Former Rep. Barney Frank, a Bayonne-born-and-raised Democratic politician who spent 32 years on the national stage as an outspoken and blunt congressman from Massachusetts and the architect of comprehensive reforms of the financial services industry, died on May 19 of congestive heart failure. He was 86.
Frank grew up believing New Jersey was corrupt. He was six-years-old when his father, the owner of a company with a public contract to supply fuel from his Jersey City truck stop, was sent to prison for refusing to testify in the trial of three Bayonne officials charged with taking kickbacks. Four years earlier, Samuel Frank pled guilty to conspiracy and was given a suspended sentence.
As a kid in Bayonne, Frank became interested in politics after Emmett Till, a Black 14-year-old, was lynched by white men in Mississippi. Frank was a Freedom Rider in Mississippi during the summer of 1964.
After graduating from Bayonne High School and Harvard University, Frank served as a top aide to Boston Mayor Kevin White and chief of staff to Rep. Michael Harrington (D-Massachusetts). He was elected Massachusetts State Representative in 1972 and to Congress in 1980. He defeated a Republican congresswoman by 20 points in 1982 after redistricting put the two incumbents in the same seat.
Frank served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011, and as ranking member from 2011 until his retirement in 2013. He was a fierce advocate of social justice, civil rights, and legalized abortion. Among his legacies was the Dodd-Frank Act, which overhauled financial regulation on Wall Street after the 2008 crisis, increasing bank oversight, creating consumer protections, and establishing mechanisms to reduce systemic economic risk.
He became one of the first openly gay members of Congress.
His older sister, Ann Frank Lewis, spent years as a powerful Democratic insider. She served as political director of the Democratic National Committee in the 1980s, and later as White House Communications Director during the Clinton administration.
Frank entered hospice last month.
In addition to his sister, Frank is survived by his husband, Jim Ready.