Bob Packwood, Oregon senator and abortion rights advocate, dies at 93

Bob Packwood, the Oregon Republican who spent years as one of the Senate’s most visible abortion-rights advocates before a sexual harassment scandal destroyed his standing, died Saturday at 93 in California. His life traced a sharp arc through modern Republican politics, from maverick policy player to a symbol of how Washington’s response to misconduct claims changed in the 1990s.

Packwood was first elected to the Oregon legislature in 1962 and served in the Oregon House from 1963 to 1969 before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 1968. He served from 1969 to 1995, building a reputation as a force on tax and social policy and as a senator willing to break with his party on abortion rights.

That break made him a favorite of women’s-rights organizations and a rare Republican ally to groups such as Planned Parenthood and the National Women’s Political Caucus. After the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, Packwood opposed President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork, citing Bork’s views on abortion rights. For years, Packwood’s stance gave Oregon Republicans a national profile that was more moderate than the party’s emerging conservative base.

His legislative record extended beyond the abortion debate. Packwood played a major role in the 1986 tax reform bill, a bipartisan overhaul that the Oregon Encyclopedia said would raise business taxes by about $120 billion over five years while lowering personal income taxes by roughly the same amount. That made him a central figure in one of the most consequential economic debates of the Reagan era, when Washington was trying to broaden the tax base while preserving growth.

The scandal that ended his career began in November 1992, when The Washington Post started publishing allegations that Packwood had sexually harassed women. The Senate Ethics Committee opened a preliminary inquiry on December 1, 1992, and expanded it on February 4, 1993, to examine whether Packwood had tried to intimidate or discredit accusers and misused official staff in that effort. Committee investigators interviewed, deposed or obtained statements from at least 210 witnesses and reviewed at least 9,600 pages of documents.

By the time the committee unanimously recommended expulsion in September 1995, it said Packwood had made unwanted advances toward more than a dozen women and had obstructed the investigation. Senate rules would have required 67 votes to expel him. Facing likely removal, Packwood announced on September 7, 1995, that it was his duty to resign, and he left the Senate on October 1, 1995, becoming the first senator forced out under such pressure in more than a century.

The end of Packwood’s career forced the women’s movement to confront a deeper contradiction: a politician celebrated for defending abortion rights had also been accused by more than two dozen women of sexual misconduct. His fall became part of the broader shift in Senate culture, where personal misconduct could no longer be separated as easily from public power, and where accountability in Washington began to carry a new political cost.