Bob Packwood

Packwood is the great-grandson of William H. Packwood, the youngest member of the Oregon Constitutional Convention of 1857.

Packwood had his great-grandfather's political Bent From his early years.

During his undergraduate years, he participated in Young Republican activities and worked on political campaigns, including later Governor and US Senator Mark Hatfield's first run for the Oregon House of Representatives.

He received the Root-Tilden Scholarship to New York University's Law School, where he earned national awards in moot court competition and was elected student body president.

Robert William Packwood (born September 11, 1932) is an American retired lawyer and politician from Oregon and a member of the Republican Party.

Morse had been elected to the Senate as a Republican in 1944 and 1950, then switched parties due to his liberal views, and was easily reelected as a Democrat in 1956 and 1962.

Packwood was born in Portland, Oregon, graduated from Grant High School in 1950, and in 1954 graduated from Willamette University in Salem.

After graduating from the NYU Law School in 1957, he was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Portland.

In 1960, he was elected Chairman of the Multnomah County Republican Central Committee, thus becoming the youngest party chairman of a major metropolitan area in the country.

In 1962, he became the youngest member of the Oregon Legislature when he was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives after a campaign waged by what The Oregonian called "one of the most effective working organizations in many an election moon in Oregon."

Hundreds of volunteers went door-to-door distributing leaflets throughout the district and put up lawn signs that became "literally a geographical feature" of the district.

Because of the effectiveness of his own campaigns, Packwood was selected to organize a political action committee that recruited attractive Republican candidates for the Oregon House throughout the state, and trained them in "Packwood-style" campaigning methods.

He was a member of the Oregon House of Representatives from 1963 to 1968.

The success of his candidates was credited with the Republican takeover of the Oregon House, thus making Oregon the only state in the Union in which the Republicans were able to score a significant victory in 1964.

In 1965, he founded the Dorchester Conference, an annual political conclave on the Oregon coast that "pointedly ignored state leadership in the Grand Old Party" to bring Republican officeholders and citizens together to discuss current issues and pass resolutions taking stands on those issues.

Initially a forum for liberal politics, it has become an annual networking event for Oregon Republicans.

In 1968, Packwood was nominated to run for the U.S. Senate in Oregon as the Republican candidate against Democratic incumbent Wayne Morse.

Deregulation was another interest of Packwood's. In the late 1970s, he became a passionate supporter of trucking deregulation and a "persuasive spokesman" for reform.

He has been described as an "ardent" pro-Israel supporter.

He opposed a sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia under President Reagan.

In a White House meeting on November 15, 1973, he told Nixon that the public no longer believed him and no longer trusted the integrity of the administration.

Two years before the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court, he introduced the Senate's first abortion legalization bill, but he was unable to attract a cosponsor for it.

Packwood was reelected in 1974, 1980, 1986, and 1992.

Packwood's voting record was moderate.

He supported restrictions on gun owners and liberal civil rights legislation.

His pro-choice stance earned him the loyalty of many feminist groups and numerous awards including those from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (January 10, 1983) and the National Women's Political Caucus (October 23, 1985).

President Ronald Reagan had proposed the idea of tax reform in 1984, but Packwood's initial response was indifferent.

However, he played a leading role in fashioning a tax code that would raise business taxes by some $120 billion over five years and lower personal income taxes by roughly the same amount.

He was most noted for his role in the 1986 tax reform while he was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Packwood voted in favor of the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 (as well as to override President Reagan's veto).

Packwood differed with President Richard Nixon on some significant issues.

He voted against Nixon's Supreme Court nominees Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, as well as Nixon's proposals for the B-1 bomber, submarines capable of carrying the Trident missile and the supersonic transport (SST).

He became the first Senate Republican to support Nixon's impeachment, which was unsuccessful.

In 1987, Packwood crossed party lines to vote against the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, and he was one of only two Republicans to vote against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the court in 1991.

Both votes were based on the nominee's opposition to abortion rights.

He played a major role in the enactment of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area Act, sponsoring a bill which protected scenic Hells Canyon, the deepest river gorge in North America, by making it into a 652488 acre National Recreation Area on the borders of northeastern Oregon and western Idaho.

Environmentalists also praised his advocacy of solar energy, returnable bottles, and bike paths.

He resigned from the United States Senate, under threat of expulsion, in 1995 after allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault of women emerged.

The relatively unknown Packwood was given little chance, but after an 11th-hour debate with the incumbent before the City Club of Portland, which Packwood was generally considered to have won, and a statewide recount in which over 100,000 ballots were challenged by both parties, Packwood was declared the winner by 3,500 votes.

Packwood replaced Senator Ted Kennedy as the youngest senator.