U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., speaks with reporters during a news conference in Quincy, Mass., in 2010. Delahunt was remembered for his pragmatic approach to politics, often working with Republicans. Steven Senne/Associated Press
Former U.S. congressman William Delahunt, a seven-term Massachusetts Democrat who helped ease international adoption and negotiated with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez to import heating oil for low-income families, died March 30 at his home in Quincy, Mass. He was 82.
His death was announced by the office of a family spokesman, George K. Regan Jr. The statement did not cite a specific cause.
Delahunt served on the Quincy City Council, in the Massachusetts State House and for two decades as district attorney in Norfolk County, on the outskirts of Boston, before winning election to Congress in 1996 at age 55. His congressional district included the South Shore of Boston as well as Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
Remarking on his already long career, Boston Globe columnist Thomas Oliphant jokingly described the newly elected Delahunt as “one of my favorite freshman congressmen, mostly because … he’s like a freshman in college who has already done a tour in the Marines and spent a couple of years working construction.”
Peter Ubertaccio, a professor of political science at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass., described Delahunt as “an old-school urban Democrat” but one who “worked easily and often with Republicans” – a profile that aligned him well with his generally Democratic district, which also included more conservative towns along the coast.
Henry J. Hyde, an Illinois Republican who chaired the Judiciary Committee during part of Delahunt’s service on the panel, told the Globe that while “some of the amendments we get are offered for purely political purposes to make a statement or otherwise are off the wall,” Delahunt brought a “level of common sense.”
Delahunt, who also served on the Foreign Affairs Committee, combined his international expertise and concern for constituents in 2005 when he helped broker a deal with Chávez to ship millions of gallons of discounted home-heating oil for use by low-income Massachusetts families during frigid New England winters.
He dismissed the controversy that ensued over his engagement with Chávez, an authoritarian left-wing president and fierce critic of the United States.
“I made an effort to secure a similar program from Exxon, from Chevron, from all of the major American oil companies and was met with either silence or a polite no,” Delahunt told the Globe in 2011. “The choice between being criticized by some or having brokered that agreement – that’s an easy choice.”
Also on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Delahunt was among the members of Congress who supported the loosening of Cold War-era restrictions on Cuba.
“The work I really reveled in was the stuff with international implications,” he told the Globe when he stepped down in 2011. “Opening up the debate on Cuba, on the fact that what we have is a failed policy, and making efforts to improve the image of the United States worldwide in the aftermath of the Iraq War.”
Delahunt was known as a chief advocate for the Child Citizen Act of 2000, which eliminated bureaucratic obstacles for American families seeking to obtain U.S. citizenship for children they adopted abroad.
He had experienced those bureaucratic struggles firsthand when he and his then-wife adopted their daughter Kara in 1975 during Operation Babylift, the evacuation from Saigon, in the waning days of the Vietnam War, of Vietnamese children who had been placed in orphanages.
William David Delahunt was born in Quincy on July 18, 1941. His father was a salesman for the U.S. Rubber Co., and his mother was a secretary for the municipal government.
Delahunt received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1963 and a law degree from Boston College in 1967.
He practiced law while beginning his career on the Quincy City Council and then in the Massachusetts State House. Democratic Gov. Michael S. Dukakis appointed him as Norfolk County’s top prosecutor in 1975.
Ubertaccio described Delahunt as an “innovative prosecutor” who focused on sexual assault and domestic violence cases before those crimes “pierced the public consciousness.” He also was credited with establishing a civil rights unit.
“He makes it impossible for them to say Democrats are soft on crime,” then-U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a fellow Massachusetts Democrat and Judiciary Committee member, told the Globe of Delahunt in 1997. “Billy has locked up more people than everyone else on the committee put together. He is a liberal with his head on his shoulders.”
Delahunt won his congressional seat, which had been vacated by the retirement of Democratic Rep. Gerry E. Studds, after a contentious primary recount.
Former state representative Philip W. Johnston was initially determined to have won the Democratic nomination, but weeks before the November general election, a Superior Court judge examined hundreds of challenged ballots and declared Delahunt the winner by 108 votes.
Delahunt defeated the Republican challenger in 1996, Massachusetts House Minority Leader Edward Teague, and never faced a serious reelection battle thereafter.
Delahunt’s marriage to Kati Hermani ended in divorce. Survivors include his fiancée, Julie Pagano of Quincy; two daughters from his marriage, Kirsten Delahunt of the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston and Kara Delahunt Bobrov of Milton, Mass.; and two grandchildren.
After his retirement from Congress, Delahunt opened a consulting and lobbying firm that at times attracted scrutiny for fees received from clients who had been the beneficiaries of federal funds he had helped secure while he was in office. Delahunt insisted that his work allowed him to remain active in areas of public affairs where he had expertise and passion.
He said that he would have retired from Congress earlier had it not been for the intercession of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a close friend and, as it happened, one of his constituents, as a resident of Hyannis Port, on Cape Cod.
“What have you done for me lately?” Delahunt recalled Kennedy asking him in jest. “Hey, I need someone to cut my grass!”
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