Democratic Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida has died, according to a senior Democratic aide. He was 84.
Hastings announced in January 2019 that he was being treated for pancreatic cancer, calling the diagnosis “traumatizing news,” but saying his treatment was “a battle worth fighting.”
Hastings, who has served in Congress since 1993, represented a district that includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach Counties.
Florida election law calls for a special election to be scheduled to fill his seat. For the time being, his death narrows an already slim Democratic seat margin in the House.
Democrats will now hold a 218 to 211 margin, with a recently elected Louisiana Republican yet to be sworn in.
His political career was marked by comebacks, and sometimes controversy. He was elected to Congress after his impeachment and removal from the bench in 1989 as a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of Florida.
A federal grand jury indicted Hastings in a bribery case involving soliciting money in return for reducing the sentences of two mob-connected felons, but he was acquitted in a criminal court in 1983 and returned to his judicial post.
The House later impeached him, and the Senate in October 1989 convicted him on eight articles. The president pro tempore of the Senate ordered Hastings removed from office.
Hastings later ran for his seat in the House and was elected the first African-American representative from Florida since the post-Civil War period. He was viewed as one of Congress’s champions for the rights of minorities, women, the elderly, children and immigrants.
Hastings was born and raised in Seminole County, Florida and attended segregated public schools. His parents, domestic servants, often worked in California and New York leaving him under the care of his maternal grandmother. He earned a biology degree from Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee and started law school at Howard University in Washington, D.C., before transferring and completing his law degree from Florida A&M.