Former Consultant Richard L. Hanna, a average Republican from upstate New York who was so disenchanted with Donald J. Trump in 2016 that he broke a
Former Consultant Richard L. Hanna, a average Republican from upstate New York who was so disenchanted with Donald J. Trump in 2016 that he broke along with his occasion and endorsed the Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, died on Sunday at a hospital close to Utica, N.Y. He was 69.
His household mentioned in a press release that the trigger was most cancers.
Mr. Hanna, who had constructed a profitable development enterprise earlier than his election to Congress in 2010, represented a sprawling district that stretched from Lake Ontario to the Pennsylvania border.
A quiet backbencher with an impartial streak, he stood out for his average views at a time when the Republican Celebration had lurched to the appropriate. He supported abortion rights, same-sex marriage and the Equal Rights Modification. He opposed slicing federal funding for Deliberate Parenthood.
After simply three phrases in Congress, he introduced in December 2015 that he planned to retire, saying he needed to spend extra time along with his spouse and younger kids.
“When all is claimed and completed, if you happen to haven’t raised your loved ones effectively, you haven’t completed something in life,” he mentioned on the time. “I’ve obtained good youngsters and an ideal spouse, and so they merely don’t need me to do that anymore.”
His spouse, Kim; a son, Emerson; and a daughter, Grace, survive him. He lived within the Oneida County hamlet of Barneveld, about 14 miles north of Utica.
In March 2016, just a few months after he introduced that he wouldn’t search re-election, Mr. Hanna mentioned that if Mr. Trump grew to become his occasion’s presidential nominee, he wouldn’t assist him. “I would like somebody to be president that my kids can look as much as,” he informed Syracuse.com.
That August, after Mr. Trump had certainly change into the nominee, Mr. Hanna additional laid out his critique in an opinion column on Syracuse.com, saying Mr. Trump was “unfit to serve our occasion and can’t lead this nation.”
“I don’t anticipate perfection, however I do require greater than the embodiment of not less than a brief record of the seven lethal sins,” he mentioned.
Mr. Hanna was particularly infuriated that Mr. Trump had attacked Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Muslim mother and father of a soldier who was killed in Iraq.
“I used to be shocked by the callousness of his feedback,” Mr. Hanna mentioned. “I feel Trump is a nationwide embarrassment. Is he actually the man you need to have the nuclear codes?”
Richard Louis Hanna was born in Utica on Jan. 25, 1951. He labored development jobs to place himself by Reed Faculty in Portland, Ore., from which he graduated in 1976 with a level in economics. After his father died, he helped take care of his mom and sisters.
He went on to start out his personal firm, Hanna Development, which specialised in excavation, taking up tasks all through New York. He grew to become a millionaire earlier than he ran for Congress.
In his first race, in 2010, he mentioned he was working as a result of he thought he may add “some stability and thought and a little bit bit extra deliberate motion and fewer demagoguery.”
He mentioned he had been discouraged watching President George W. Bush “with the wild spending and the 2 wars and simply this hard-right social agenda.”
He defeated Consultant Michael Arcuri, a Democrat from Utica, in a rematch of their 2008 race, which Mr. Arcuri had gained.
In Congress, he sought to bridge the divide between the events. He was most pleased with his efforts in 2012 to resume the Violence Towards Girls Act.
Nonetheless, he lamented what his occasion had change into.
“I by no means left the Republican Celebration that I initially joined,” he informed Syracuse.com in 2016. “I can solely say that they’ve left me. It’s actually gone to the far extremes on social points. They’ve change into judgmental and sanctimonious and authoritarian on their method to folks.”
When he endorsed Mrs. Clinton, he mentioned that he didn’t agree together with her on many points and that she had a whole lot of baggage.
“However she stands and has stood for causes larger than herself for a lifetime,” he mentioned. “That issues.”