Steve Symms, senator who was voice of conservative ire, dies at 86

[Prof. Toru Tanaka]

5. I had never heard of Symms until tonight.

His Wiki article was definitely not flattering. Apparently, six senators voted against the ADA and Symms was one of them.

After reading the Wiki article, I think his vote was out of spite. His wife Fran suffered greatly from arthritis so she rarely accompanied him to public functions. Symms had a reputation of being a party animal and a philanderer and his wife finally had enough and initiated divorce proceedings against him. Their divorce was finalized in 1990- the same year he voted against the ADA.

The fallout from the divorce convinced him not to seek re-election as his poll numbers tumbled downward. He then became a lobbyist. As for his horse stunt, if I were the PMG I would have went to him and challenged him with two more letters addressed to Hawaii. And I would have told him “let’s see how long it takes your fucking horse to deliver this one”.

All in all, Symms came across as a complete lout. The world is better off without him as far as I am concerned.