Richard L. Hanna

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Richard L. Hanna (2011)

Richard Louis Hanna (born January 25, 1951 in Utica , New York , † March 15, 2020 in Oneida County , New York) was an American politician ( Republican Party ). From 2011 to 2017 he represented part of Upstate New York in the United States House of Representatives .

Family, education and work

Richard Louis Hanna was of Lebanese descent and the nephew of the mayor of his hometown Utica , Edward A. Hanna. He attended Whitesboro High School in Marcy and then studied economics and political science at Reed College in Portland ( Oregon ) until 1976 . He supported his mother and sisters after his father died and financed his studies through construction work. Back in New York State, he started a housing construction company, Hanna Construction , which he ran for decades and made it a large corporation with assignments across the state. He was one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Hanna was married and had a daughter and a son; the family lived in Barneveld . He died on March 15, 2020, aged 69, surrounded by his family at a cancer .

Political career

In 2008 Hanna ran for the first time for the US House of Representatives, but was narrowly defeated in the November 2008 election in the 24th  Congressional electoral district of New York state to the Democratic mandate holder Mike Arcuri , who won the constituency for the first time in 2006 after decades of Republican dominance.

In the November 2010 election , Hanna ran again against Arcuri and was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC for the 24th district . There he succeeded Arcuris on January 3, 2011. He represented a rather rural district in the central north of Upstate New York between Lake Ontario and the Pennsylvania border with the city of Utica. In the 2012 election , he prevailed with 61 to 39 percent of the vote against the Democrat Dan Lamb.

After a restructuring of the electoral districts in 2013, he represented the geographically largely corresponding 22nd district of his state. Because of his moderate voting behavior, the much more conservative state member Claudia Tenney ran against him in the party primary in 2014 , but Hanna was able to prevail with 16,000 to 14,000 votes and was confirmed in the general election in November 2014 without a democratic opponent. In December 2015, Hanna announced that she would not run again in the 2016 election after Tenney said he would challenge him again. His parliamentary term ended with the meeting of Congress on January 3, 2017. He was succeeded by Claudia Tenney.

In Congress, he was a member of the Education and Labor , Transport and Infrastructure, and Small Business Committees and a total of five sub-committees.

Positions

Within the party, he is a member of both the conservative Republican Study Committee and the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership ; overall he was counted to the moderate wing of his faction. For example, he was one of only six Republican Congressmen who did not make the commitment Grover Norquist called for never to vote for tax increases, and he was one of two Republican House members who campaigned for the recognition of same-sex partnerships in the United States . In 2014 he was one of the few Republicans who voted against a delay in Obama's health care reform and against a committee of inquiry into the Benghazi attack , which he criticized as being politically motivated. Hanna stood up against most of his party for the right of women to abortion ( Pro-Choice ) and for the Equal Rights Amendment . In 2012 he was an initiator of the bipartisan legislation against domestic violence ( Violence Against Women Act ). He repeatedly warned that his party was becoming too intolerant and extreme and silencing moderates like himself.

In August 2016, Hanna became the first Republican Congressman to announce that she would vote for the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton , in the 2016 presidential election. Hanna justified this step with the fact that the Republican candidate Donald Trump was "deeply insulting and narcissistic" and as a person not suitable for the office of president. The decisive factor for Hanna was that Trump had sharply attacked the Muslim parents of the US soldier Humayun Khan who had fallen in Iraq and who had recently appeared at the Democratic National Convention .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Honoring Lebanon on its 70th Independence Day. Anna's speech in Congress, November 15, 2013.
  2. ^ A b c John Gizzi: GOP's Retiring Richard Hanna Leaves Open Seat. In: Newsmax , December 23, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b c Mark Weiner: Former Rep. Richard Hanna, GOP moderate from Upstate NY, dies at 69. In: Syracuse.com , March 16, 2020.
  4. ^ Mark Weiner: 7 who may run for retiring Rep. Richard Hanna's seat in Congress. In: Syracuse.com , December 21, 2015.
  5. ^ Richard Hanna: Rep. Richard Hanna letter: We should all be done with Donald Trump (commentary). In: Syracuse-Post Standard , August 2, 2016.
  6. ^ Nick Gass: Republican Rep. Richard Hanna will vote for Clinton. In: Politico , August 2, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Hanna, Richard L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hanna, Richard Louis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Utica , New York
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 2020
Place of death Oneida County , New York