Bob Dole, Giant of the Senate and Former Presidential Candidate, Dies

Bob Dole, a longtime leader in the Republican party who served in the US Senate for 27 years, passed away in his sleep last night at age 98, his family announced.

"It is with heavy hearts we announce that Senator Robert Joseph Dole died early this morning in his sleep," the foundation said. "At his death, at age 98, he had served the United States of America faithfully for 79 years."

Dole, who was described as “a giant of the Senate,” was a powerful committee chairman in the early 1980s and then a GOP party leader from 1985 until he resigned 11 years later, in 1996, to concentrate on his unsuccessful presidential campaign against former President Bill Clinton, who was then a popular incumbent.

Dole, who was born in Russell, Kan., overcame life-threatening injuries while fighting in a combat division in Italy during World War II, where he suffered grievous wounds that kept him in military hospitals for years after the war.

Despite losing the use of his right arm, Dole graduated from law school and went on to became a public prosecutor, state legislator, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator.

Dole first came to Washington, DC, in 1960, as a member of the House of Representatives, where he served until 1968, when Dole, who strongly supported former President Richard Nixon, won the first of five Senate elections.

Twenty years before running against Clinton for president, Dole ran as the vice-presidential candidate under Gerald Ford, who lost to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

After retiring from the Senate in 1996 to focus on his presidential campaign, Dole remained active in Washington, where he served on presidential commissions and supported the political career of his wife, Elizabeth Dole, who served as North Carolina’s first female senator from 2003 to 2009.

In 2016, Dole endorsed the GOP presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.

"When you think about the fact that Bob Dole was elected to the House of Representatives the same year that John F. Kennedy was elected president, and that he went on, for example, in [1994] to be one of the most important factors in the defeat of Bill Clinton's health insurance plan, and then run for president in 1996, you realize that, in a sense, the last four decades of the 20th century were Bob Dole territory," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University.

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