Patrick Hillings; Congressman
Former Rep. Patrick J. Hillings, who replaced Richard Nixon in Congress and later became one of his advisers, died Wednesday in Rancho Mirage. He was 71.
Hillings, who suffered from cancer, served four terms in the House of Representatives in the seat Nixon vacated when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1950. Hillings gave up the seat in 1958 to run for state attorney general, a race he lost.
He also served as an adviser to Nixon, and directed Ronald Reagan’s Florida presidential campaign in 1979.
Known in Congress as an ardent anti-Communist, he also played a role in a 1951 subcommittee investigation of major league baseball. He called the organized sport a monopoly because it had not then expanded west of the Mississippi. By 1957, the year the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers announced their moves to California, he said the National League had proven itself not to be monopoly-minded.
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