Steny Hoyer: “Seventeen times. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) has been reelected 19-plus times. We all had the opportunity…”

“Seventeen times. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) has been reelected 19-plus times. We all had the opportunity of serving here with Mr. Whitten who was reelected, I believe, 25 or 26 times, served a half a century. Clearly, Peter Rodino was one of the longest serving. But serving a long time in and of itself simply means that you were able to live and to be reelected. Serving well is the mark of one who served our country, and that is Peter Rodino's legacy. His lead role as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment investigation has been spoken of here, and that is clearly what he will be remembered for. However, he also doggedly, as has also been said, fought for the rights of people, authoring multiple civil rights reports which formed the basis of several landmark civil rights bills. That was in a time when we recall that the Senate was refusing to pass legislation to outlaw lynching. The Senate just a few days ago apologized for that. The House passed a number of bills, but the Senate failed to pass them. Peter Rodino, even at that time, before it became really popular and the thing to do, was standing tall for the rights of individuals. John Conyers spoke eloquently to that just now. The son of an Italian immigrant. How proud Nancy Pelosi, herself a child of a famous Italian family, must have felt in rising to speak about Peter Rodino, an Italian who brought luster to his Italian heritage and to his American citizenship and country.…”