But it was a transparent victory for Mr. McCloskey, who mentioned 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 responsibility.)
Attempting a political comeback in 2006, Mr. McCloskey misplaced a main combat towards Representative Richard W. Pombo, a seven-term Republican who opposed environmental reforms. Mr. McCloskey, ever the maverick, endorsed the Democrat, Jerry McNerney, within the common election, and Mr. Pombo misplaced. The subsequent 12 months, at age 79, Mr. McCloskey switched his affiliation to the Democratic Party.
“The new model of Republicanism,” which he described as hostile to progressive causes, had lastly led him to desert the party he joined in 1948, Mr. McCloskey wrote in a letter to The Tracy Press, a California weekly whose articles and editorials have been broadly 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 Area, in addition to a farm in Rumsey, northwest of Sacramento. He was a trustee for the Monterey Institute of International Studies and led efforts to assist veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars obtain school educations on their return from responsibility.
Mr. McCloskey and Helen McCloskey are the themes of a documentary movie, “Helen and the Bear,” launched lately by his niece Alix Blair, a filmmaker.
“Just as he lived his life with braveness, motion, and compassion,” Ms. Blair mentioned within the household assertion, “Pete introduced these qualities to their marriage. The movie is a celebration of his openheartedness.”