Remembering key figures who shaped politics and law

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 1st.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: notable deaths from 20-24.

Just this week, we remembered former President Jimmy Carter. Other big names we covered last year include Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He died under mysterious circumstances in a Siberian prison camp.

EICHER: We also marked the departures of Senator and presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, and the youngest son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Dexter King.

Today, a handful of others who left their mark on law and politics. Here now is WORLD’s Washington producer Harrison Watters.

HARRISON WATTERS: We begin today with Jean Carnahan, the first woman to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate. She died in January at age 90.

In the year 2000, Jean was the First Lady of Missouri and her husband Mel Carnahan was leveraging his popularity as governor in a bid to unseat Republican Senator John Ashcroft.

But then, tragedy struck twenty days before the election.

SPOKESMAN: A plane believed to be carrying Governor Mel Carnahan, his son Roger, and senior campaign advisor Chris Sifford went down in Jefferson County. There were no survivors.

Jean was left to raise their three remaining children alone and finish the campaign Mel started.

JEAN: I determined that if the people would elect him, I would serve.

Missouri elected Carnahan posthumously and Jean was appointed by the new governor to take the oath of office in her husband’s place.

In 2002, Carnanan lost a special election to her Republican challenger and never returned to government, but two of her children found careers in Congress and Missouri state government.

Next, a man who made clothes for American leaders and celebrities.

GREENFIELD: I think that I make the finest clothing in the world. That's why they seek me out.

Martin Greenfield was born in 1928 in Czechoslovakia—14 years before his Jewish family was taken to Auschwitz.

GREENFIELD: Some were sent to the left and I was sent to the right.

Greenfield never saw his family again. But the camp tailor trained Greenfield to make clothes. In 1945, American forces under General Dwight Eisenhower liberated Europe. Sound here from ABC.

GREENFIELD: And I shook his hand, and I cried. I cried for joy.

Greenfield emigrated to America and started working in a garment factory. Here he is in a Jewish American Heritage interview.

GREENFIELD: I worked 30 years, and then I bought the business.

Greenfield’s business made fine suits for the likes of President Lyndon Johnson and basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, but his first famous customer was General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Greenfield died at age 95 on March 20th.

Next…

JIM BAKKER: Our special guest today is none other than Beverly LaHaye.

In the 1970s and 80s, the wife of evangelical pastor and author Tim LaHaye made a name in her own right as founder of Concerned Women for America. As a wife and mother, LaHaye was frustrated to see traditional values mocked and undermined in popular culture and the public square.

LAHAYE: We did not have a voice. When the feminists spoke, they spoke, as they said, for the women of America, and we are not a single block group of women.

In 1979, LaHaye founded CWA as a political action group for conservative women to get involved in politics and school boards. They also took national stands on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.

Here’s LaHaye at the organization’s 40th anniversary gala in 2019.

LAHAYE: I started Concerned Women for America when I was fifty years old. So it's never too old to start doing something for the Lord.

LaHaye died on April 14. She was 94.

Turning now to a lawmaker who challenged the reasoning behind climate change alarmism.

O’BRIEN: Let let's move on though let's talk a little bit about—

INHOFE: No no we can't move on because if you're talking about the science, the science is not settled.

O’BRIEN: Well all right let's move on now…

Jim Inhofe represented Oklahoma in the U.S. Senate from 1994 to 2023.

INHOFE: Climate has always changed and it always will change—there’s archaeological evidence of that, there’s biblical evidence of that, there’s historical evidence of that. It will always change. The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful they can change climate. Man can’t change climate.

Inhofe argued against the United States joining the Paris Climate Accords in 2015. He said the deal put heavy burdens on the U.S. without addressing emissions from China and India. He also questioned the science behind global warming as a threat to human survival.

INHOFE: In case we have forgotten, because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair, you know what this is? It's a snowball… and that's just from outside here so it's very very cold out, very unseasonable so here.

Inhofe died in July. He was 89.

We end today with the conservative attorney who argued the Supreme Court case that decided the presidential election of 2000.

OLSON: What happens in Florida affects people all over the United States.

When Florida went to a contested recount, Ted Olson argued for the George W. Bush campaign.

Sound here from a CBS Sunday interview.

MO ROCCA: Why did the Bush side win?

OLSON: We were right.

Bush appointed Olson the Solicitor General of the United States. Several years after returning to private law practice, Olson surprised many by taking on a case in California. That case challenged the state’s ban on gay marriage known as Proposition 8. Here’s Olson on PBS.

OLSON: That was November 8th of 2008. Proposition 8 passed in California adding a provision to the Constitution that said marriage was permissible and recognizable only between a man and a woman.

Olson argued the case alongside David Boise, the attorney who represented Al Gore in the Supreme Court case Olson won nine years earlier.

BOISE: When Ted called me I immediately said yes.

The unlikely legal team succeeded in defeating Prop 8, legalizing same-sex marriage in California.

OLSON: I think I've always been a conservative. People tend to want to put people in boxes and people overdo the conservative or liberal thing.

On November 13th, Ted Olson died after suffering a stroke. He was 84 years old.

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