Orrin Hatch wore many hats on long journey to Capitol Hill

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 24, 1997 | by Stephen Goode

Orrin Hatch, the senior U.S. senator from Utah, is in his fourth term. He never had held political office when, at the urging of former Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, he decided to run against three-term Democratic Sen. Frank Moss in 1976 and filed his candidacy on the last day possible. Admirers have dubbed him "Mr. Free Enterprise" and "Mr. Constitution." Feminists and others on the left have called him an implacable enemy.

Insight: You've just come from a joint Dress conference with Senators Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott and Larry Craig in support of a balanced-budget amendment.

Orrin Hatch: Yes. That's a very important battle and I'm not sure we're going to win it, because we have to have 12 Democrats. Right now we have seven who are co-sponsors. We've had six others promise to vote for it. I think they will in the end, and if they do we'll pass it through the Senate.

I'm very proud of my work on the amendment. Along with Senator Thurmond, we were in 1982 the first to bring this amendment to the floor of either house of Congress, and it did pass the Senate. But [former Speaker] Tip O'Neill defeated it in the House in the last minute by procedural maneuvers.

Insight: Liberals like to believe that Republicans are privileged folks to the manor born. Tell us about your upbringing.

OH: We were poor. We lost our home right after I was born [during the Great Depression]. My dad only went to the ninth grade my mother only to the eighth.

My dad was a metal lather. He was one of the last great artisans who could do all ... of that molding work that you no longer see done except in plastic. He taught me a trade.... I went through a formal apprenticeship and became a journeyman metal lather in the AFL-CIO. I worked 10 years in the building-construction trade unions and I was good at it. I was very proud to work with my hands -- it was a very good thing for me to do.

My mother made sure this fellow named Orrin Hatch who loved athletics more than anything else learned to love music, and she had me take piano for six months when I was 6 years old. They bought a violin and I played violin all the way through high school and was concert master of our high-school orchestra and the all-state orchestra as well.

You've asked about influences. The death of my older brother Jesse [whose plane was downed on his 10th mission during a World War II raid] was so important. He was such a great person and I looked up to him an awful lot. That was such a profound thing -- I got a white streak in my heir. It was even worse to see the anguish in my parents' eyes.

To get through school, I worked at being a janitor. I was a salesman in a jewelry store. At law school, they said they wouldn't let me in school if I tried to hold a job as well. But I had to work. We had three kids when I graduated. I worked in a law office and I was an all-night desk attendant in a girls' dormitory. I was the only young man they'd trust to do that.

Insight: You are famous for your exchanges with Ted Kennedy.

OH: Ninety-five percent of the time, we fight each other. Those are big fights. Everybody watches them because they know, when we get going, it is going to be colorful; it's going to be a knock-down, drag-out battle, and neither of us is going to give an inch.

But I look for the good in him and [the good side] is becoming more accentuated as he gets older. The good father that he is. The good brother to his sisters and his dead brothers. Naturally, there are things I don't like about Ted Kennedy -- that he is extremely liberal in most ways, and he can be brutal about that liberality.

I have a major failing. I can't really get mad or stay mad at anybody. I'd probably be a better senator if I could hold a few grudges [laughs].

Insight: You've been a basketball player, a boxer, you love athletics . . .

OH: I'm pugnacious. One reason I took to fighting is I carried that violin case with me everywhere I went. Let me tell you, no one ran my violin-playing down after a while and no one tried to take my case from me, either.

[Boxing] builds discipline. It builds character. It builds an ability within to give everything you have. You have to call in extra reserves to be a good fighter. You've got to call on them when your arms are leaden and your legs are going and when you've been smacked a few times and it hurts.

I've played basketball. I can remember many times ... when we just kept going [despite being done in]. We would win games that were unwinnable. And we sometimes lost some we should have won [laughs].

I'd have to say my hero is Muhammad Ali [a personal friend]. But there were some other fighters I used to watch: Rocky Graziano and Jake LaMotta, the whole bunch.

Insight: What legislative achievements are you proudest of?

OH: An awful lot. The first big battle was labor-law reform [which Hatch waged as a freshman senator].... It was a pivotal free-market economic battle of the century, and we won it by one vote.

The passing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was certainly one of the greatest thrills I've ever had. During the fight for the Americans with Disabilities Act I was very emotional -- it was important to me.