ASTORIA, Oregon – Steve Forrester, former editor and publisher of The Daily Astorian, will interview Marc Johnson, author of Mansfield and Dirksen: Giants in the Senate on Thursday, May 23, at 6:30 pm in the Astoria Public Library Flag Room. The Astorian is co-sponsoring the event with the Astor Library Friends Association. 

Senators Mansfield and Dirksen were majority and minority leaders of the U.S. Senate in the 1960s, and great friends. Despite strong political differences, they collaborated on a number of landmark policies during the turbulent 1960s. Forrester and Johnson will compare the U.S. Senate then versus now, and talk about national policies in the 1960s that affected the Pacific Northwest.

“In today’s era of polarized politics, it seems extraordinary that the Senate’s majority and minority leaders could put aside party rivalries to work together for the common good, but Mike Mansfield and Everett Dirksen shaped partisanship to create room for significant compromise. Marc C. Johnson deftly reveals how they made that work,” writes Donald A. Ritchie, Historian Emeritus of the U.S. Senate, in his review of Mansfield and Dirksen. 

Marc C. Johnson is an independent historian and senior fellow at the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana. He is the author of Tuesday Night Massacre: Four Senate Elections and the Radicalization of the Republican Party and Political Hell-Raiser: The Life and Times of Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana. 

Steve Forrester is the former editor and publisher of The Daily Astorian and author of Ahead of His Time: Richard Neuberger and the Decade that Changed Oregon.

Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event. Event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served, courtesy of the Astor Library Friends Association.

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