William F. Clinger Jr., a nine-term Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who vigorously pursued two investigations into wrongdoing by the Clint
William F. Clinger Jr., a nine-term Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who vigorously pursued two investigations into wrongdoing by the Clinton administration and 20 years later stated that Donald J. Trump, his social gathering’s nominee, was unqualified to be president, died on Could 28 in Naples, Fla. He was 92.
His loss of life, in a hospital, was confirmed by his daughter Eleanore (Bijou) Miller. Mr. Clinger had lived in Florida for a number of years since shifting from Virginia.
Mr. Clinger, the one millionaire member of the Home of Representatives when he was first elected in 1978, was a comparatively average Republican, a former appointee of President Gerald R. Ford as chief counsel of the Commerce Division’s Financial Improvement Administration and a proponent of public works.
His signature laws, although, was a plank from the Contract With America, the conservative legislative agenda efficiently superior by Speaker Newt Gingrich and his fellow Republicans in the course of the 1994 midterm elections, wherein they seized management of the Home for the primary time in 40 years.
The following yr, as chairman of the Committee on Authorities Reform and Oversight, Mr. Clinger was instrumental in enacting laws that restricted Congress from imposing mandates on states and localities to spend cash on packages that the federal authorities required however had didn’t finance.
Mr. Clinger additionally shepherded laws to streamline the federal government’s buying of products and providers.
He launched two investigations of White Home overreach. One, christened “Travelgate” within the information media, examined allegations that the White Home beneath President Invoice Clinton had fired personnel in its Journey Workplace and changed them with Clinton cronies. The committee accused the administration of stonewalling the investigation, and an impartial prosecutor discovered proof that whereas First Girl Hillary Clinton had performed a job within the firings, there was inadequate proof that she had misled investigators.
The impartial prosecutor additionally exonerated Mr. and Mrs. Clinton after an inquiry into whether or not they had improperly accessed F.B.I. recordsdata on Republican opponents (inevitably known as “Filegate”).
Mr. Clinger was so in style that he ran for re-election a number of occasions and not using a Democratic opponent. He didn’t search a 10th time period in 1996.
In October 2016, weeks earlier than the overall election, he was considered one of about 30 former Republican legislators who declared in a public letter that Mr. Trump was “manifestly unqualified to be president.”
William Floyd Clinger Jr. was born on April 4, 1929, in Warren, Pa., within the northwestern a part of the state. William Sr. was a banker and owned oil wells. His mom, Lella Could (Hunter) Clinger, was a homemaker.
After graduating from The Hill Faculty in Pottstown, Pa., he earned a bachelor’s diploma at Johns Hopkins College in 1951, served 4 years within the Navy and was discharged as a lieutenant. He labored as an promoting govt for the New Course of Firm, a mail-order clothes enterprise in Warren, earlier than enrolling within the College of Virginia Faculty of Legislation, the place he obtained a level in 1965.
After he retired from Congress, Mr. Clinger taught at Johns Hopkins College, was the chairman of the Chautauqua Establishment’s board of trustees and was a co-chairman of the Institute for Consultant Authorities, a nonprofit, bipartisan Washington group that promotes democracy internationally.
He married Julia Whitla, who died in 2016. Along with his daughter Eleanore, he’s survived by one other daughter, Julia Boulton Clinger; two sons, James and William F. Clinger III; and 7 grandchildren.