Hatch, Orrin, 1934-

Orrin Grant Hatch (born March 22, 1934) is an American attorney, retired politician, and composer. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a United States Senator from Utah from 1977 to 2019. He is the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senator in history and the longest-serving U.S. Senator from Utah.

Born in Homestead Park, Pennsylvania, he received early education in the public schools of Pittsburgh before earning a B.A. from Brigham Young University and a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. After graduation, Hatch worked as an attorney in Pittsburgh and moved to Utah in 1969, where he continued to practice law. In 1976, in his first run for public office, Hatch was elected to the United States Senate. Running on the promise of term limits, he defeated three-term incumbent Democrat Frank Moss. Hatch would go on to be re-elected six times, announcing in early 2018 that he would not seek re-election to an eighth term.

Hatch currently holds the distinction of having passed more legislation than any other Senator alive today. In so doing, he earned a reputation as one of the most effective and bipartisan lawmakers of all time. In total, he sponsored or cosponsored more than 750 bills that became law. Throughout his service, Senator Hatch had the distinction of serving in numerous leadership positions. He was one of only a few Senators in history to serve as Chairman of three major Senate Committees: the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee (now called the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, 1981-1987), the Senate Judiciary Committee (1995-2001; 2001; 2003-2005), and the Senate Finance Committee (2015-2019). In addition to his formal leadership positions, Senator Hatch was long regarded as among the nation’s elder statesmen who—even before election by his colleagues as President pro tempore of the Senate—played a prominent role in revitalizing the Senate’s historic traditions, safeguarding its rules and precedents, and defending its institutional prerogatives.