Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., entered the U.S. Senate as a 34-year-old in 1975, becoming the youngest senator in Vermont history. Now, 45 years later, Leahy is the fifth longest-serving senator and is four votes away from third all-time in votes cast.
On Tuesday, the dean of the Senate turned 80.
In an interview Monday with VTDigger, Leahy reflected on his 45 years in the upper chamber — including discussing the aftermath of the 1983 bombing of the Senate and telling former President Ronald Reagan to show the Soviet Union he was more than a star in Western movies.
While Leahy, who has just finished long weeks negotiating the $2 trillion COVID-19 disaster relief package, has retired to his home away from Vermont, in McLean, Virginia, he said he is not ready to consider retiring from the U.S. Senate.
Speaking about the coronavirus package, which he made sure included about $2 billion for Vermont, Leahy said that he weighs his future plans against what he is able to accomplish for the state with his seniority and level of influence.
“We would have probably gotten a third the amount of money we’re getting, and that would not be enough for all the economic damage that is being done,” Leahy said.
But Leahy added that he did think about retirement in 2019 when he took a vacation with his wife, Marcelle.
Out scuba diving, Leahy, said, down 75 feet or so, he thought to himself, “this is kind of fun,” and contemplated possibly taking more time to enjoy the hobby and the rest of his life away from the Senate chamber.
For now, with his term ending in 2022, it is no more than a thought, as he says he continues to focus on legislation and not on what his personal future holds.
“I make up my mind mid-year before the election, I walk around our fields and woods and go hiking and talk about it and make the decisions,” he said.
On the question of why he thinks Vermont has not yet sent a woman to Congress, he said that the most important thing is for more women to run for higher office. Looking back over his time in Washington, D.C., he added that if former Gov. Madeleine Kunin had decided to run for Congress, she would have won.
“There are a lot of women who I wish would have run,” Leahy said. “The one who would have really had an excellent chance, I believe, would have been Gov. Kunin.”
Leahy has been in office during the tenure of eight different presidents — five Republicans and three Democrats.
In that time, Leahy said, some of the work he is most proud of includes the landmark Organic Foods Production Act in the 1990 Farm Bill, the creation of the Leahy War Victims Fund — which has supported the safe removal of millions of landmines — and his role in negotiating the release of Alan Gross with the Cuban government.
Leahy says former President Gerald Ford — who was in the White House when he was first elected to the Senate — is the “most down to earth” executive he has served with.
Leahy first met former President Jimmy Carter in the early 1970s — before running for the Senate — in New Hampshire. Leahy said that Carter urged him to run for Congress, despite his young age.
He also recalled a meeting he and others had with former President Ronald Reagan in which he told the president he should travel to the Soviet Union. Reagan asked the Vermont senator why he should do such a thing.
“I said, ‘Well, they think you’re just an actor in cowboy movies,’” to which Leahy said he remembered the president’s entourage started to bristle.
Leahy added that he took Reagan’s favorite photograph from the president’s second inauguration.
When Leahy was thrown from a horse and broke his back, Reagan phoned him to ask how he was doing.
“I’ve been involuntarily separated from a horse many times,” Leahy said he remembers Reagan saying.
Over the years, since first coming to D.C. in the mid-1970s, Leahy said the culture of the Senate has changed dramatically.
“It has been a difficult time,” he said of the current state of affairs. “You had far more bipartisanship back then and that is the difference.”
As an example, Leahy pointed to the events before and after Nov. 7 1983, when a bomb exploded just outside the Senate chamber. Before the blast, with Republicans in the majority, both parties had agreed to adjourn until the next morning and put off debate on a hotly contested piece of legislation. Hours later the bomb went off in the mostly deserted area.
“The stained glass windows in each of the rooms had been shattered, they were pulling pieces of glass out of cement walls with pliers,” Leahy said. “A number of people would have been killed, maimed, and injured had we stayed in session but we were able to leave because everybody could take everybody’s word.”
“The next morning all 100 senators were on the floor — you could smell the gunpowder still,” he added.
“Now it gets too difficult,” Leahy said.
