NATION : Ex-Congressman Pattison Dies; Advocate of Seniority Reforms
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TROY, N.Y. — Former Rep. Edward (Ned) Pattison, president of Congress’s famed post-Watergate class of 75 freshmen Democrats, died Wednesday night of cancer. He was 58.
Pattison was a key member of the reform coalition that toppled the blind seniority system and other restrictive rules that had guided the House. He also was an architect of the 1976 modernization and reform of the federal copyright law.
The liberal Democrat, elected in 1974, was ousted from his conservative district in 1978 by Rep. Gerald Solomon, a Republican, after confessing he once smoked marijuana and after bucking the National Rifle Assn. on gun control.
Pattison had returned to his law practice at his family’s century-old law firm in Troy.
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