Former Minnesota Republican Sen. David Durenberger, a Republican critic of the GOP after his political career, died Tuesday at age 88.
Durenberger’s health had declined in recent months, said longtime spokesman Tom Horner. Horner told The Associated Press that Durenberger died of natural causes early Tuesday morning. He was at home in St. Paul surrounded by his family.
Durenberger, a lawyer and former captain in the US Army Reserve, won a seat in the US Senate in 1978. He served three terms and championed health care reforms. He pushed ideas to expand Medicare benefits, protect the rights of people with disabilities, and promote gender equity.
In the year He was unanimously censured by the Senate in 1990 over a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into payments for books and federal reimbursements to residents of a Minneapolis condominium. In the year In 1995, Durenberger pleaded guilty to five felony charges related to the condominium payments.
“If there is dirt on the seal of the United States Senate or on the North Star, as we like to call our state, I will do my best to restore both to shine,” Durenberger told his Senate colleagues. His blame.
In 1994, he decided not to run for re-election. After leaving politics, he worked on several initiatives focused on health care policy. As Chair of the National Health Policy Institute at St. Thomas Opus College of Business, he has addressed systemic health care issues.
As the Republican Party shifted toward fiscal conservatism and focused on slashing government programs, Durenberger became a critic. In the year In 2005, he told a Minnesota political podcast that Democrats were “better equipped to carry the day” on health care policy, though he said at the time that he would not be a Democrat.
In the year He supported Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden against Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. And in the year In 2018, he co-authored a book with political reporter Lori Sturdevant titled “When Republicans Go Progressive.” He lamented the near-disappearance of the GOP wing, where lawmakers prided themselves on bipartisanship and wanted to help vulnerable people.
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