Eliot Engel, a prominent voice on foreign affairs in the House, dies at 79

Eliot L. Engel, a former chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs who represented New York in Congress for more than three decades, died April 10 in the Bronx. He was 79.

His family announced the death in a statement but did not cite a cause.

Mr. Engel served 16 terms in the House, rising to become the chamber’s longest-serving member from New York and one of its most senior Democrats. Amid the coronavirus pandemic and a reckoning over racial justice, he suffered an upset defeat in the 2020 primary, losing to Jamaal Bowman, a Black middle school principal endorsed by national progressives.

Representing a district that included portions of Westchester County and the Bronx, Mr. Engel was haunted by back-to-back gaffes on the campaign trail. When a reporter questioned him about being at his Washington-area residence rather than back home in New York, he responded, “I’m in both places.”

Two weeks later, he was caught on a hot mic imploring an organizer to let him speak at a news conference on protests over the killing of George Floyd. “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care,” he said.

In Congress, Mr. Engel championed a center-left, interventionist approach to foreign policy, serving since 2019 as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He faced criticism from colleagues at times for his support of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which he came to regret, and for his rejection of the Iran nuclear deal.

Mr. Engel played a central role in the 2019 impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump over his dealings with Ukraine, requesting testimony and documents, issuing subpoenas and participating in closed-door depositions alongside the House Intelligence and Oversight committees. The House voted that December to impeach Trump on charges that he abused his office and obstructed Congress. He was acquitted by the Senate less than two months later.

Looking back on his time in office, Mr. Engel said he remained especially proud of championing the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999, with an aim at halting the ethnic cleansing of Muslims. The airstrikes helped lead to autonomy for a new state, Kosovo, where Mr. Engel was hailed as a hero. A street in Pec, a city in western Kosovo that is also known as Peja, was named in his honor.

“With Kosovo, this was working against a genocide in the heart of Europe,” Mr. Engel told Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin in 2020. “And as someone who is very knowledgeable about the Holocaust, I thought we couldn’t just leave it where people in Kosovo would just be slaughtered.”

Born in the Bronx on Feb. 18, 1947, Eliot Lance Engel was the son of an ironworker and the grandson of Jewish immigrants who fled czarist Russia. He grew up in Bronx housing projects, attended New York City public schools and graduated from Hunter College. Mr. Engel worked as a schoolteacher and guidance counselor, earned a law degree and served in the New York State Assembly before being elected to Congress in 1988.

Mr. Engel “helped shape American foreign policy with strength and principle — advancing democracy, standing up for human rights and reinforcing our alliances,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said in a statement Friday.

Reflecting on his career, Mr. Engel held an optimistic view of the role the United States could hold on the world stage. “If we want to effectuate change in the world, if there are things we want to see in the world, if we are going to be the world leader, there are responsibilities that come with that,” he told Rogin.

“We are the leaders, and we should act like it.”