Thirty Years in Congress
Passman was first elected to the 80th United States Congress in 1946, when he unseated two-term incumbent Charles E. McKenzie in the Democratic primary. In the nationally Republican year, numerous returning veterans, including John F. Kennedy in Massachusetts and Richard M. Nixon in California, were chosen for congressional duty.
Passman held his Fifth Congressional District seat with minimal or no opposition for thirty years. Not once did a Republican candidate oppose Passman in his fifteen terms in office; the GOP at the time was a mostly moribund institution in Louisiana.
As a representative, Passman concentrated on national defense and veterans' issues as well as his scrutiny of foreign aid programs. He supported the American military in the Vietnam War under both Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. He took the "My country, right or wrong" mantra first voiced in the Barbary pirates war by Stephen Decatur.
Democratic colleague Joe D. Waggonner, Jr., of Plain Dealing, said that no one in Congress knew more about foreign aid than Passman. According to Waggonner (1918–2007), Passman was "tight with a buck and tight with taxes. He had good fundamental instincts ... He had a sense of compassion for people who were downtrodden. He was worried about the welfare of older people. He was a pretty sensitive man." Passman obtained $900,000 in federal funding to convert the Francis Towers Hotel in Monroe to a senior citizens home.
Passman was active in channelizing the Ouachita River for barge traffic.
He made financial contributions to leprosy colonies in Hong Kong and in Carville, Louisiana. "He saw those poor people, and it just worked on his heartstrings. He was a tough businessman, but a lot of things touched him," said Paul Fink.
Read more about this topic: Otto Passman
Famous quotes containing the words years and/or congress:
“On a late-winter evening in 1983, while driving through fog along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Abnaki Indians of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Such is the labor which the American Congress exists to protect,—honest, manly toil,—honest as the day is long,—that makes his bread taste sweet, and keeps society sweet,—which all men respect and have consecrated; one of the sacred band, doing the needful but irksome drudgery.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)