Edward Brooke Served in a Different Era of Senate Politics
The former Massachusetts senator, who died Saturday, exemplified a brand of liberal Republican politics that doesn't exist today.
Former Massachusetts Senator Edward W. Brooke, III was the first African American to be elected by popular vote, and the first to be seated since Reconstruction.
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Edward Brooke, the former Massachusetts Republican lawmaker who died yesterday at the age of 95, served in the Senate in a political environment much different from today.
A member of the Senate from 1967 to 1979, Brooke was a part of the Republican Party's liberal wing, which was geographically concentrated in the northeastern states. At that time, Democrats still held sway in the conservative South. Those days have faded as the two major parties have undergone regional as well as ideological changes.