Barney Frank obit

Barney Frank, longtime Jewish congressman from Massachusetts, dies at 86

Frank served in Congress for 32 years until his retirement in 2013.

 He was not on the list.

Barney Frank, the Jewish Democrat who advocated for LGBTQ rights in Congress and who coauthored the last major finance reform bill, has died at 86.

The former Massachusetts representative died in hospice care at home in Ogunquit, Maine, where he lived with his husband, Jim Ready, close family friends told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Frank served in Congress for 32 years as a progressive until his retirement in 2013. Among his signature accomplishments were co-authoring the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010 in response to the banking crisis and pushing for the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the U.S. military.

In fighting for gay rights, Frank was motivated by his own experience as a gay man. When he came out in 1987, he was the first member of Congress to choose to do so. He became the first member of Congress to enter a same-sex marriage in 2012.

In his last weeks, Frank made an effort to share his warnings for the Democratic Party at a time of change. To JTA, he said party leaders should join with the progressive wing in pressing to cut off aid to Israel until Israeli leaders change their policies — a decision that he had been hard to reach given the liberal Zionism with which he was raised in New Jersey in the years surrounding Israel’s creation.

“I guess I held on longer than I should have to, ‘Well, we can work with them,’” Frank said about the current Israeli government. “But it’s become clear to me, particularly due to what they’re allowing to happen in the West Bank, that it is important morally and politically to repudiate the policy of supporting Israel’s military activity.”

He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts from 1981 to 2013. A Democrat, Frank served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011 and was a leading co-sponsor of the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act. Frank, a resident of Newton, Massachusetts, was considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States during his time in Congress.

Born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, Frank graduated from Bayonne High School, Harvard College, and Harvard Law School. He worked as a political aide before winning election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1972. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 with 52 percent of the vote. He was re-elected every term thereafter by wide margins. In 1987, he publicly came out as gay, becoming the first member of Congress to do so voluntarily. From 2003 until his retirement, Frank was the leading Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, and he served as committee chairman when his party held a House majority from 2007 to 2011. In July 2012, he married his long-time partner, James Ready, becoming the first member of Congress to marry someone of the same sex while in office. Frank did not seek re-election in 2012, and was succeeded by fellow Democrat Joe Kennedy III.

Prior to his time in the House of Representatives, Frank served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1973 to 1981.

Frank was born on March 31, 1940, in Bayonne, New Jersey, one of four children of Elsie (née Golush) and Samuel Frank. His family was Jewish, and his grandparents had emigrated from Poland and Russia. Frank's father ran a truck stop in Jersey City—a place Frank described as "totally corrupt"—and when Frank was 6 or 7, his father served a year in prison for refusing to testify to a grand jury against Frank's uncle. Frank was educated at Bayonne High School, before matriculating at Harvard College, where he resided in Matthews Hall his first year and then in Kirkland House and Winthrop House. He graduated in 1962.

Frank's undergraduate studies were interrupted by the death of his father, and Frank took a year off to help resolve the family's affairs prior to his graduation. In 1964, he was a volunteer in Mississippi during Freedom Summer.

He taught undergraduates at Harvard while studying for a PhD in government, but left in 1968 before completing the degree, to become Boston mayor Kevin White's Chief Assistant, a position he held for three years. He then served for a year as Administrative Assistant to Congressman Michael J. Harrington. In 1977, Frank graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was once a student of Henry Kissinger, while serving as a Massachusetts state representative.

In 1980, Frank ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 4th congressional district, hoping to succeed Reverend Robert Drinan, who had left Congress, following a call by Pope John Paul II for priests to withdraw from political positions. In the Democratic primary held on September 16, 1980, Frank won 52% of the vote in a four-candidate field.  As the Democratic nominee, he faced Republican Richard A. Jones in the general election and won narrowly, 52–48%.

For his first term, Frank represented a district in the western and southern suburbs of Boston, anchored by Brookline and his hometown of Newton. However, in 1982, redistricting forced him to run against Republican Margaret Heckler, who represented a district centered on the South Coast, including Fall River and New Bedford. Although the newly configured district retained Frank's district number—the 4th—it was geographically more Heckler's district. Frank focused on Heckler's initial support for President Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, and won with 60% of the vote.

n 2010, Frank ran for his 16th term. Public opinion polling showed him facing his first credible challenge since defeating Heckler in 1982. His opponent was Republican Sean Bielat, a U.S. Marine veteran and businessman. In mid-September, an internal poll showed Frank leading 48–38%. In late October, he loaned his campaign $200,000. In early October, The Cook Political Report changed its assessment of the district from "solid Democratic" to "likely Democratic"—meaning that while Frank was favored, a victory by Bielat could not be entirely ruled out. While Frank had a 3-to-1 advantage in terms of cash on hand, Bielat outraised him in September.[36] On October 25, a survey by The Boston Globe showed Frank leading 46–33%. Frank won re-election to his 16th term, 54–43%

In 1985, Frank was still publicly closeted. That year he hired Steve Gobie, a male prostitute, for sex, and they became "more friends than sexual partners."[40] Frank housed Gobie and hired him with personal funds as an aide, housekeeper and driver and paid for his attorney and court-ordered psychiatrist.

In 1987, Frank evicted Gobie after being advised by his landlord that Gobie kept escorting despite the support and was doing so in the residence. Later that year, Gobie's friends persuaded him that he had a gay male version of Mayflower Madam, a TV movie about an escort service. In 1989, Gobie tried to initiate a bidding war for the story between WUSA-TV (Channel 9), The Washington Times, and The Washington Post. He then gave the story to The Washington Times for nothing, in hopes of getting a book contract.

Amid calls for an investigation, Frank asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate his relationship "in order to ensure that the public record is clear." The Committee found no evidence that Frank had known of or been involved in the alleged illegal activity and dismissed all of Gobie's more scandalous claims; they recommended a reprimand for Frank using his congressional office to fix 33 of Gobie's parking tickets and for misstatements of fact in a memorandum relating to Gobie's criminal probation record. The House voted 408–18 to reprimand Frank.

In 2003, a documentary film about Barney Frank entitled Let's Get Frank was released. The documentary recounted Barney Frank's struggle coming out in public and political life as a prominent gay man, the height of which was his reprimand following the Gobie scandal, and documented Frank's dedicated defense of U.S. President Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial in January and February 1999. At the time of its release, Let's Get Frank received mixed reviews, some celebrating the film, as Ken Eisner did in Variety, and others struggling with director Bart Everly's distinct style and the dual telling of Frank's own personal story along with that of the Clinton Impeachment Trial through Frank's eyes, as Ed Halter did in The Village Voice.