Former Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) passed away late last year. Journalist Blake Morlock remembers:
Kolbe was a reliable Republican soldier on the big issues. He checked the right Republican boxes for the Bush tax cuts, the war in Iraq, the confirmation of conservative judges. That freed him to work locally with the other side on issues his party cared less about. The environment was one area where he left his mark. The Las Cienegas National Conservation Area east of Tucson was largely his baby in Congress.
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The passing of Kolbe signals another end to a kind of conservative: The free-market type, who could see the whole board and make his moves accordingly. If his brain triggered snowflakes on the right, well, he was OK with that. In fact, the “Republicanism” of Donald What’s His Name proved too much for Kolbe. He left the party in 2018. It was right about the time the whole party stopped being conservative. He endorsed Joe Biden for president two years ago. But this year, he endorsed the GOP’s candidate in the redrawn Southern Arizona district, Juan Ciscomani — while warning against any votes for Trumpist candidate Mark Finchem for secretary of state. I’m left with this: You’ve just gotta like a guy who had power over billions of dollars in spending that leverages America’s soft power around the globe, and still answered his own home phone with an unpretentious “Hello?”