Michael Pertschuk, Antismoking and Auto Safety Crusader, Dies at 89

Rising because the Senate’s main employees knowledgeable on tobacco management laws, Mr. Pertschuk was recruited by Senator Warren G. Magnuson, the Washington Democrat who was chairman of the Commerce Committee. Mr. Pertschuk served as a counsel to the committee from 1964 to 1968 and as chief counsel and employees director from 1968 to 1977, when he was named chairman of the Federal Commerce Fee.

He relinquished the chairmanship after Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 however remained a commissioner till 1984. Throughout his tenure he pressured the funeral trade to itemize its expenses, however because the local weather for regulation cooled, he failed in his effort to ban TV commercials geared toward advertising and marketing sugary meals to kids.

On leaving workplace, Mr. Pertschuk blamed the Republican administration for fostering de-regulaton, he mentioned, whose “extremism and ideological blindness led to a brand new period of regulatory nihilism and simply plain nuttiness.”

Mr. Pertschuk’s first marriage, in 1954, to Carleen Joyce Dooley, led to divorce in 1976. He married Anna Phillips Sofaer in 1977.

Along with his spouse, he’s survived by two kids from his first marriage, Amy and Mark Pertschuk; a stepson, Daniel Sofaer; and three grandchildren.

He and his spouse moved from Washington to Santa Fe in 2003.

Requested what motivated Mr. Pertschuk to embark on his client campaign, Joan Claybrook, who headed one other of his progenies, the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration, through the Carter administration, mentioned in a telephone interview: “The info. The extra he discovered, the extra adamant he grew to become. The extra he discovered about tobacco, the extra outraged he grew to become and the extra decided he was to do one thing about it. And he was ready of huge energy to do one thing about it.”

After leaving authorities, Mr. Pertschuk based, with David Cohen, a former president of Frequent Trigger, the Advocacy Institute, which skilled social justice adherents in the US and rising democracies.