Texas Congressman Was 85 : George Mahon, Ex-House Power, Dies

Former U.S. Rep. George Herman Mahon, who represented Texas’ 19th Congressional District for 44 years and was chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee longer than any other congressman, has died at 85.

Officials at Shannon West Texas Memorial Hospital said the veteran lawmaker died Nov. 19 after being hospitalized for about a week. The hospital declined to release the cause of death, but a friend of Mahon told the local newspaper that he was admitted for knee surgery, became ill and died.

A Democrat, he served under eight presidents, beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and ending with Jimmy Carter. Lyndon B. Johnson was a close personal friend.

A strict Methodist who didn’t drink or smoke, he was appointed to the Appropriations Committee in 1949. In 1964, he was made its chairman and held the post 14 years.

Mahon, who had been living in Colorado City, Tex., represented the west Texas 19th district from 1934, when it was created out of 25 counties, until 1978, when he retired. He had been a young district attorney and recalled a few years ago that he never thought he’d be in Congress for more than four decades.

“In 1934, when I was first elected, I thought I’d like to serve at least two terms so as not to be considered a political accident,” he once said. “I’ve just played things as they came along.”