Richard Lugar, senator and US foreign-policy luminary, dies at 87

Moderate Republican, six-term lawmaker from Indiana, praised for career marked by bipartisan work and effort to stem spread of nuclear weapons

WASHINGTON — Former senator Richard Lugar, a leading US voice on foreign policy for decades and a one-time presidential candidate, known for his civility and bipartisan ways, has died at a medical center in Falls Church, Virginia. He was 87.

Lugar died of chronic inflammatory polyneuropathy, according to a statement from the Lugar Center in Washington, a global policy institute, which he founded in 2013.

A soft-spoken Republican moderate, Lugar was twice chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and built a reputation as one of Washington’s most influential foreign-policy voices during the record six terms he represented Indiana in the Senate.

That reputation was burnished by his willingness to work across party lines, most famously when he joined Democratic senator Sam Nunn in 1991 to forge what became known as the Nunn-Lugar program to help former Soviet republics dismantle their nuclear arsenals.

Attendees acknowledge retired Senator Richard Lugar prior to a speech February 6, 2015, by then-US president Barack Obama, at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Aaron P. Bernstein / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)

“America has lost a true statesman in Dick Lugar,” tweeted Pete Buttigieg, another Indiana native and current Democratic presidential aspirant. “A great mayor, senator and mentor, he made the world safer, stood up for better foreign policy, and knew how to work across the aisle.”

Buttigieg, who at 37 is mayor of the Indiana city of South Bend, is in a way following in the footsteps of Lugar, who became mayor of state capital Indianapolis at 35.

Worked against apartheid

President Barack Obama awarded Lugar the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 for his “decency (and) his commitment to bipartisan problem-solving.”

Lugar was a leader in pressing South Africa to end apartheid, and, earlier in the campaign, to oust the authoritarian Filipino president Ferdinand Marcos — having to overcome opposition from President Ronald Reagan on both issues.

Senator Richard Lugar receives an award on December 20, 2012, from Senate colleagues, including committee chairman senator John Kerry, during Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC. (KAREN BLEIER / AFP)

Lugar sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, saying he wanted to see whether “serious talk” on the issues could prevail over “sound bites.”

But the bookish Lugar — as a Rhodes scholar, he earned an honors degree from Oxford in 1954 — wryly acknowledged that charisma was hardly his strong suit, and he ultimately withdrew from the 1996 race.

Despite his longtime popularity in Indiana, Lugar ran into trouble when he sought a seventh Senate term.

A Tea Party-backed Republican, Richard Mourdock, portrayed him as overly liberal and out of touch, and soundly defeated him in the party’s primary. Mourdock was subsequently defeated by a Democrat, Joe Donnelly.

After leaving the Senate, Lugar continued to work on nuclear nonproliferation issues, global hunger and energy conservation.

He is survived by his wife Charlene, whom he married in 1956, and by four sons.