Senator Lindsey Graham’s death highlights US Congress’ age issue

WASHINGTON – For more than a month since US Senator Mitch McConnell entered the hospital, Washington has been on something of a death watch for the frail 84-year-old former leader, who has provided no information about his condition.

So the news of the sudden death on the night of July 11 of another lawmaker more than a decade younger, Senator Lindsey Graham, came as a particular shock to his colleagues. Many of them are around the same age as Graham, who died two days after his 71st birthday, and did not think of his age or health as an issue.

Together, McConnell’s lengthy hospitalisation and the unexpected death of Graham offered the latest reminders that the US Senate is run by a geriatric class of lawmakers – some old, and some very old – many of whom hang on to their positions of power long past their primes, and long after the age when most Americans have retired.

Graham was energetic, omnipresent and in the midst of a re-election campaign that he had been expected to win handily for another six-year term. His age was barely remarked upon in the Senate, an institution that is sometimes only half-jokingly referred to as the world’s most prestigious nursing home.

There, the average age is just under 66, and more than one-third of members are Graham’s age or older, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the @unitedstates project.

He served alongside lawmakers including Senator Chuck Grassley, who at 92 is third in line to the presidency, leads the powerful Judiciary Committee and proudly reminded voters in a social media post earlier in July that he has been farming corn since the Civil Rights Movement.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who remains a major force driving the Democratic Party, is 84, one of seven octogenarians in the chamber, including McConnell, who has undergone a steep physical decline in public for years.

Some of the tributes that rolled in on July 12 from colleagues came from people who had embarked on their careers when Graham was still in high school.

“When we last spoke, he was as enthusiastic and exuberant as I’ve ever seen him,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, 80, said in a statement.

Still, Graham’s unexpected death after three decades in Congress, from what his office described only as a “brief and sudden illness”, was the latest reminder that the institution celebrates seniority and is built to avoid raising questions about incumbency and accumulated power.

Even as remembrances poured in, so did calls for change to what many people view as a broken system that is making government more dysfunctional.

“The constant deaths in office we’ve seen over the last few years aren’t shocking when you have a gerontocracy where too many elected officials would rather die at their desks than let anyone new fix people’s problems,” said Rohan Patel, the executive director of Majority Democrats, a political action committee that backs the next generation of Democrats and soon plans to roll out a campaign targeting older lawmakers.

Patel added: “If you haven’t worried about childcare in 50 years, applied for a job in 40 or bought a house in 30, you cannot understand the problems Americans are facing today, and the rest of us are paying the price.”

Even as the two oldest presidents in history, former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, have in recent years pushed the issue of aging in office into the forefront of voters’ minds and the political conversation, this Congress is the oldest in modern history.

Of the 530 voting members of the House and Senate, 131 of them – nearly one-quarter – are 70 or older.

The average retirement age for men is 64, and about 62 for women, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff, who is eyeing a presidential run in 2028, has long called for mandatory retirement at 75 for people serving in all three branches of government, as well as for Cabinet secretaries.

“You’re not hitting your stride at 78,” Emanuel said in a brief interview on July 12, following the news of Graham’s death. “The United States government at all levels look like the Brezhnev bureau from the Soviet days.”

Emanuel recalled working with former Senator Dianne Feinstein in her prime, when she played a key role in passing the assault weapons ban. That made it all the more painful, he said, to witness her in her final, deteriorating days before her death in office, when “she didn’t know she was a United States senator”, Emanuel said.

Graham was the first senator to die in office since Feinstein in 2023, at the age of 90, after a long physical and mental decline that tarnished her legacy.

Emanuel said that after the age of 75, the task at hand for once-great legislators was simple: “Get out of Washington”.

But aging lawmakers are often reluctant to give up power, and view their experience as an asset, not a liability, even as they enter life’s final chapters.

In the Senate, there is little appetite for questioning incumbency, and staff aides are invested in keeping their aging bosses in place.

Strom Thurmond famously hung on until past his 100th birthday. Robert C. Byrd died in office at age 92 after 51 years in the Senate. Despite serious medical issues, Thad Cochran ran for re-election at 76, with the prospect of leading the powerful Appropriations Committee too good to pass up – though he later resigned before the end of his term, citing his failing health.

When the Senate returns from its holiday break on July 13, Republicans will be mourning Graham’s death while likely still remaining in the dark about the prognosis of McConnell.

While his aides have refused to divulge any information about his health status, emergency responders reported performing CPR on an unconscious individual suffering cardiac arrest at the senator’s Washington address on the morning he was hospitalised.

On July 12, a spokesperson said there was no update, only that McConnell was continuing his recovery in the hospital.

Matt Zdun contributed reporting.

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.