Philip Aloysius Hart (December 10, 1912 – December 26, 1976) was an American lawyer and politician. A Democrat, he served as a United States Senator from Michigan from 1959 until his death from cancer in Washington, D.C. in 1976. He was known as the "Conscience of the Senate".[1] The Hart Senate Office Building is named in his honor.[2]
In June 1943, Hart married Jane "Janey" Briggs, the daughter of Walter and Jane Cameron Briggs. Her father was by then a philanthropist and had owned the Detroit Tigers. Jane was an aviator who was the first female helicopter pilot in Michigan. She later qualified in the 1960s as one of the Mercury 13 group. The couple met through her brother, who was Hart's roommate at Georgetown. They have four surviving sons and four daughters.[8] Hart's namesake, Philip Jr., died as a toddler. He was buried in a family plot, followed decades later by his father nearby.
In 1946, Hart returned to Detroit and entered the general law practice of Monaghan, Hart & Crawmer.[3] He became politically active in the Democratic Party and, from 1949 to 1951, he served as Michigan's Corporation Securities Commissioner, a political appointee position.[7] His duties included the approving of stock issues of corporations in the state, licensing real estate brokers and builders, and collecting real estate taxes.[3] In 1951 Hart was appointed as state director of the Office of Price Stabilization, serving for a year.[5] For his work in that office, he was named Outstanding Federal Administrator of the Year in 1952 by the Federal Business Association.[3]
In 1954, Hart ran for electoral office, elected as the 51st lieutenant governor of Michigan, on a ticket with Governor Williams. He served two terms, until 1959.[7] His re-election in 1956 made him the first Democrat in Michigan to serve two terms as lieutenant governor.[3]
Hart was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in the Democratic wave election of 1958, defeating one-term incumbent Republican Charles E. Potter by a 54% to 46% margin. He was reelected by overwhelming margins in 1964 and 1970. (His 1970 opponent was former Michigan First LadyLenore Romney.) Some conservatives in Michigan attempted to recall Hart from office for his stands on gun control and busing for racial integration, with bumper stickers reading "Recall cures Hart attacks," but the US Constitution does not authorize the recall of elected federal officials, and Hart was strongly re-elected by supporters.
Hart was the chief Senate sponsor of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, which ended the quotas that restricted immigration from most of the world since 1924.
Hart died in office. He had announced his intention not to run for re-election in June 1976 and was diagnosed with cancer a month later.[9] The same year, the Senate voted to name its new Senate office building after him, the Hart Senate Office Building.[10] It would have been the first federal government building named after someone still living. The vote was 99-0, with Hart abstaining. He died of melanoma a few days later, just before his term would have expired, and he would have retired. Donald W. Riegle, Jr., who had just been elected to the seat for the next term, was named to fill Hart's seat for the remaining days of the congressional session.
Hart is interred in St. Anne's Catholic Cemetery on Mackinac Island in a family plot near his namesake son, who died as a toddler.
Honors
In 1982, the Hart Senate Office Building, the third to be constructed, was officially dedicated and named for him.
