Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a feisty New Jersey Democrat who had been campaigning for his 15th term in Congress, died Aug. 21 at a hospital in Livingston, N.J. He was 87.

Rep. Bill Pascrell following congressional votes on July 9, 2024. Allison Robbert/The Washington Post 

His death was confirmed by a spokesman, Mark Greenbaum, who did not cite a cause. Pascrell had been hospitalized for weeks with a fever and respiratory infection, and previously underwent heart bypass surgery in 2020. He was the U.S. House of Representative’s second-oldest member, after Rep. Grace F. Napolitano, D-Calif., who is set to retire at the end of the current term.

A former public school teacher, state assemblyman and two-term mayor of Paterson, New Jersey’s third-largest city, Pascrell was first elected to Congress in 1996. Across more than a quarter-century in Washington, he compiled a largely liberal voting record, backing environmental causes, championing President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda and – as chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on oversight – campaigning for access to former president Donald Trump’s tax returns.

To colleagues and constituents, he was considered a glad-handing, back-clapping politician of the old school. He had friends across the aisle, including former representative Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), but he was also known for picking fights with Republicans he lambasted on social media and ridiculed in congressional hearing rooms.

On Twitter, now known as X, he bashed Trump as a “lowlife” who was “beneath contempt” and called Attorney General William P. Barr “a lying disgrace whose word isn’t worth a nickel.” At a hearing in 2020, he angrily confronted Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for refusing to turn over Trump’s tax returns, declaring that the Cabinet official offered only “smug rhetoric and staggering lies.” (He and House Democrats later succeeded in gaining access to six years of Trump’s tax returns.)

“The joy of Bill Pascrell is you never walked way from Bill Pascrell saying he was undecided,” Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, told NJ Advance Media in 2020.

Pascrell’s combative approach to politics was shaped by his upbringing in Paterson, where his uncle served as a ward leader and took him to his first political meeting. The future congressman was 16.

“Ten minutes into the event, a chair goes flying by my head,” he recalled. “There were fights here, there were fights there. And I said to myself, ‘I might like this.’”

During his first congressional campaign, he declared that his Republican opponent, a one-term incumbent, was “full of donkey dust.” After he arrived in Washington, he put a bumper sticker on his office door reading “NAFTA is Shafta,” a symbol of his opposition to free-trade agreements, which he blamed for the loss of American jobs.

Pascrell, a grandson of Italian immigrants, endeared himself to many of his constituents by railing against HBO’s “The Sopranos,” declaring that it unfairly stereotyped Italian Americans as mobsters. After a high school football player died in New Jersey in 2008, he began championing treatment and prevention efforts for traumatic brain injuries, which he called a “silent epidemic” among student-athletes and veterans.

He also became a prominent voice for first responders, steering federal dollars to local fire and police departments, and helped establish a national historical park centered on the Great Falls of the Passaic River, a Paterson landmark. When he learned that organizers wanted to commemorate abolitionist Harriet Tubman by putting her face on U.S. currency, he launched a lobbying campaign to ensure that she didn’t displace Alexander Hamilton, one of Paterson’s founding fathers, on the front of the $10 bill.

Pascrell regretted a few of his congressional votes – including his 2002 decision to join 80 of his Democratic colleagues, along with an overwhelming majority of Republicans, in backing the use of military force against Iraq. He later called the vote “a historic mistake.”

Late in his political career, he embraced a role as an ally to younger colleagues, including progressives whom he joined in endorsing the Green New Deal, a sweeping proposal to address climate change. On Twitter in 2019, he shared a satirical article from the Onion headlined “82-Year-Old New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell Quietly Asks Ilhan Omar If He Can Be Part Of The Squad.”

“Well. How ‘bout it,” he tweeted, addressing the group’s members. A half-hour later, he got an answer from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York: “You’re in.”

William James Pascrell Jr. was born in Paterson on Jan. 25, 1937. His father was a traffic manager for the Erie Lackawanna Railway, and his mother managed the home.

Pascrell enrolled at Fordham University in the Bronx, receiving a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1959 and a master’s in philosophy in 1961. He married Elsie Marie Botto two years later. In addition to his wife, survivors include three children, William J. Pascrell III and twins Glenn and David Pascrell; two sisters; and six grandchildren.

After serving in the Army, Pascrell taught high school history, psychology and English for 12 years and went into local politics in Paterson. He worked as the mayor’s director of policy and planning, served as president of the board of education and, in 1982, became the Passaic County Democratic chairman.

Five years later, he won his first general election, becoming a member of the New Jersey General Assembly at age 50. He held dual roles as a state lawmaker and Paterson mayor beginning in 1990, launching new health-care programs and a housing plan for the city while positioning himself as an accessible, low-key man of the people.

“Not to pound my chest, but I don’t have a bodyguard, never had a driver or a press secretary,” he told the New York Times in 1996, while campaigning for Congress for the first time.

His opponent, Bill Martini, had become the first Republican in decades to represent New Jersey’s 8th District, sweeping into office as part of the Republican revolution of 1994. Pascrell labeled him a puppet of House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) – some of his campaign materials caricatured Martini as a marionette – and went on to capture 51 percent of the vote, winning a race that he later described as “a food fight.”

He faced few serious challenges until 2012, when redistricting placed his home in the newly redrawn 9th District. One of his friends and Democratic colleagues, Steve Rothman, also found himself in a new district, one held by a right-wing Republican.

Rather than compete against the incumbent, Rothman moved and ran against Pascrell, his former dining partner and travel companion, setting up a contested primary that drew appearances from former president Bill Clinton, who joined Pascrell at a rally, and President Barack Obama’s senior strategist David Axelrod, who backed Rothman.

The race ended in a lopsided victory for Pascrell, who was buoyed by support in his hometown and won 61 percent of the vote.

Pascrell faced another contested primary in June, defeating a challenger who accused him of failing to adequately acknowledge and respond to the mounting death toll in the Israel-Gaza war. His district includes one of the country’s largest Palestinian American enclaves, a Paterson neighborhood known as Little Ramallah.

“Like all Americans, I want a permanent end to these hostilities and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis both,” he told the New York Times in 2023.

In November, he was slated to face Billy Prempeh, a Republican he had defeated in the past two election cycles.