Former GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe, known for his snowball incident in the Senate chamber, has died at the age of 89. Inhofe, a prominent figure in Oklahoma politics for over six decades, passed away on Tuesday morning after suffering a stroke during the July Fourth holiday, his family announced.
Inhofe, who was elected to a fifth Senate term in 2020, stepped down in early 2023. He was a staunch supporter of defense spending and a vocal critic of the mainstream science that attributes climate change to human activity. He once famously called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
In February 2015, with temperatures in Washington, D.C., below freezing, Inhofe brought a snowball onto the Senate floor. He tossed it while arguing that environmentalists’ focus on global warming was misplaced because it was still cold. “It’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonable,” he said.
As Oklahoma’s senior U.S. senator, Inhofe was a strong advocate for the state’s five military installations and a proponent of congressional earmarks. An Army veteran and licensed pilot, he often flew himself to and from Washington. He secured federal funds for local road and bridge projects and criticized House Republicans who sought a one-year moratorium on such projects in 2010. “Defeating an earmark doesn’t save a nickel,” Inhofe told the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. “It merely means that within the budget process, it goes right back to the bureaucracy.”
Inhofe was a fervent supporter of President Donald Trump, who praised him for his “incredible support of our #MAGA agenda” while endorsing the senator’s 2020 reelection bid. During the Trump administration, Inhofe served as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee following the death of Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
In March 2009, Inhofe introduced legislation to prevent detainees from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay from being relocated “anywhere on American soil.” Closer to home, he helped secure millions of dollars to clean up a former mining hub in northeast Oklahoma that had spent decades on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list. The federal government purchased homes and businesses within the 40-square-mile region of Tar Creek, where children consistently tested for dangerous levels of lead in their blood. “This is an example of a government program created for a specific purpose and then dissolves after the job is completed. This is how government should work,” Inhofe said in December 2010.
In 2021, Inhofe defied some in his party by voting to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, stating that to do otherwise would violate his oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. He voted against convicting Trump in both of his impeachment trials.
Born James Mountain Inhofe on Nov. 17, 1934, in Des Moines, Iowa, Inhofe grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tulsa in 1959. He served in the Army between 1956 and 1958 and was a businessman for three decades, serving as president of Quaker Life Insurance Co.
Inhofe’s political career began in 1966 when he was elected to the state House. Two years later, he won an Oklahoma Senate seat, which he held during unsuccessful runs for governor in 1974 and for the U.S. House in 1976. He then won three terms as Tulsa mayor starting in 1978. Inhofe went on to win two terms in the U.S. House in the 1980s before entering a bitter U.S. Senate race when longtime Sen. David Boren resigned in 1994 to become president of the University of Oklahoma. Inhofe beat then-U.S. Rep. Dave McCurdy in a special election that year to serve the final two years of Boren’s term and was reelected five times.
Inhofe lived up to his reputation as a tough campaigner in his 2008 reelection bid against Democrat Andrew Rice, a 35-year-old state senator and former missionary. Inhofe claimed Rice was “too liberal” for Oklahoma and ran television ads that critics said contained anti-gay overtones, including one that showed a wedding cake topped by two plastic grooms and a photo of Rice as a young man wearing a leather jacket. Rice, who has two children with his wife and earned his master’s degree from Harvard University Divinity School, accused Inhofe of distorting his record and attacking his character.
Inhofe’s bullish personality was also apparent outside politics. He was a commercial-rated pilot and flight instructor with more than 50 years of flying experience. He made an emergency landing in Claremore in 1999 after his plane lost a propeller, an incident later blamed on an installation error. In 2006, his plane spun out of control upon landing in Tulsa; he and an aide escaped injury, though the plane was severely damaged. In 2010, Inhofe landed his small plane on a closed runway at a rural South Texas airport while flying himself and others to a home he owned in South Padre Island. Runway workers scrambled, and Inhofe agreed to complete a remedial training program rather than face possible legal action. “I’m 75 years old, but I still fly airplanes upside down,” Inhofe said in August 2010. “I don’t know why it is, but I don’t hurt anywhere, and I don’t feel any differently than I felt five years ago.”
Inhofe is survived by his wife, Kay, three children, and several grandchildren. A son, Dr. Perry Dyson Inhofe II, died in November 2013 at the age of 51 when the twin-engine aircraft he was flying crashed a few miles north of Tulsa International Airport.
Source: AP, NBC News
