Former Maryland Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who spent 30 years in the Senate, died at the age of 87.
Sarbanes “passed away peacefully” on Sunday in Baltimore, Maryland, according to his son, Rep. John Sarbanes, who represents Maryland’s 3rd Congressional District.
“Our family is grateful to know that we have the support of Marylanders who meant so much to him and whom he was honored to serve,” the younger Sarbanes said. “Following state, local, and public health guidance amid the COVID-19 pandemic, our family will hold a private service in the coming days.”
He did not mention what caused his father’s death.
The late senator, who began his career busing tables and washing dishes at his parents’ restaurant, drafted and introduced the first article of impeachment against former President Richard Nixon in 1974, according to the Washington Post. The House Judiciary Committee, which he was on during his three terms in the House of Representatives, voted 27-11 on the articles of impeachment he drafted over Nixon’s false statements to investigators and other misdeeds in the Watergate scandal.
He unseated Republican Sen. J. Glenn Beall in 1976 and would later be reelected four times in his Senate career. In one of his more notable Senate achievements, Sarbanes, as the head of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, co-wrote the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which restructured corporate oversight after a headful of accounting scandals plagued major corporations, Politico reported. Sarbanes left the Senate in 2007.
Sarbanes, who was born to Greek immigrant parents, attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School and studied in England as a Rhodes scholar. His wife, Christine Sarbanes, died in 2009, and they are survived by their children, John, Michael, and Janet, and seven grandchildren.
