Orrin Hatch: Conservative of deep contradictions — and kindness

In the late 1970s I started an unlikely professional friendship of sorts with Orrin Hatch, a freshman Senator from Utah. We couldn’t have been more different. He was a right-wing conservative politician; I was journalist more than a little skeptical of those views. He was a Mormon teetotaler; I was a heavy-drinking Episcopalian.

Unlike many others in his ideological circles, Hatch loved to engage, to proselytize — politics, not religion. Interviews could get emphatic but were never uncivil. Even back then I sensed a flexibility that this ultra-conservative came to display over the following four decades.

When he passed away at 88 last week, praise — more than perfunctory — flowed from both sides of the political aisle, including from President Biden, who served with Hatch in the Senate for more than 30 years.

If there is a heaven, that great liberal lion, Ted Kennedy, is roaring a welcome to his odd couple legislative partner.

To be sure, there were many contradictions. In his first campaign, Hatch assailed the incumbent for his long service: 18 years is too long, Hatch insisted. Then he stayed for 42. He was a co-architect of some of the most important health care measures, also a champion of dubious dietary supplements. 

Hatch was raised in Pittsburgh, in a labor family; his Dad was a business agent for the Lathers Union, and he was a good friend of the late Teamsters chief Jackie Presser. Yet Hatch was a harsh critic of unions, with only a 15 percent pro-labor voting record.

The Almanac of American Politics once wrote that Hatch “was shaped by two impulses that sometimes are at odds with the other: a strong conservative philosophy and a sense of responsibility to pass meaningful legislation.”

In 2000 Hatch stepped outside the legislative arena to seek the Republican presidential nomination. It was a disaster. He finished sixth in the initial Iowa caucuses, with less than 1,000 votes, running behind John McCain, who didn’t even enter the contest, and fringe figures Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes. But Hatch didn’t pout, bouncing back to his natural habitat, Congress.

Hatch was a down-the-line conservative on fiscal, social and judicial matters. He praised all the Republican Supreme Court nominees and harshly — unfairly — attacked Anita Hill when she testified against Clarence Thomas. However, he also was a friend of the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

During his long service, Hatch chaired the Health and the Judiciary and the Finance committees and was president pro tem of the Senate, third in line for the presidency.  

Some of his most notable achievements were with Ted Kennedy, despite their profound differences in background, politics and personal behavior. They established a bond. Among their major measures were more assistance for AIDS sufferers and a landmark 1997 Children’s Health Insurance Program bill, a Federal-state program that has provided support and insurance and better outcomes for tens of millions of children. 

During the negotiations over the CHIP bill, Hatch complained to Kennedy that his church wasn’t helping him get a recorder for religious songs he’d written. Kennedy immediately contacted his nephew, a Hollywood agent, to get the job done. The songs were recorded, the legislation was crafted and passed. I’ve written this — first related to me by Kennedy — several times, as it is one of my favorite stories of the human element in the legislative process… or the way it was in better times. 

When the Massachusetts lawmaker died in 2009, Hatch was one of the eulogists at the John F. Kennedy Library the night before the funeral service.

The straight-laced Hatch — he did favor elegant Turnbull & Asser blue shirts with white collars and cuffs — could be funny. He gave two memorable self-deprecating humorous speeches to the Gridiron Club, an organization of leading Washington journalists. In one he cited the challenges of campaigning in Mormon-dominated Utah: “You think it’s easy raising money from people who are all sober.” In another later, he noted a speaker the previous year was Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger: “I’m surprised you’d invite two sex symbols in a row.” 

He also had a kind side. We have a son with disabilities. Every time I saw Orrin Hatch, he’d ask, “How’s that boy doing?”

Al Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then The International New York Times and Bloomberg View. He hosts Politics War Room with James Carville. Follow him on Twitter @AlHuntDC.