Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat first elected to the House in 1996, died on Wednesday, his office announced on X. He was 87 and would have been the oldest member of the House if reelected in November. 

“Bill fought to his last breath to return to the job he cherished and the people he loved,” the post said. “Bill lived his entire life in Paterson and had an unwavering love for the city he grew up in and served. He is now at peace after a life time devoted to our great nation America.”

A veteran of New Jersey’s brand of politics who dominated his home Passaic County, Pascrell was known for his pugnacious demeanor in promoting tax enforcement and ensuring “tax fairness” for all income levels. To achieve that, “everybody’s got to pull on the rope the same,” he said.

An Army veteran and one-time semi-professional baseball player, Pascrell was a teenager when his uncle took him to his first ward meeting in the city of Paterson, then a factory town with a thriving textile business. The rough-and-tumble political arena left an impression on Pascrell.

“There’s a lot of fist fights … I’m gonna like this,” he recalled in an interview. “I did. I stayed with it since I was 16 years old.”

While he saw far fewer physical melees between parties in Congress, Pascrell said he stuck by the lessons he learned from his first exposure to politics.

“See it through or else don’t start it,” he said. And when you are in a fight, “never yield.”

In the 118th Congress, Pascrell was the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee, having previously spent more than two years as the panel’s chairman.

He and fellow Ways and Means Democrats scored several victories in the final months of the previous Congress, including enacting a major tax and social spending budget reconciliation law and, after years of legal battles, acquiring six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns in the lame duck session after the 2022.

Pascrell waged a long campaign to tax “carried interest,” a form of compensation for investment fund managers that is not taxed like ordinary income, a situation he called a loophole that allows rich individuals to avoid fair taxation.

He repeatedly introduced legislation to change inheritance rules as well. His bill on the so-called stepped-up basis would have changed existing tax law so that when someone dies and passes on property, the inheritor would pay capital gains taxes based on the fair market rate of the inherited assets, with a few exceptions.

Pascrell’s position on the Ways and Means Committee also gave him a platform to fight to restore deductions for state and local tax payments, which Republicans capped in their 2017 tax law.

The cap on the SALT deduction hit people in the top income brackets hardest, but in states with high local property and income taxes such as New Jersey, it was also felt by less wealthy families. As a result, Pascrell framed his tax proposals as benefiting the middle class.

Representing a manufacturing-heavy district, he was a close ally of labor unions and focused on ensuring that countries trading with the U.S. complied with international labor standards. 

One recurring bipartisan cause for Pascrell was research on and treatment of brain injuries. Inspired by the plight of a constituent, he co-founded the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force in 2001. The issue took on added importance after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks because of a spike in veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with wounds from improvised explosive devices. 

Pascrell was born in Paterson, N.J., where his Italian immigrant grandparents settled. His father worked for the railroad. The first member of his family to go to high school, Pascrell was an all-state third baseman, played semi-professional baseball for a team in Clifton and tried out for the Philadelphia Phillies after finishing his schooling in the early 1960s. 

While in Congress, he shared his expertise for years as a first base coach for the Democrats’ baseball team during the annual Congressional Baseball Game. 

A graduate of Fordham University, Pascrell was one of the only children from his neighborhood to go to college. His father hoped for him to become a lawyer, but he opted instead to go to graduate school for philosophy. Pascrell later worked as a high school history teacher in nearby Paramus.

In 1974, he became director of public works in Paterson and was a campaign volunteer for Democratic Rep. Robert A. Roe and others. He was appointed to the Paterson Board of Education and later was elected its president. Pascrell won a seat in the state Assembly in 1987.

Starting in 1990 he simultaneously served as Paterson’s mayor. He promoted a law-and-order agenda, even interfering with the communications of drug dealers by personally ripping out the lines and receivers of pay telephones that had not been issued a city permit.

In 1996, Pascrell took on Rep. Bill Martini, who had been swept into office with the 1994 Republican revolution — ending 34 years of Democratic hegemony in the 8th District in the process. Pascrell won a tight race, then raised enough campaign cash to dissuade Martini from attempting a rematch.

He cruised to reelection until 2012, when a new congressional map put Paterson in the 9th District. Pascrell had to battle eight-term Democratic Rep. Steven R. Rothman, who saw the 9th District he had represented as his best chance for survival. Their bitter primary split the national and state Democratic parties.

Former President Bill Clinton swung through the district with an endorsement for Pascrell; Rothman, who portrayed himself as more reliably liberal, got the tacit support of President Barack Obama. In the end, Pascrell walloped Rothman by 22 points, and he had won comfortably since.

For all his exterior toughness, Pascrell had a soft side that he said was a little different than his public persona. He loved reading and writing poetry. And in true Italian spirit, he loved to play bocce: “It’s almost as relaxing as poetry.”