Fred Harris, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma, presidential hopeful and populist who championed Democratic Party reforms in the turbulent 1960s, died Saturday. He was 94. Harris’ wife, Margaret Elliston, confirmed his death to The Associated Press. It was not immediately clear where he died, but he had lived in New Mexico since 1976 and was a resident of Corrales at the time of his death. “Fred Harris passed peacefully early this morning of natural causes. He was 94. He was a wonderful and beloved man. His memory is a blessing,” Elliston said in a text message. Harris served eight years in the Senate, first winning in 1964 to fill a vacancy, and made unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1976. It fell to Harris, as chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1969 and 1970, to help heal the party’s wounds from the tumultuous national convention in 1968 when protesters and police clashed in Chicago. Get the latest breaking news as it happens. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy . He ushered in rule changes that led to more women and minorities as convention delegates and in leadership positions. “I think it’s worked wonderfully,” Harris recalled in 2004, when he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. “It’s made the selection much more legitimate and democratic.” Former Oklahoma Sen. Fred Harris stands outside his Corrales, N.M., home, Friday, July 23, 2004. Credit: AP/Jake Schoellkopf “The Democratic Party was not democratic, and many of the delegations were pretty much boss-controlled or -dominated. And in the South, there was terrible discrimination against African Americans,” he said. Harris ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, quitting after poor showings in early contests, including a fourth-place win in New Hampshire. The more moderate Jimmy Carter went on to win the presidency. Harris moved to New Mexico that year and became a political science professor at the University of New Mexico. He wrote and edited more than a dozen books, mostly on politics and Congress. In 1999 he broadened his writings with a mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma. Throughout his political career, Harris was a leading liberal voice for civil rights and anti-poverty programs to help minorities and the disadvantaged. Sen. Fred Harris of Oklahoma at a Democratic party commission meeting on March 1, 1969, in Washington. Credit: AP “Democrats everywhere will remember Fred for his unparalleled integrity and as a pioneer for instituting core progressive values of equity and opportunity for prosperity as core tenets of our party,” the Democratic Party of New Mexico said in a statement. Along with his first wife, LaDonna, a Comanche, he also was active in Native American issues. “I’ve always called myself a populist or progressive,” Harris said in a 1998 interview. “I’m against concentrated power. I don’t like the power of money in politics. I think we ought to have programs for the middle class and working class.” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham praised his work for their shared state and the nation. “In addition to being a highly accomplished politician and professor, he was a decent, honorable man who treated everyone with warmth, generosity, and good humor,” she said in a statement. “Sen. Harris was a lesson in leadership that public officials would be wise to emulate now and forever.” Harris was a member of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the so-called Kerner Commission, appointed by then-President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the urban riots of the late 1960s. The commission’s groundbreaking report in 1968 declared, “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” Thirty years later, Harris co-wrote a report that concluded the commission’s “prophecy has come to pass.” “The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and minorities are suffering disproportionately,” said the report by Harris and Lynn A. Curtis, president of the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, which continued the work of the commission. Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said Harris rose to prominence in Congress as a “fiery populist.” “That resonates with people ... the notion of the average person against the elite,” Ornstein said. “Fred Harris had a real ability to articulate those concerns, particularly of the downtrodden.” In 1968, Harris served as co-chairman of the presidential campaign of then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He and others pressed Humphrey to use the convention to break with Johnson on the Vietnam War. But Humphrey waited to do so until late in the campaign, and narrowly lost to Republican Richard Nixon. “That was the worst year of my life, ’68. We had Dr. Martin Luther King killed. We had my Senate seatmate Robert Kennedy killed and then we had this terrible convention,” Harris said in 1996. “I left the convention — because of the terrible disorders and the way they had been handled and the failure to adopt a new peace platform — really downhearted.” After assuming the Democratic Party leadership post, Harris appointed commissions that recommended reforms in the procedures for selecting delegates and presidential nominees. While lauding the greater openness and diversity, he said there had been a side effect: “It’s much to the good. But the one result of it is that conventions today are ratifying conventions. So it’s hard to make them interesting.” “My own thought is they ought to be shortened to a couple of days. But they are still worth having, I think, as a way to adopt a platform, as a kind of pep rally, as a way to get people together in a kind of coalition-building,” he said. Harris was born Nov. 13, 1930, in a two-room farmhouse near Walters, in southwestern Oklahoma, about 15 miles from the Texas line. The home had no electricity, indoor toilet or running water. At age 5 he was working on the farm and received 10 cents a day to drive a horse in circles to supply power for a hay bailer. He worked part-time as a janitor and printer’s assistant to help for his education at University of Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1952, majoring in political science and history. He received a law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1954, and then moved to Lawton to practice. In 1956, he won election to the Oklahoma state Senate and served for eight years. In 1964, he launched his career in national politics in the race to replace Sen. Robert S. Kerr, who died in January 1963. Harris won the Democratic nomination in a runoff election against J. Howard Edmondson, who left the governorship to fill Kerr’s vacancy until the next election. In the general election, Harris defeated an Oklahoma sports legend — Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, who had coached OU football for 17 years. Harris won a six-year term in 1966 but left the Senate in 1972 when there were doubts that he, as a left-leaning Democrat, could win reelection. Harris married his high school sweetheart, LaDonna Vita Crawford, in 1949, and had three children, Kathryn, Byron and Laura. After the couple divorced, Harris married Margaret Elliston in 1983. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available Saturday.Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is leading the charge along with other states to confirm President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Pam Bondi as the next U.S. Attorney General. In a press release Tuesday, Moody’s office said she is leading the multistate effort to urge the U.S. Senate to confirm Bondi, who was Florida’s attorney general for eight years: Moody, 27 attorneys general, and two attorneys general-elect are showcasing Bondi’s track record in the Sunshine State. Moody said: Pam Bondi is a proven leader and fighter for justice. After her work over nearly two decades of prosecuting murderers and standing up for crime victims, she became Florida’s first female Attorney General and took the fight straight to the drug smugglers, human traffickers and serial rapists. Attorney General Bondi shut down pill mills, put human traffickers behind bars and fought to eliminate the backlog of untested sexual assault kits — to bring predators to justice and some sense of closure to victims of rape. Her stellar record as an attorney general, state prosecutor and fighter for justice has prepared her to serve as the nation’s 87th U.S. Attorney General and we look forward to a swift, successful confirmation. Attorneys general from the following states are siding with Moody in the effort: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Trump nominated Bondi after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) dropped out due to an ethics probe alleging sexual misconduct, Breitbart News reported November 21. Trump said, “For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans — Not anymore. Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again.” A few days before the presidential election that Trump won in a landslide after beating Vice President Kamala Harris (D), Bondi shared a photo of herself and Trump: Following Trump’s nomination announcement, political commentator Jason Johnson said his choice of Bondi was a “dangerous and effective pick,” Breitbart News reported.
None
NoneNone
UC SAN DIEGO 73, JAMES MADISON 67
Elon Musk causes uproar for backing Germany’s far-right party ahead of elections
HOUSTON (AP) — An elaborate parody appears to be behind an effort to resurrect Enron, the Houston-based energy company that exemplified the worst in American corporate fraud and greed after it went bankrupt in 2001. If its return is comedic, some former employees who lost everything in Enron’s collapse aren’t laughing. “It’s a pretty sick joke and it disparages the people that did work there. And why would you want to even bring it back up again?” said former Enron employee Diana Peters, who represented workers in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings. Here’s what to know about the history of Enron and the purported effort to bring it back. Once the nation’s seventh-largest company, Enron filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 2, 2001, after years of accounting tricks could no longer hide billions of dollars in debt or make failing ventures appear profitable. The energy company's collapse put more than 5,000 people out of work and wiped out more than $2 billion in employee pensions. Its aftershocks were felt throughout the energy sector. Twenty-four Enron executives , including former CEO Jeffrey Skilling , were convicted for their roles in the fraud. Enron founder Ken Lay’s convictions were vacated after he died of heart disease following his 2006 trial. On Monday — the 23rd anniversary of the bankruptcy filing — a company representing itself as Enron announced in a news release it was relaunching as a “company dedicated to solving the global energy crisis.” It also posted a video on social media, advertised on at least one Houston billboard and a took out a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle In the minute-long video full of generic corporate jargon, the company talks about “growth” and “rebirth.” It ends with the words, “We’re back. Can we talk?” In an email, company spokesperson Will Chabot said the new Enron was not doing any interviews yet, but "We’ll have more to share soon.” Signs point to the comeback being a joke. In the “terms of use and conditions of sale” on the company's website, it says “the information on the website about Enron is First Amendment protected parody, represents performance art, and is for entertainment purposes only.” Documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office show College Company, an Arkansas-based LLC, owns the Enron trademark. The co-founder of College Company is Connor Gaydos, who helped create a joke conspiracy theory claiming all birds are actually government surveillance drones. Peters said she and some other former employees are upset and think the relaunch was “in poor taste.” “If it’s a joke, it’s rude, extremely rude. And I hope that they realize it and apologize to all of the Enron employees,” Peters said. Peters, 74, said she is still working in information technology because “I lost everything in Enron, and so my Social Security doesn’t always take care of things I need done.” “Enron’s downfall taught us critical lessons about corporate ethics, accountability, and the consequences of unchecked ambition. Enron’s legacy was the employees in the trenches. Leave Enron buried,” she said. But Sherron Watkins, Enron’s former vice president of corporate development and the main whistleblower who helped uncover the scandal, said she didn’t have a problem with the joke because comedy “usually helps us focus on an uncomfortable historical event that we’d rather ignore.” “I think we use prior scandals to try to teach new generations what can go wrong with big companies,” said Watkins, who still speaks at colleges and conferences about the Enron scandal. This story was corrected to fix the spelling of Ken Lay’s first name, which had been misspelled “Key.” Follow Juan A. Lozano on X at https://x.com/juanlozano70