Abner Mikva, liberal voice from Illinois, dies at 90

CHICAGO (AP) — Abner Mikva, an influential liberal from Illinois who served in all three branches of government as a congressman, federal judge and adviser to President Bill Clinton has died. He was 90.

Mikva died Monday of cancer in hospice care at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Brian Brady, national director of Mikva Challenge, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Mikva Challenge is a nonprofit leadership organization that the statesman founded. Brady said he learned of the death from Mikva’s daughters.

Mikva was diagnosed with bladder cancer several months ago, but had remained “strong and active” until a couple of weeks ago, according to Steven Cohen, who is married to Mikva’s oldest of three daughters, Mary.

Cohen said the family thinks it is “fitting he died on the Fourth of July” because he was a “true patriot and had a flair for doing things in a historic way.”

A stalwart of Illinois’ political landscape for decades, Mikva most recently pushed for the U.S. Senate to consider the nomination of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Brady called Mikva “the ideal public servant” who was saddened by growing bitter animosity between the parties in Washington.

“He thought it had a lot to do with people not socializing together anymore,” Brady said of partisan rancor. “He had dinner and played poker two or three times a week with Republican leaders. He thought the days of real relationships don’t exist right now.”

Mikva often told of how he initially tried to get involved in Chicago politics in 1948 but was told: “We don’t want nobody nobody sent” — an anecdote that came to encapsulate the city’s often-corrupt patronage system.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, a fellow Democrat, said Mikva’s record of public service “was proof that the good guys can win without selling their souls.”

“Ab Mikva was the pol ‘nobody sent’ but Illinois and America are better today because he defied the Bosses and rallied thousands to beat them,” Durbin said in an emailed statement.

President Barack Obama has said Mikva was one of his political mentors, and awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014.

“No matter how far we go in life, we owe a profound debt of gratitude to those who gave us those first, firm pushes at the start,” Obama said Tuesday in a statement. “For me, one of those people was Ab Mikva. When I was graduating law school, Ab encouraged me to pursue public service.