Victor Fazio, Longtime Democratic Leader in the House, Dies at 79

Victor Fazio, a longtime Democratic member of Congress from California who served in Home management for a number of years, died on March 16 at his residence in Arlington, Va. He was 79.

The trigger was most cancers, based on an announcement from his former congressional workplace.

Mr. Fazio represented the Sacramento space from 1979 to 1999. As a member of the Home Appropriations Committee, he helped deliver residence funding for quite a few initiatives, together with a multimillion-dollar environmental institute on the College of California, Davis. He additionally lobbied for the funds to guard 3,700 acres of wetlands west of Sacramento as a refuge; devoted by President Invoice Clinton in 1997, it is named the Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Space.

Recognized for his low-key, bipartisan model, he usually labored in partnership with the highly effective California Republican consultant Jerry Lewis, who died final yr.

Maybe Mr. Fazio’s most tough interval was his tenure as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee in 1994 — the yr that Republicans, led by Consultant Newt Gingrich, took management of the Home for the primary time in 40 years.

Nonetheless, due to Mr. Fazio’s capacity to work throughout the aisle, his colleagues selected him the following yr as chairman of the Home Democratic caucus.

After he retired from Congress, he labored at a public relations agency in Washington led by Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman. He later joined the Washington workplace of the powerhouse regulation agency Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and was usually named to the annual checklist of prime lobbyists by the political newspaper The Hill. He retired from Akin Gump in 2020.

Victor Herbert Fazio Jr. was born in Winchester, Mass., on Oct. 11, 1942. His father was an insurance coverage salesman, his mom a homemaker and gown store supervisor.

He earned a bachelor’s diploma in historical past from Union School in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1965 earlier than going to California on a Caro Basis fellowship.

In 1970, he co-founded California Journal journal, now defunct, which lined state authorities and politics, and served within the California State Meeting earlier than profitable his Home seat in 1978.

His first marriage, to Joella Mason, resulted in divorce. His second spouse, Judy Neidhardt Kern, whom he married in 1983, died in 2015.

In 2017, he married Ms. Sawyer. Along with her, he’s survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Dana Fazio Lawrie; two stepchildren, Kevin and Kristie Kern; and 4 granddaughters. A daughter, Anne Noel Fazio, died in 1995.