Fred R. Harris, a maverick Oklahoma Democrat who served eight years within the Senate and who misplaced a race for his social gathering’s 1976 presidential nomination in a populist marketing campaign that challenged politics as regular and proposed radical modifications for America, died on Saturday in Albuquerque. He was 94.
His demise, in a hospital, was confirmed by his spouse, Margaret Elliston. He lived in New Mexico.
In a meteoric rise and fall, Mr. Harris was a state legislator who went to Washington in 1964 to fill the unexpired time period of Senator Robert S. Kerr, who had died of a coronary heart assault. He supported American involvement within the Vietnam Warfare, was a favourite of President Lyndon B. Johnson, whose Nice Society applications he backed, and practically grew to become Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey’s operating mate for the White Home in 1968.
When he left the Senate, he flirted with a run for president in 1972, seemingly destined for higher issues.
However in a tumultuous, divisive period, because the nation confronted struggle, the civil rights motion, city riots and the assassination of leaders, Mr. Harris underwent a dramatic passage from moderate-conservative to liberal concepts, after which to a “new populism” addressing points that had been nearly taboo: racial equality, class battle, the exploitation of employees, and a nationwide redistribution of financial and political energy.
He reversed his stand on the Vietnam Warfare, calling for troop reductions after which a withdrawal from navy operations in Southeast Asia.
