WASHINGTON (Reuters)-WASHINGTON (Reuters)- Democratic U.S. Representative Alcee Hastings died on Tuesday at the age of 84, according to his office, further reducing the party’s majority in the lower chamber of Congress.
His office did not give the cause of death details. Hastings reported in January 2019 that pancreatic cancer had been diagnosed and treated.
“My dear friend Alcee Hastings passes me heartbreak,” Florida fellow democrats Ted Deutch said in a statement. “Speaking for the quiet, unheard voices. Alcee spoke. He never supported a fight for his representatives and for anyone else that needed to stand up for it.”
Hastings, who has been Florida’s first African-American Congressman since the post-Civil War era, served his 15th term in the U.S. House of Representatives in a Florida district now comprising areas such as Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and the Okeechobee Lake area, his website said. In 1992, he was elected for the first time.
According to the Florida State Department, he won his seat most recently with 78.7% of the votes.
James McGovern, Chairman of the House Rules Committee, said in a statement: ‘I have been sitting side by side in the committee for many years and watched him take up false arguments and lift up the truth with one sentence that he alone can pass. “I have lost a friend, a giant has lost this Congress and a champion has lost those who go undiscovered all too often. “
Hastings was a civil rights defender and activist before he was elected to Congress.
Alcee Hastings – Short overview
Hastings was born in 1936 and attended a segregated high school, the son of parents who were domestic workers. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that he talked about how his parents, grandparents, and grandparents couldn’t vote.
He was appointed as a judge of the federal court in 1979. However, two years later, Hastings was charged with conspiring and judicial obstruction based on the website of the Senate, for asking for a 150,000 dollar bribe to reduce the sentences of two mob-linked felons convicted in his court.
Though acquitted, Hastings was prosecuted and removed by the U.S. 1989 Senate. The future elected official was not disqualified from holding the position.
According to a tally from the House press, his death has left a sixth vacancy in the House of Représentants, which Democrats now have 218 seats under control.
A further restriction of the majority of the Democrats would complicate the party’s legislative agenda even further.
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