But it surely was a transparent victory for Mr. McCloskey, who stated he had unmasked Mr. Robertson as “the fraud he’s.” (Mr. Robertson, who give up the presidential race, did serve in Korea, however mainly as a provide officer removed from fight obligation.)
Trying a political comeback in 2006, Mr. McCloskey misplaced a main battle towards Consultant Richard W. Pombo, a seven-term Republican who opposed environmental reforms. Mr. McCloskey, ever the maverick, endorsed the Democrat, Jerry McNerney, within the normal election, and Mr. Pombo misplaced. The subsequent 12 months, at age 79, Mr. McCloskey switched his affiliation to the Democratic Get together.
“The brand new model of Republicanism,” which he described as hostile to progressive causes, had lastly led him to desert the social gathering he joined in 1948, Mr. McCloskey wrote in a letter to The Tracy Press, a California weekly whose articles and editorials had been extensively mentioned in information and opinion boards within the state.
Mr. McCloskey had lived for a few years in Woodside and had a house in Portola Valley, each within the Bay Space, in addition to a farm in Rumsey, northwest of Sacramento. He was a trustee for the Monterey Institute of Worldwide Research and led efforts to assist veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars obtain faculty educations on their return from obligation.
Mr. McCloskey and Helen McCloskey are the topics of a documentary movie, “Helen and the Bear,” launched not too long ago by his niece Alix Blair, a filmmaker.
“Simply as he lived his life with braveness, motion, and compassion,” Ms. Blair stated within the household assertion, “Pete introduced these qualities to their marriage. The movie is a celebration of his openheartedness.”