EX-SEN. DANFORTH WILL SPEAK AT SEMO

John C. Danforth, a former U.S. senator from Missouri, will speak Thursday at Southeast Missouri State University.

The lecture, the second in the university's Public Issues Forum series, will be at 7:30 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom.

Danforth is expected to discuss his political career and life and his views on current political events.

Danforth served in the Senate for 18 years. Prior to becoming senator, he was Missouri attorney general from 1968 to 1976, when his first of three Senate terms began. He currently is a partner in the law firm of Bryan Cave LLP and maintains offices in both Kansas City and St. Louis.

Danforth was the first senator from Missouri to chair a major legislative committee since World War I and the only Republican in the history of the state elected to three Senate terms.

"Sen. Danforth played a major role in revitalizing the Republican party 20 years ago and led the way to a long string of successful Republican candidates in Missouri," said Jack Stapleton, managing editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.

"After two terms as Missouri attorney general, he ran for the Senate and served three terms that really could be characterized as more statesman than political. He tackled big issues in a non-partisan way and established a standard in the Senate that you could view as non-partisan," said Stapleton.

Dr. Russell Renka, an associate professor of political science at Southeast, said Danforth "stood out in his career for having a certain personal integrity to be brought into politics.

"He wouldn't do crass political trading," Renka said. "He wasn't a grabber and user of power the way some are.

"He knew there were bound to be different points of view in a democracy, but people had to learn to do constructive things in spite of this. He worked across the aisle when he thought it was the right thing to do. By and large, he set a standard of integrity and voiced the need for not falling into the harsh dismissal of people that we see in the 1990s. He loathed that kind of politics."

Danforth graduated with honors from Princeton University in 1958. In 1963, he received a bachelor of divinity degree from Yale Divinity School and a bachelor of laws degree from Yale Law School. Before seeking public office, he practiced law in New York City and St. Louis.