Bob Packwood, senator who resigned amid sexual misconduct scandal, dies aged 93

Former US senator Bob Packwood, a moderate Oregon Republican whose reputation as a champion of abortion and women’s rights was spoiled at the end of his career by allegations of sexual harassment, has died. He was 93. Packwood’s death on Saturday was announced in an obituary sent to media outlets by his family. The release didn’t include additional details. Packwood was a political scrapper who first refused to quit the chamber in which he had served for 27 years, saying he didn’t want to be remembered only for that controversy. Before the era marked by the #MeToo social justice movement, Packwood stood out as an example of private behavior undermining a man’s public image. He had been praised by Planned Parenthood and others. The great-grandson of a member of the 1857 Oregon Constitutional Convention, Packwood established himself as a social moderate and fiscal conservative who often voted across party lines. He considered running for president in 1980. Elected to the Senate in 1968, Packwood was best known as the leading Republican advocate of abortion rights – and was widely admired by women’s groups throughout the US until the Senate ethics committee launched an investigation into the allegations of sexual and official misconduct in 1993. More than two dozen women, former employees and acquaintances, accused him of making unwanted or uninvited sexual advances. …