The death was confirmed by Ernie Dumas, the former chief political reporter for the Arkansas Gazette and a friend of Mr. Pryor. No cause was noted.
Part of a long family tradition of public service, Mr. Pryor has spent his entire career in politics, except for a post-college stint as a small-town newspaper publisher and editor describing himself as “on a crusade”. His two terms as governor – from 1975 to 1979 – were sandwiched between those of fellow Democratic reformers Dale Bumpers and Bill Clinton, and he helped the state move away from its segregationist past.
“I cite it as one of the main reasons why Democrats held on in places like Arkansas much longer than in any other southern state,” said Angie Maxwell, director of the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society at the University. from Arkansas. “He allowed Arkansas to punch above its weight in terms of power and influence.”
Mr. Pryor launched his political career in 1960, serving six years in the Arkansas House of Representatives before winning a special election to the United States House of Representatives, followed by two full terms. In Washington, looking for a cause to distinguish himself, he gained national visibility in 1970 by denouncing the treatment of elderly people in nursing homes, saying he had visited a dozen without identifying himself as a member of Congress and had found their operations understaffed and often uncaring.
“I have nothing against profit,” he told the Associated Press at the time, “but I am against exploitation. Profits are exploding, prices are increasing and service is not improving. »
The problem, he added, was that responsibilities for oversight of the nursing home industry were spread among nearly two dozen federal agencies and congressional committees. “Everyone seems to be looking at their small part of the picture,” Mr. Pryor said. “That’s why I think it’s urgent that a committee look at the whole issue.”
When House leaders, citing other priorities, denied him funding to create a new committee, he set up what he called two “government-in-exile” caravans on a street near the Rayburn House office building – space for 15 student volunteers and senior citizens. who worked on its unofficial “Committee on Aging.”
Although he would soon leave the House to run for Senate, Mr. Pryor gained early critical support from Congress for the creation in 1975 of the House Special Committee on Aging. Until its closure in 1993, the committee held hearings on elder abuse and other related topics affecting older Americans.
Mr. Pryor lost a close U.S. Senate primary race in 1972, nearly ousting 30-year-old segregationist President John McClellan, but two years later he defeated Orval Faubus, another notorious foe of civil rights, who was trying to return as governor. .
Maxwell said Mr. Pryor kept Arkansas on a balanced path between economic growth and environmental protection and made progress on gender and racial equality by appointing minorities and women to important positions in state government, including the first black and female justices on the Arkansas Supreme Court. .
After two popular two-year mandates As governor, Mr. Pryor successfully ran for Senate in 1978. He became chairman of the House board. Special Committee on Aging, where he focused on controlling prescription drug prices. In addition to addressing the concerns of seniors, an important voting group, he remained a voter favorite with his criticism of waste, fraud and abuse among government contractors and what he called astronomical supply costs.
Mr. Pryor was the primary sponsor of the 1988 Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which conservative commentator James J. Kilpatrick likened to a “Miranda rule for the people” for those audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Pryor said his legislation, designed to expand the rights available to taxpayers involved in disputes with the IRS, would help repair “a tax system that people fear and distrust.” His efforts were at the forefront of a national movement for taxpayer rights.
Mr. Pryor overwhelmingly won his third Senate term in 1990, but he had a heart attack the following year and heart bypass surgery the year after that. He did not seek reelection in 1996, when Rep. Tim Hutchinson became the first Republican to win a U.S. Senate seat in Arkansas since Reconstruction.
David Hampton Pryor was born on August 29, 1934, in Camden, the seat of Ouachita County in south-central Arkansas. His father was the county sheriff, as was his grandfather. Her mother ran unsuccessfully for county precinct clerk in 1926, making her one of the first women to run for elected office in the state, and later served for 15 years as a member elected to the Camden school board.
Mr. Pryor worked as a page for the United States House of Representatives in 1951, when he was 17; Before his senior year at the University of Arkansas, he spent the summer of 1956 delivering mail to Capitol Hill. After earning a bachelor’s degree in political science, he married Barbara Lunsford and they returned to Camden, where he established and edited a weekly newspaper, the Ouachita Citizen.
During the four years he was publisher, he challenged the segregationist positions of Governor Faubus. He wrote an editorial in favor of sending in federal troops when Faubus sparked a crisis in 1957 by trying to prevent black students from attending Little Rock High School. He later told the Associated Press that his editorials were “an attempt to appeal to reason during a time of great emotion and stress in the state.”
At the newspaper, which he sold after a few years, he successfully advocated a city manager style of government and other good governance measures, but he said he soon began to believe that he could have a greater impact by creating laws. He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1960, at the age of 26, and joined a group of young legislators fighting for state reform. He returned to school and received degree in law from the University of Arkansas in 1964.
Mr. Pryor described his personal life as marked by turbulent times. He was early in his term as governor when his wife left the governor’s mansion in 1975, saying she was exhausted after 18 years of supporting her husband’s ambitions.
“He understood, which was a good thing,” she later told the Washington Post. “At first he was shocked, because I never questioned him and I never let him down. But after he understood, we talked to the boys and he told them, “It’s his turn.” We talked to them separately until they understood.
She spent nearly two years living elsewhere in Arkansas, taking classes and helping a film producer friend make films, while Mr. Pryor stayed at the mansion with their three sons. She came back to the family and the marriage continued. Survivors include his wife and sons, David Pryor Jr., Mark Pryor, a Democrat who served two terms as a U.S. senator from Arkansas, and Scott Pryor; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
In 1999, Mr. Pryor and his wife established the Arkansas Center for Oral and Visual History at the University of Arkansas. Mr. Pryor later served as director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and, from 2004 to 2006, the first dean of the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas. He also wrote a memoir titled “A Pryor Commitment” (2008) and served as chairman emeritus of the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees.
Throughout his career, Mr. Pryor maintained a simple, laid-back personality that kept him popular with voters. Working alone late into the night in the governor’s office, he recalled to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: he said he personally answered a phone — only to find an agitated caller on the line demanding to speak to someone “no lower than the governor himself.”
“Ma’am, there is no one lower than the governor himself,” Mr. Pryor replied.
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