Former Sen. Bob Packwood, the Oregon Republican whose decades of legislative clout were ultimately eclipsed by a sweeping sexual misconduct scandal that drove him from Capitol Hill, died on June 6, 2026, at a residential care facility in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 93.
The Senate Ethics Committee’s unanimous decision in September 1995 to recommend Packwood’s expulsion represented the first such vote to remove a sitting senator since 1981. Packwood announced his resignation from the Senate floor the following day.
“It is my duty to resign,” he said. “I am aware of the dishonor that has befallen me.”
According to the committee’s findings, Packwood made unwanted sexual advances toward at least 17 women during his Senate tenure. The investigation also revealed that he had altered evidence in an effort to mislead investigators. Packwood’s own taped diaries, which the committee obtained through subpoena, provided some of the most damaging material, including an entry where he joked that he was performing his “Christian duty” by having sex with a staff member.
The committee’s recommendation was based on its compiled documentation, not on additional allegations that emerged later, including one involving unwanted sexual advances toward a 17-year-old who had served as an intern in Packwood’s office.
A Lasting Tax Policy Legacy
Before his downfall, Packwood served as chair of the Senate Finance Committee and was one of the principal architects of the Reagan-era tax overhaul that became law in 1986. Though initially skeptical of the sprawling rewrite, he eventually helped broker the final product alongside then-House Ways and Means Chair Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill.
The highest personal income tax rate was dropped under the legislation, while the top capital gains tax rate was raised. Despite being declared dead by lobbyists and lawmakers multiple times during stop-and-start negotiations, the tax reform remains a reference point for contemporary debates on tax policy.
Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who replaced Packwood in the Senate and now serves as the panel’s top Democrat, said Packwood’s record on abortion rights and tax reform merited recognition but emphasized that his treatment of women told a different story. “Simply put, historians’ first line about Bob Packwood must include those women who he abused and assaulted for years and years,” Wyden said. “His horrible history as documented in his own diaries will forever overshadow that public record.”
An Investigation That Reshaped Congressional Accountability
Packwood served nearly 27 years in the Senate before resigning in 1995, when the Senate Ethics Committee unanimously voted to recommend his expulsion for sexual misconduct, abuse of office and obstruction. The committee’s 33-month investigation produced 10,145 pages of documentation and fundamentally changed how Congress addressed harassment by its own members. Packwood’s resignation became a frequently invoked watershed moment in subsequent years as lawmakers grappled with how to handle accusations of harassment against their colleagues.
The release of his taped diaries, in particular, established a precedent for the types of personal records the Ethics Committee could compel under subpoena.
Mounting press reports about his behavior toward female staffers, lobbyists and constituents triggered the ethics inquiry that ultimately ended his career.
Shifting Positions on Health Care
As the lead Senate sponsor of President Richard M. Nixon’s 1974 health care proposal, Packwood championed a concept similar to what would later become the Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. The Nixon proposal would have required employers to offer health insurance to their workers.
But as resistance within the Republican Party intensified in the early 1990s, Packwood reversed his position and ultimately opposed the legislation he had once backed. The flip illustrated what supporters called his pragmatic approach to legislating and what critics called opportunistic.
He was also an early Republican supporter of legalized abortion, introducing legislation to protect abortion rights in 1973 — before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision codified that right into law.
Packwood is survived by his wife, two children, two stepchildren and three grandchildren.