Former US Senator Jim Inhofe dies at 89

OKLAHOMA CITY — Former Sen. Jim Inhofe, a conservative firebrand known for his strong support of defense spending and denying that human activity is responsible for most climate change, has died. He was 89 years old.

Inhofe, a powerful figure in Oklahoma politics for more than six decades, died Tuesday morning after suffering a stroke during the Fourth of July holiday, his family said in a statement.

Inhofe, elected to a fifth term in the Senate in 2020, left office at the beginning of 2023.

Inhofe has frequently criticized the mainstream science that human activity has contributed to changes in the Earth’s climate, once calling it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against the American people.”

In February 2015, with temperatures below zero in the country’s capital, Inhofe threw a snowball into the Senate plenary. He threw it out before claiming that environmentalists focus attention on global warming as it cools. “It’s very, very cold outside. Very unseasonable,” said Inhofe.

As Oklahoma’s senior U.S. senator, Inhofe was a staunch supporter of the state’s five military installations and an outspoken supporter of congressional appropriations. The Army veteran and licensed pilot, who would fly solo to and from Washington, secured federal money to fund local road and bridge projects and criticized House Republicans who wanted a one-year moratorium on such pet projects in 2010.

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“Beating a brand doesn’t save a dime,” Inhofe told the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce that August. “It just means that, within the budget process, everything goes directly back to the bureaucracy.”

He was a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, who praised him for his “incredible support of our #MAGA agenda” while also endorsing the senator’s 2020 re-election bid. During the Trump administration, Inhofe served as chairman of the Committee on Senate Armed Services following the death of Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Inhofe gained national attention in March 2009 by introducing legislation that would have prevented detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay from being relocated “anywhere on American soil.”

Closer to home, Inhofe helped secure millions of dollars to clean up a former mining center in northeastern Oklahoma that spent decades on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list. In a massive takeover program, the federal government purchased homes and businesses in the 40-square-mile Tar Creek region, where children were consistently tested for dangerous levels of lead in their blood.

“This is an example of a government program created for a specific purpose and then disbanded after the work is completed. This is how the government should work,” Inhofe said in December 2010, when the project was almost completed.

In 2021, Inhofe defied some members of his party by voting to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, saying that to do otherwise would be a violation of his oath to support and defend the Constitution. He voted against convicting Trump in both impeachment trials.

Born James Mountain Inhofe on November 17, 1934, in Des Moines, Iowa, Inhofe grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tulsa in 1959. He served in the Army from 1956 to 1958, and was a businessman for three decades, serving as president of Quaker Life Insurance Co.

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His political career began in 1966, when he was elected state deputy. Two years later, he won a seat in the Oklahoma Senate, which he held during unsuccessful runs for governor in 1974 and the U.S. House in 1976. He then won three terms as mayor of Tulsa, beginning in 1978.

Inhofe won two terms in the U.S. House in the 1980s before throwing his hat in a tight race for U.S. Senate when longtime Sen. David Boren resigned in 1994 to become president of the University of Oklahoma. Inhofe defeated then-U.S. Rep. Dave McCurdy in a special election that year to serve the final two years of Boren’s term and was reelected five times.

Inhofe lived up to his reputation as a tough defender in his 2008 re-election bid against Democrat Andrew Rice, a 35-year-old state senator and former missionary. Inhofe claimed that Rice was “too liberal” for Oklahoma and ran television ads that critics said contained anti-gay connotations, including one that showed a wedding cake topped by two plastic bride and grooms and a photo of Rice as a young woman wearing a leather jacket.

Rice, who has two children with his wife and earned a master’s degree from Harvard University Divinity School, accused Inhofe of distorting his record and attacking his character.

Inhofe’s optimistic personality was also evident outside of politics. He was a commercial pilot and flight instructor with over 50 years of flying experience.

He made an emergency landing in Claremore in 1999 after his plane lost a propeller, an incident later attributed to an installation error. In 2006, his plane went out of control when landing in Tulsa; he and an aide escaped injury, although the plane was badly damaged.

In 2010, Inhofe landed his small plane on a closed runway at a rural South Texas airport while flying with others to a home he owned on South Padre Island. The track workers fought back and Inhofe agreed to complete a remedial training program rather than face possible legal action.

“I’m 75 years old, but I still fly planes upside down,” Inhofe said in August 2010. “I don’t know why, but I don’t feel pain anywhere and I don’t feel any different than I did five years ago.”

Inhofe leaves behind his wife, Kay, three children and several grandchildren. A son, Dr. Perry Dyson Inhofe II, died in November 2013 at age 51 when the twin-engine plane he was piloting crashed a few miles north of Tulsa International Airport.