Howard M. Metzenbaum, Who Battled Big Business as Ohio Senator, Dies at 90
Howard M. Metzenbaum, who for nearly two decades as a Democratic senator from Ohio fought conservatives and big business with such effectiveness and ferocity that he became known as “the last angry liberal,” died Wednesday at his home in Aventura, Fla. He was 90.
His daughter Shelley H. Metzenbaum confirmed the death.
Mr. Metzenbaum came from poverty to accumulate a fortune in the parking-lot business, but he made a political career of battling for the poor and the middle class. His style was stubborn, bombastic and often self-righteous — so grating that more than one colleague compared it to fingernails scraping across a blackboard.
But Mr. Metzenbaum’s success in passing social legislation on issues like workers rights and adoption policy, in blocking pork-barrel excess and tax loopholes, and in inventing new ways to use the filibuster — long the tool of Southern segregationists — were unquestioned.
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His daughter Shelley H. Metzenbaum confirmed the death.
Mr. Metzenbaum came from poverty to accumulate a fortune in the parking-lot business, but he made a political career of battling for the poor and the middle class. His style was stubborn, bombastic and often self-righteous — so grating that more than one colleague compared it to fingernails scraping across a blackboard.
But Mr. Metzenbaum’s success in passing social legislation on issues like workers rights and adoption policy, in blocking pork-barrel excess and tax loopholes, and in inventing new ways to use the filibuster — long the tool of Southern segregationists — were unquestioned.