Former U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, leading Republican defender, dies at age 89

OKLAHOMA CITY — Former Sen. Jim Inhofe, a conservative hardliner known for his strong support of defense spending and his denial that human activities were responsible for most climate change, has died. He was 89.

Inhofe, who was an influential figure in Oklahoma politics for more than sixty years, died Tuesday morning after suffering a stroke during the Fourth of July holiday, his family said in a statement.

Inhofe, who was elected to a fifth term in the Senate in 2020, resigned in early 2023.

Inhofe has frequently criticized established science that assumes that human activities are contributing to climate change on Earth, once calling the theory “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

In February 2015, when temperatures in the nation’s capital were below zero, Inhofe brought a snowball to the Senate floor. He threw it and claimed that environmentalists were turning their attention to global warming as the weather got colder. “It’s very, very cold outside. Very unseasonable,” Inhofe said.

As Oklahoma’s highest-ranking U.S. senator, Inhofe was a staunch supporter of the state’s five military bases and a vocal advocate of congressional appropriations. An Army veteran and licensed pilot who flew to and from Washington himself, Inhofe secured federal funds to finance local road and bridge projects and criticized House Republicans who called for a one-year moratorium on such pet projects in 2010.

“Rejecting a budget reservation doesn’t save a penny,” Inhofe told the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce in August. “It just means the issue goes right back to the bureaucracy in the budget process.”

He was a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, praising him for his “incredible support of our #MAGA agenda” while supporting the senator’s re-election in 2020. During the Trump administration, Inhofe served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee following the death of Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona.

In March 2009, Inhofe attracted national attention when he introduced a bill that would have prevented the transfer of prisoners from the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay “anywhere on American soil.”

Back home, Inhofe helped raise millions of dollars to clean up a former mining hub in northeastern Oklahoma that was on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list for decades. In a massive buyout program, the federal government bought homes and businesses in the 39-square-mile Tar Creek region, where children regularly have dangerous levels of lead in their blood.

“This is an example of a government program that is created for a specific purpose and then dismantled when the work is done. That’s how government should work,” Inhofe said in December 2010, when the project was almost completed.

In 2021, Inhofe defied some of his party members by voting to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, saying anything else would be a violation of his oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. He voted against convicting Trump in both impeachment trials.

Inhofe was born James Mountain Inhofe on November 17, 1934, in Des Moines, Iowa, and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tulsa in 1959. He served in the Army from 1956 to 1958 and was a business person for three decades, including serving as president of Quaker Life Insurance Co.

His political career began in 1966 when he was elected to the state House of Representatives. Two years later, he won a seat in the Oklahoma Senate, which he held during unsuccessful runs for governor in 1974 and for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976. He then served three terms as mayor of Tulsa beginning in 1978.

Inhofe won two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1980s before plunging into a bitter Senate race when longtime Senator David Boren resigned to become president of the University of Oklahoma in 1994. Inhofe defeated then-U.S. Rep. Dave McCurdy in a special election that same year and served the final two years of Boren’s term. He was re-elected five times.

Inhofe lived up to his reputation as a tough campaigner when he ran against Democrat Andrew Rice, a 35-year-old state senator and former missionary, in 2008. Inhofe claimed Rice was “too liberal” for Oklahoma and ran television ads that critics said had homophobic undertones, including one that featured a wedding cake with two plastic grooms on top and a photo of Rice as a young man in 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 falsifying his achievements and attacking his character.

Inhofe’s optimistic personality was also evident outside of politics. He was a professional pilot and flight instructor with over 50 years of flying experience.

In 1999, he made an emergency landing in Claremore after his plane lost a propeller. The incident was later traced to an installation error. In 2006, his plane went out of control while landing in Tulsa. He and an assistant were uninjured, but the plane was badly damaged.

In 2010, Inhofe landed his small plane on a closed runway at a rural South Texas airport while trying to fly himself and others to his home on South Padre Island. Runway workers were in a rush, and Inhofe agreed to complete a remedial 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 that is, but I don’t hurt anywhere and I don’t feel any different than I did five years ago.”

Inhofe is survived by his wife, Kay, three children and several grandchildren. His son, Dr. Perry Dyson Inhofe II, died in November 2013 at age 51 when the twin-engine plane he was flying crashed several miles north of Tulsa International Airport.