The news of Thad Cochran’s death Thursday morning was not entirely unexpected — poor health had forced him to resign on April 1, 2018, four years into his last six-year term in the U.S. Senate.
Even so, his passing — and especially what he had come to represent in more 45 years in Congress — seems to have come too soon.
Cochran, 81, died at his home in Oxford. After serving three two-year teams in the U.S. House of Representatives (Third District), Cochran became the first Republican to win a statewide race since Reconstruction when he captured the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jim Eastland in 1978.
At the time of his resignation, he seemed a man who had outlasted his time. Politics in D.C. had changed. And not for the better.
Today, Cochran will be remembered in a way that, regrettably, few of his modern contemporaries can claim. He was, at heart, a skilled and enthusiastic legislator and a lukewarm politician, a quiet studious man among the loud and calculating masses, a man willing to compromise and collaborate in a Senate that has now gone poisonously partisan.
In his long years of service, during which he twice held the powerful position of Senate Appropriation chairman, as well as Senate Agriculture chairman, Cochran directed hundreds of millions of dollars to Mississippi for a wide range of projects.
Yet for all his power, Cochran seemed to have little interest in self-promotion. He rarely spoke on the floor of the Senate and was an infrequent guest on the Sunday morning news shows that are often used by politicians to build their popularity and swell their campaign coffers.
It would be wrong to suggest that Cochran was entirely aloof to party politics. From the start and until the finish, he was a conservative Republican and his votes generally reflected the mainstream of his party’s views.
But what distinguishes him, what set him apart, was his commitment to the hard, often unglamorous business of governing. Often that meant finding common ground with Democrats. It meant understanding that his primary allegiances were to the citizens.
For 45 years, he took that job seriously.
In the era of Celebrity Senators, Cochran was content in his work.
He was, until the end, a good and faithful servant of his home state of Mississippi and to the nation.
It is a fine legacy and one we hope others will choose to emulate.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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