U.S. Sen Jim Inhofe’s farewell speech looks back on Senate career

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe gave his farewell speech on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon.

No snowballs were involved.

Inhofe, who turns 88 on Thursday, is in the final weeks of a political career that stretches back to the mid-1960s, and to a congressional career that began with his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986 and the Senate in 1994.

Inhofe talked about friends, past and present, Republican and Democrat, and said, “Real friendship exists in the Senate, but nobody hears about it.

“It’s not newsy,” he said. “The media doesn’t care if everybody loves each other.”

He remembered the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who Republicans vilified, changing the floor schedule so Inhofe could get to a grandson’s football games.

He remembered his leadership partner on the Environment and Public Works Committee, California Democrat Barbara Boxer, and former senators Ted Kennedy, Orrin Hatch and Mike Enzi, all deceased. He praised Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed, with whom he’s traded the top spots on the Armed Services Committee in recent years.

“The secret to getting things done in the Senate is determination, but also the trust and respect of the person across the table from you,” Inhofe said.

He remembered the late Sen. Robert Byrd calling him “young man” on Inhofe’s 60th birthday, and lecturing him on the difference between the House and Senate.

“And there’s the one we all love,” Inhofe said, “(Maine Sen.) Susan Collins. And not just because of her lobster rolls.”

Inhofe also delved into his relationship with the late Doug Coe, for many years head of the secretive but influential evangelical group known as The Fellowship. It was Coe, Inhofe said, who persuaded him to become involved in Africa.

Since then, Inhofe has made more than 170 trips to Africa and become perhaps the Senate’s most knowledgeable and connected authority on African politics.

“I said ‘no’ to him for eight years,” Inhofe said. “I finally said yes, and to this day I can’t say why.

“I developed a deep love for the people of Africa, and became convinced that building lasting relationships there is essential to our interests,” he said.

Inhofe did not mention what is for many the defining moment of his Senate career — a 2015 speech in which he threw a snowball in a somewhat-but-not-entirely tongue-in-cheek poke at global warming. He didn’t call climate change a hoax. But he did vent one more time about environmentalists and the Obama administration’s “radical (environmental) policy.”

“What it was really about was giving Washington bureaucrats sweeping power over our lives,” he said.

Coincidentally, Inhofe’s farewell speech occurred immediately after his Senate colleagues passed, with 62 votes, a procedural motion on a bill giving federal protection to same-sex marriages — another sore point for Inhofe over the years.

He didn’t mention it Wednesday, but he did vote against the motion.

Reed, who spoke after Inhofe, called the retiring senator “a fierce advocate for the people of Oklahoma” known for “unswerving honesty and integrity.”

Oklahoma’s junior and soon-to-be senior senator, James Lankford, said, “The people of Oklahoma know he loves them.”

Inhofe, in closing, acknowledged his wife Kay and “the people of Oklahoma. Thank you for all you’ve done for me. Thank you very much. I love you guys.”