This weekend brought the sad news that former senator Orrin G. Hatch passed away in Salt Lake City at age 88. Elected in 1976, Hatch served through 2018. The Utah Republican’s seven terms eventually elevated him to president pro tempore of the Senate, a post reserved for the most senior member of that chamber’s majority party. This put Hatch three heartbeats away from the presidency.
Hatch’s least momentous achievement might have been that he was among the first major conservative figures to believe in me. From freshman through junior years at Georgetown University, I interned for Senator Hatch. After class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons between fall 1982 and spring 1985, I took a bus to Dupont Circle and then the Metro to Union Station, alighting and then hiking the short climb up Capitol Hill to our space in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
Comments