Government officials and politicians

Government officials and politicians

Spencer M. Williams, 85; federal judge in San Francisco, appointed by President Nixon, who advocated for judges’ interests (Jan. 3)

Houston I. Flournoy, 78; GOP assemblyman and controller in California who lost the 1974 governor’s race to Jerry Brown (Jan. 7)

Albert H. Bowker, 88; chancellor of UC Berkeley who was a stabilizing force on campus during the student unrest of the 1960s (Jan. 20)

Richard Darman, 64; White House budget director who helped persuade President George H.W. Bush to renege on his “no new taxes” pledge (Jan. 25)

Robert M. Ball, 93; tireless Social Security advocate who was its commissioner under three presidents (Jan. 29)

Earl L. Butz, 98; Agriculture secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford who was ousted for telling a racist joke (Feb. 2)

Tom Lantos, 80; Democratic U.S. representative from Burlingame, Calif., who was the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress (Feb. 11)

Evan Mecham, 83; firebrand GOP governor of Arizona who was impeached in 1988 after 15 months in office (Feb. 21)

William F. Buckley Jr., 82; author and conservative commentator who founded the National Review (Feb. 27)

Charles A. Gillespie Jr., 72; career diplomat who opened the first American Embassy in Grenada and later served as an envoy to Colombia and Chile (March 7)

Howard W. Metzenbaum, 90; Democratic U.S. senator from Ohio and self-made millionaire who fought big business in Washington (March 12)

Hal Riney, 75; San Francisco advertising executive who created the “morning in America” campaign for President Reagan (March 24)

William G. Hyland, 79; deputy national security advisor to President Ford and editor of Foreign Affairs magazine (March 25)

Joe Shell, 89; state assemblyman from Los Angeles whose 1962 challenge to Richard Nixon for the GOP gubernatorial nomination showed the emerging strength of the right wing (April 7)

Robert T. Hartmann, 91; key aide and speechwriter for President Ford who served as Washington Bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times (April 11)

Hale Champion, 85; senior member of Democratic Gov. Pat Brown’s administration who helped craft major public programs in California in the 1960s (April 23)

William H. Stewart, 86; surgeon general who led anti-smoking crusades and encouraged warnings on cigarette packs (April 23)

DeVan Shumway, 77; spokesman for the Committee to Reelect the President and staunch defender of President Nixon (April 23)

Lucius Battle, 89; career diplomat who served in the Truman, Kennedy and Johnson administrations (May 13)

Lionel Van Deerlin, 93; Democratic U.S. representative for the southern part of San Diego County (May 17)

Mike Gotch, 60; Democratic state assemblyman and city councilman from San Diego (May 18)

Hamilton Jordan, 63; key political aide to President Carter who became his White House chief of staff, the youngest in history (May 20)

George B. Hartzog Jr., 88; director of the National Park Service who led an unprecedented expansion of the nation’s parkland (June 27)

Robert C. Seamans Jr., 89; leading U.S. scientist-administrator during the space race of the 1960s and secretary of the Air Force during the Vietnam War (June 28)

Douglas Dollarhide, 85; elected Compton’s first black mayor in 1969 (June 28)

Robert V. Phillips, 91; general manager and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power whose plan to ration electricity helped the city endure the early-1970s oil embargo (June 28)

Jesse Helms, 86; Republican senator from North Carolina who for half a century infuriated liberals with his race-baiting campaign tactics and maddened presidents of both parties with his use of senatorial privilege (July 4)

Roy M. Huffington, 90; Houston oilman who helped develop Indonesia’s oil and gas fields and served as ambassador to Austria during George H. W. Bush’s administration (July 11)

Tony Snow, 53; conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President George W. Bush’s press secretary (July 12)

Patricia Buckley Bozell, 81; matriarch of a prominent conservative family who helped start Triumph, an opinion journal of Roman Catholic orthodoxy (July 12)

Charles Z. Wick, 90; long-serving director of the United States Information Agency under President Reagan (July 20)

Clay “Tom” Whitehead, 69; telecommunications policy advisor under President Nixon who helped cable TV flourish by bringing competition to the domestic satellite market (July 23)

Julius Richmond, 91; pediatrician who helped create Project Head Start and later, as surgeon general, issued a 1979 report on the health risks of smoking that led to more informative warning labels on cigarette packs (July 27)

Anne Armstrong, 80; U.S. ambassador to Britain in the Ford administration (July 30)

James E. Ludlam, 93; a founder of healthcare law and a principal author of the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 (Aug. 12)

Stephanie Tubbs Jones, 58; Democrat who was the first black woman to represent Ohio in the U.S. House (Aug. 20)

John Sanford Todd, 89; Lakewood city attorney who created the so-called Lakewood Plan for cities to contract all services and not go broke (Aug. 30)

Calvin L. Beale, 85; Agriculture Department demographer who was among the first to recognize the transformation of America’s rural landscape (Sept. 2)

Charles A. O’Brien, 83; Democratic California deputy attorney general who narrowly lost the 1970 race for state attorney general to Republican Evelle Younger (Sept. 3)

Peter Camejo, 68; Green Party candidate in three California governor’s races and Ralph Nader’s running mate in the 2004 presidential election (Sept. 13)

Johnny Hayes, 67; prominent Democratic fundraiser who managed finances for Al Gore’s two runs for the presidency (Sept. 20)

Ronald N. Kornblum, 74; nationally recognized expert on chokehold deaths who served six years as Los Angeles County coroner (Sept. 23)

Doris “Dodo” Meyer, 83; San Fernando Valley’s link to City Hall as a key aide under Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley (Sept. 27)

Paul G. Rogers, 87; congressman known as “Mr. Health” for his work on environmental and healthcare legislation during 24 years as a Democratic U.S. representative from Florida (Oct. 13)

Cecil Underwood, 86; West Virginia Republican who was the state’s youngest governor ever when he was elected in 1956 and was its oldest governor ever when he won a second term 40 years later (Nov. 24)

Ethel Bradley, 89; widow of Los Angeles’ first black mayor, Tom Bradley (Nov. 24)

William “Mo” Marumoto, 73; White House aide to President Nixon who grew up in a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans (Nov. 25)

Verne Orr, 92; California’s finance director under Gov. Ronald Reagan and secretary of the Air Force under President Reagan (Nov. 27)

Raymond F. Lederer, 70; Democratic U.S. representative from Pennsylvania who resigned and served 10 months in prison for Abscam bribes (Dec. 1)

Beatriz Valdez, 69; first woman to serve as registrar-recorder of Los Angeles County (Dec. 5)

W. Mark Felt, 95; the former FBI official who as the anonymous source “Deep Throat” helped guide the Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the Watergate scandal (Dec. 18)

Paul Weyrich, 66; the conservative thinker who coined the phrase “moral majority,” founded the Heritage Foundation and became an intellectual leader of the U.S. religious right (Dec. 18)