Nixon’s favorite mayor” for backing the move of federal programs to local governments. He also started efforts to revive the city’s downtown with construction of Market Square Arena, which in turn helped keep the Indiana Pacers in the NBA following the 1976 merger with the ABA, and spurred Indianapolis’ development as a sports city.

He first ran for Senate in 1974, narrowly losing to Sen. Birch Bayh in a Democratic landslide after the Watergate scandal. He ran again two years later and easily unseated three-term Democratic Sen. Vance Hartke, launching a 35-year Capitol Hill career that made him Indiana’s longest-serving senator.

Senior Field Editor Larry Dreiling contributed to this report.