Sen. Quentin Burdick, who followed his father to Congress and over three decades earned a pork-barrel reputation for his unabashed pursuit of federal funds, died early Tuesday at age 84.
The North Dakota Democrat, who had battled heart disease in recent months, died of heart failure at 3:05 a.m., his office said. He had been in St. Luke's Hospital since suffering a mild heart attack 10 days ago, it said.Although he won his first Senate election in 1960, he did not become a committee chairman until 1986 when he took over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He was also chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture.
At the time of his death, he had served in the Senate longer than all but two other men - Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.
Democratic Gov. George Sinner has authority to appoint an interim replacement, but state law specifies that voters will choose who would fill out the remaining two years of Burdick's term.
Since there's not enough time to fill the vacancy via the general election, Sinner will have to call a special election, which must be held within 90 days.
On the Senate floor Monday, Majority Leader George Mitchell said of Burdick, "His accomplishments were many, his integrity unimpeachable, his character high. He worked very hard right until the end."
Burdick's father, Usher Lloyd Burdick, was a congressman from 1935 to 1945 and again from 1949 to 1959. The elder Burdick had been a Republican, but he supported his Democrat son's campaign to replace him in Congress when he decided to retire in 1958. When Quentin Burdick was elected that year, he was the first Democrat that North Dakota had ever sent to Congress.
Burdick's efforts on behalf of his state brought criticism, especially a $500,000 federal grant he obtained in late 1990 to help build a German-Russian museum in Strasburg, the birthplace of bandleader Lawrence Welk.
The Welk project was called a prime example of pork-barrel projects, and Congress voted in the spring of 1991 to withdraw the grant. Burdick himself was labeled by critics as the "King of Pork," because of the federal dollars he helped bring to North Dakota.