The Legacy of Barney Frank

Barney Frank died at age 86 after a career that paired openness as an openly gay politician with significant legislative achievements. His work included the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform package aimed at addressing abuses that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. Even while in hospice, he continued advising Democrats. After Governor Janet Mills lost a Senate race in Maine to Graham Platner, Frank criticized the progressive left for pairing economic inequality critiques with an emphasis on racial and cultural issues. Earlier reporting recalled Frank’s decision in 1987 to tell a reporter he was gay to avoid damaging revelations. Observers described him as exceptionally smart, with wit aimed at both left and right.

"Most obituaries have emphasized Frank's pioneering role as an openly gay politician first, and his legislative accomplishments second, among them the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform package, a valiant if imperfect effort to root out the abuses that had led to the financial crisis of 2008. Even from his hospice bed, Frank continued to dole out advice to Democrats."

"Frank criticized the progressive left for combining a critique of economic inequality with an impolitic emphasis on " racial and cultural things." A look back through The Nation 's coverage of Frank's long and storied political career-admiring, at times sympathetic, but far from uncritical-suggests the late congressman was always a man containing multitudes; a brilliant, brash politician whose famous wit could be directed both at the left and the right."

"In 1987, Frank called up a reporter from The Boston Globe and asked her to visit his office with no stated purpose. During the interview, Frank did something that at the time was still unthinkable: he told the reporter he was gay. (The cartoonist Eric Orner depicted the scene in his 2022 graphic biography of Frank, Smahtguy, excerpted in The Nation.)"

"Frank, von Hoffman observed, was "one of the smartest men in national politics." He had seen how reports of an extramarital affair had doomed Democratic Senator Gary Hart's bid for the party's 1988 presidential nomination. Frank wanted to avoid something similar happening to him, so he got out in front of it before one of those news organizations von Hoffma"

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