Orrin Hatch, longest-serving Republican in Senate history, dies

Former Utah senator was ‘surrounded by family’ when he passed, statement says

Orrin Hatch, former senator from Utah (The Associated Press)

Orrin Hatch, the longest serving Republican senator in US history who championed the Americans with Disabilities Act, died on Saturday at the age of 88.

The former Utah senator “passed away at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 23, 2022 in Salt Lake City, Utah, surrounded by family,” according to a statement from the Hatch Foundation, which he founded in 2019 upon retiring from the chamber. His seat is now occupied by senator Mitt Romney.

A cause of death was not noted in the statement, which continued: “Hatch’s legacy continues through the work of the Hatch Foundation and the lives of the countless people he impacted over many decades of public service.”

Mr Hatch was a staunch conservative who won admiration among some on the left with his work to pass landmark legislation mandating protections and infrastructure to support Americans with disabilities through a major bipartisan legislative victory in 1990 that decades later in his career he still called his greatest achievement.

He attracted as many foes on the left as allies, however, with his vocal opposition to abortion, which he proposed allowing states to ban entirely via constitutional amendment. Mr Hatch was an ally of Donald Trump during his four years in the presidency and was eulogised as a “mentor” by Donald Trump Jr on Twitter; during Mr Trump’s first year in office, he worked with his party to pass a tax cut along party lines that the Congressional Budget Office would later blame for ballooning the federal budget deficit.

More importantly, I’ll never forget him as the one GOP senator who voluntarily showed up and sat through my Russia Russia Russia inquisition simply as a show of support for what he too new to be nonsense. Thank you again sir! R.I.P.

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 24, 2022

While serving on the Judiciary Committee he was also involved in the contentious confirmation hearing for now-Justice Clarence Thomas, who faced a sexual harassment allegation from Anita Hill, a Yale-educated law professor at Brandeis University. Mr Hatch defended the nominee by suggesting she had taken some details of her account from the novel, “The Exorcist”.

He declined to run for reelection in 2018 after just over four decades of service in the Senate and endorsed Mr Romney, his successor.

In a statement late Saturday evening Mr Romney called his fellow Utahn “a man of vision and unparalleled legislative accomplishment” and “a lion of the Senate”.