Gruff, warm, combustible, shrewd: For 49 years, Don Young’s ideology was ‘Alaska’
Rep. Young, at 88 the oldest and longest-serving member of the current Congress, died Friday. A Republican from Fort Yukon, he fashioned a career as Alaska’s winningest politician ever, gradually building the kind of seniority in Congress that became its own compelling argument for his reelection. Don Young, the irascible riverboat captain who did not so much represent Alaska as personify it for half a century in Congress, died Friday as he was flying home to Alaska for yet another political campaign. He showed up in committee hearings wearing cowboy boots and cleaned his fingernails with a Bowie knife. Photos, >click to read< 14:36
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