Philip Hart

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Philip Aloysius Hart
United States Senator from Michigan
In office 1959–1976
Preceded by	Charles E. Potter
Succeeded by	Donald W. Riegle, Jr.
Born	December 10, 1912 Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Died	December 26, 1976 Washington D.C.
Political party	Democratic
Profession	Attorney

Philip Aloysius Hart (December 10, 1912–December 26, 1976) was a Democratic United States Senator from Michigan from 1959 until 1976. He was nicknamed the Conscience of the Senate.

He was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and attended Waldron Academy and parochial schools. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1934 and from the University of Michigan Law School in 1937. He was admitted to the Michigan bar in 1938 and practiced law in Detroit. During the Second World War, he served in the U.S. Army from 1941 until discharged in 1946 as a lieutenant colonel of Infantry. He was wounded during the D-Day assault on Utah Beach in Normandy, France.

After the war, he was the Michigan Corporation Securities Commissioner from 1949 until his resignation in 1951. He was the State director of the Office of Price Stablization, 1951-1952, and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, 1952-1953. He was legal advisor to the Governor of Michigan, 1953-1954, and Lieutenant Governor of Michigan, 1955-1958 under Soapy Williams.

He was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1958, and was reelected in 1964 and 1970. There had been a call from conservatives in Michigan to recall Hart due to his stand on gun control and bussing, with bumper stickers reading "Recall cures Hart attacks." The recall effort never got off the ground, and Hart remained in office. After deciding not to run for reelection to a fourth term in 1976, the Senate voted to name the new Congressional Building after him. It would have been the first federal government building named after someone still living. The vote was 99 to 0, with Hart abstaining. Just a few days later, though, he was dead. He died of cancer in 1976, a few days before his term would have expired and he would have retired. Donald W. Riegle, Jr., who had just been elected to the seat for the next term, was named to fill Hart's seat for the remaining days of the congressional session.

[edit] Honors

The third of the United States Senate Office Buildings, the Hart Senate Office Building, was officially dedicated and named for Senator Hart in 1987.

The Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center in Battle Creek, Michigan also bears his name, as does Detroit's Hart Plaza park and the Hart-Kennedy House, headquarters of the Michigan Democratic Party in Lansing. He is interred in St. Anne’s Catholic Cemetery on Mackinac Island.

[edit] References

• Philip Hart at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2008-01-25
• The Political Graveyard

[edit] Further reading

• O’Brien, Michael. Philip Hart: The Conscience of the Senate. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0870134074

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