1969 Wharton MBA graduate and United States Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) died on April 22.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scott\u00a0\u2014\u00a0who was first elected to Congress in 2002 \u2014\u00a0received a Master of Business Administration degree from the Wharton School. He was the Democrats\u2019 ranking member on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture after having once served as the panel\u2019s first Black chairman, despite most recently representing a metropolitan district around Atlanta.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of five Penn alumni in the 119th session of the U.S. Congress, Scott was running for reelection this fall.<\/p>\n
He was a leading voice for his party on issues related to farm aid policy and food aid for consumers and a prominent Black member of the party\u2019s moderate Blue Dog Caucus.<\/p>\n
However, Scott faced criticism and concerns in recent years because of declining health, enduring a primary challenge in 2024 and facing another one at the time of his death.<\/p>\n
Get the DP delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n
Sign Up<\/a><\/p>\n Democrats on Capitol Hill praised the longtime lawmaker.<\/p>\n \u201cThe news of Congressman Scott\u2019s passing is deeply sad,\u201d House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters.<\/p>\n \u201cDavid Scott was a trailblazer who served district that he represented admirably, rose up from humble beginnings to become the first African American ever to chair the House Ag Committee,\u201d Jeffries said. \u201cHe cared about the people that he represented. He was fiercely committed to getting things done for the people of the great state of Georgia, and he\u2019ll be deeply missed.<\/p>\n The congressman was not especially active on the campaign trail in 2026 but had been dismissive of pressure to retire.<\/p>\n \u201cThank God I\u2019m in good health, moving, and doing the people\u2019s work,\u201d Scott said in 2024.<\/p>\n Scott\u2019s death slightly widens the Republicans\u2019 narrow House majority going into the thick of this midterm election year.<\/p>\n Senior reporter Arti Jain covers state and local politics and can be reached at jain@thedp.com<\/a>. At Penn, she studies economics and political science. Follow her on X @arti_jain_<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1969 Wharton MBA graduate and United States Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) died on April 22.\u00a0 Scott\u00a0\u2014\u00a0who was first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-173096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-philadelphia","9":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","10":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}