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Jul 29, 2021 · Carl Levin, a liberal Michigan Democrat who served 36 years in the Senate and scared the wits out of America’s biggest C.E.O.s by demanding explanations for shadowy schemes that hid billions in...
Jul 30, 2021 · Former Senator Carl Levin, a powerful voice on military issues in Washington and a staunch supporter of the auto industry back home in Michigan during his record tenure in the U.S. Senate, has...
- He Cut A Distinctive Figure in The Senate
- Plump and Balding, He Made A Career
- Detroit Always remained Home For Carl Levin
- He Fought Pentagon Overspending, Helped Make Policy
- But He Wasn't Always Successful
- He Was A Sought-After Voice on Policy Matters and A Fierce Investigator
- A Voracious Reader and A Mind Like A "Razor"
Often disheveled and wearing a rumpled blue suit, with a signature comb-over and peering over glasses perched at the end of his nose, Levin’s unprepossessing looks masked a sharp wit and fierce intellect that he reserved for the right moment. He was most at ease when deploying his considerable debating skills to trap an argumentative hearing witnes...
Born in 1934 in Detroit to Saul and Bess Levin, Carl Levin came from — and would continue to represent — a family of lawyers, many of them engaged in social activism and politics. Saul Levin would become a Michigan corrections commissioner. Saul’s brother, Theodore, rose to become the longtime chief judge of U.S. District Court in Detroit — and eve...
Levin would never face a serious threat to the office again. In 1983, his brother Sandy joined the U.S. House of Representatives and for the next 33 years, the Levin brothers would play a large role in helping to set trade policy, auto standards and more. For a brief time in 2010 and 2011, they each chaired major committees, with Carl over Armed Se...
Throughout Levin’s career, he worked to make changes both political and practical. From early on, he railed against Pentagon overspending, introducing legislation to stop the Defense Department from buying “$600 toilet seats and $400 hammers,” as he put it in one campaign ad. During President George W. Bush’s administration, he and others raised se...
Levin had his setbacks, however. For years, he pushed unsuccessfully to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for instance. And as a longtime Democratic National Committee member, he argued against Iowa and New Hampshire having the beginning of the primary season in each presidential campaign to themselves, arguing that a bigger state such as ...
For all of that, Levin was considered a go-to legislator, especially when it came to matters of defense policy, helping to shape — or sharply criticize — America’s handling of its foreign wars. He had a hand in raising pay for military personnel and when he voted against the use of force in Iraq, it was only to give inspectors more time to determin...
Conrad remembered Levin as extraordinarily inquisitive, saying he and Levin and their wives would have dinner parties on Capitol Hill for authors on subjects they had read about. One of the last before the Levins left Washington, he recalled, was about theories regarding the possibilities of there being multiple universes. Astronaut and former U.S....
- Todd Spangler
- Washington Correspondent
Jul 30, 2021 · Carl Levin, the longest-serving U.S. senator in Michigan history and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has died at age 87. The death was announced late Thursday by his...
- Melissa Nann Burke
- Washington Correspondent
Jul 30, 2021 · Carl Levin, Michigan's longest-serving U.S. senator who died Thursday at age 87, was remembered by family and friends as a man who personified integrity.
- Todd Spangler
- Washington Correspondent
Jul 30, 2021 · The former taxi driver and auto-line worker, who for decades kept his faded 1953 union card in his wallet, died Thursday at 87. His family and the Levin Center at Wayne State University’s law ...
Jul 30, 2021 · Former Sen. Carl Levin, a powerful voice for the military during his career as Michigan’s longest-serving U.S. senator, has died. The Democrat was 87. Levin’s family says Levin died Thursday, July 29, 2021.
