RALEIGH -- – Former U.S. Rep. Charlie Rose, who used his
seat on the House Agriculture Committee to help farmers and protect the tobacco
crops that brought wealth to farmers in his North Carolina district, has died,
his wife said Tuesday.
Rose, 73, died of Parkinson’s disease at a hospital near
their northern Alabama home, said his wife, Stacye Hefner. Rose was diagnosed
with the degenerative brain disorder last year, Hefner said.
Rose, a Democrat, spent 24 years in Washington representing
the 7th Congressional District, which included his hometown of Fayetteville and
much of North Carolina’s southeastern region. Elected in 1972, the attorney and
former prosecutor became one of the most powerful lawmakers in Congress and
used his seat on the House Agriculture Committee to back the interests of
farmers, especially tobacco growers back home.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/09/05/2317418/ex-us-rep-charlie-rose-helped.html#storylink=cpy
Rose’s successor in the 7th District was his former intern,
Democrat Mike McIntyre, who is seeking re-election this November.
As chairman in the early 1990s of the House Administration
Committee – which oversees office space, security, and lawmaker expenses – Rose
was nicknamed the “mayor of the Capitol” and was said to be looking for an
opening to run for speaker of the House.
But the Washington dealmaker found himself in the House
minority for the first time in his career when Republicans led by soon-to-be
House Speaker Newt Gingrich won broad gains in the 1994 elections.
Rose said the election resulted in a Congress full of “ideologues
unwilling to compromise,” adding that they “over-promised or narrowly dedicated
themselves to solving one or two issues.”
John Merritt, a longtime friend of Rose and his former chief
of staff, said that Rose had a well-deserved reputation as one North Carolina’s
most skilled politicians.
“A lot of people come and go and you wonder if they were
ever really there,” Merritt said. “With Charlie there was no question.”
Merritt said Rose’s fascination with technology, while
lesser-known than his contribution to agriculture issues, is just as important
to his legacy.
Rose pushed the House of Representatives to televise its
activities on C-SPAN, helped bring computers and fiber optics to Congress and
was “behind just about every tech advancement Congress made while he was
there,” Merritt said.
His interest in technology spilled into other areas of his
life. Rose worked as a photographer at The News & Observer while he was an
undergraduate student at Davidson College, and Merritt said he was the first to
get anything new that came out, often before manufacturers even put new
products on the shelves.
“In the mid-1970s, he even had an electric car,” Merritt
said. “He would drive it all over Washington. It rode like an ox cart and
always got looks, but he was on the edge of emerging technology.”
Rose announced his retirement in 1996 and started lobbying
Washington with his third wife, the daughter of Rep. Bill Hefner, D-N.C.
“They had served together for 24 years. They were really,
really best buddies,” Stacye Hefner said.
Rose and his wife moved to Albertville, Ala., to be near her
mother after Bill Hefner died in 2009. The Roses largely gave up their lobbying
work with the move.
Tony Rand, a former state senator and law partner of Rose,
said he was one of the last of the great Southern Democrats of that era.
“He was great at working with people and getting things
done. He loved the political process,” Rand said. “In his day, he was as good
of a politician as I ever saw up close.”
Original Article Here
0 comments:
Post a Comment