Former Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage die in a car crash yesterday.
Former U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, a Republican who held “endangered salmon bakes” and once accused federal agents of using black helicopter gunships, died Monday in a car crash, her daughter said. She was 68.
Chenoweth-Hage, whose arch-conservative, often libertarian and sometimes extreme views made her popular with militia movements, was the passenger in a one-car crash near Tonopah, Nev., 172 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said her daughter Meg Chenoweth Keenan. No one else was seriously hurt, she said.
The Nevada Highway Patrol said Chenoweth-Hage was pronounced dead at the scene. Though other family members were in the car — including the driver, daughter-in-law Yelena Hage, 24, and Hage’s 5-month-old son Bryan. Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Rocky Gonzalez said Chenoweth-Hage was holding the baby and wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Both Chenoweth-Hage and the baby were thrown from the car but the child “miraculously” had only minor injuries, Gonzalez said.
Chenoweth was one of the strangest Members of Congress in my memory and the fact that she was driving around, unseatbelted, with a baby in her lap is not surprising. That the child’s mother let that happen is another thing.
