Jim McDermott

Jim McDermott died late on the night of Thursday, November 12, 2026, at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, at the age of 89. His brother, Mark McDermott, confirmed the death to The Seattle Times, saying "He died at peace." The news was reported on November 13, 2026, by The Seattle Times and FOX 13 Seattle. The cause of death has not been made public, and funeral or memorial arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.

Jim McDermott was born James Adelbert McDermott on December 28, 1936, in Chicago, Illinois, to Roseanna (Wabel) and William McDermott. He was the first person in his family to attend college. He finished high school in 1954, the year Congress added the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, a detail he would recall half a century later on the House floor.

McDermott graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois and earned his M.D. from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago in 1963. He completed an internship at Buffalo General Hospital in Buffalo, New York, in 1964, a two-year psychiatry residency at the University of Illinois Research and Educational Hospital, and fellowship training in child psychiatry at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle from 1966 to 1968. He then served in the United States Navy Medical Corps from 1968 to 1970 as a psychiatrist in California during the Vietnam War, reaching the rank of lieutenant commander.

McDermott was elected to the Washington House of Representatives from Seattle's 43rd legislative district in 1970 and served from 1971 to 1973. Instead of seeking re-election he ran for governor in 1972 and lost the Democratic primary to former governor Albert Rosellini. Elected to the Washington State Senate in 1974, he served from 1975 to 1987 and wrote the legislation that became the Washington State Basic Health Plan, an early state programme offering health insurance to the unemployed and working poor.

In 1980, with the backing of Senator Warren Magnuson and the state AFL-CIO, he defeated sitting Democratic Governor Dixy Lee Ray in the primary by 57 to 42 percent, but lost the general election to Republican John Spellman, 57 to 43 percent. In 1984 he ran a third time, carrying red apples around the state to promote his "Apple agenda" (Affordable health care, Promotion of jobs, Protection of the environment, Life with hope and without fear, and Excellence in education), but lost the primary to Booth Gardner. In 1987 he left the Senate to become a Foreign Service medical officer based in Zaire, providing psychiatric care to Foreign Service, USAID and Peace Corps personnel in sub-Saharan Africa.

When Mike Lowry left the 7th district seat to run for the Senate in 1988, McDermott came home from Africa and won with 71 percent of the vote. He held the seat from January 3, 1989, to January 3, 2017, winning re-election thirteen times. Even in the Republican wave of 1994 he took 75 percent of the vote.

He chaired the House Ethics Committee from 1993 to 1995 and then served as its ranking Democrat. He sat for years on the Ways and Means Committee, including its Health Subcommittee, and on the Budget Committee, and co-chaired the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Kidney Caucus and the Afterschool Caucus.

His legislative work included the AIDS Housing Opportunity Act of 1990, which created the HOPWA programme; the Cedar River Watershed Land Exchange Act of 1992, giving Seattle greater control of its main water source; the African Growth and Opportunity Act measures of 2004; the Depleted Uranium Study amendment of 2006; the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008; the emergency unemployment compensation extensions of 2008 and 2009; the Conflict Minerals Trade Act, which became section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010; and bills that led the Army to overturn the convictions of Black soldiers after the 1944 Fort Lawton Riot. He supported the Affordable Care Act and introduced the American Health Security Act of 2015, a single-payer proposal. He also repeatedly introduced bills to regulate and tax online gambling and sponsored tax parity legislation for same-sex couples and domestic partners.

McDermott was married twice. He and Virginia Beattie McDermott divorced in 1989. He married Therese Hansen in 1997, and they divorced in 2012. He had two children and three grandchildren. He was an Episcopalian. After leaving Congress he kept a home in Seattle but lived for much of the year in Civrac-en-Médoc, near Bordeaux, France, where, after vacationing in 2017, he bought a cottage and a hectare of vineyard in a wine cooperative.

Health care was the thread through his whole career. As a physician he argued for a Canadian-style single-payer system, and in 2015 he told the House that his American Health Security Act recognised "that healthcare is a human right." He was a leading member of the Progressive Caucus, opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, backed a 2008 effort to impeach President George W. Bush, and championed foster children, people living with HIV and AIDS, the unemployed and trade links with Africa. On April 28, 2004, leading the House in the Pledge of Allegiance, he left out the words "under God", later explaining that he had reverted to the pledge as taught when he was a child.

McDermott is remembered in Washington state as the architect of the Basic Health Plan and in Congress as one of the most consistent voices for universal health coverage across almost three decades. His HOPWA programme for housing people living with HIV had grown to a 335 million dollar federal budget line by 2010, his foster care law extended support to young people up to age 21, and the conflict minerals rule he pushed changed supply chains for gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten. A United Nations Security Council expert group called the legislation a "catalyst" for efforts to cut off funding for armed groups in Congo. His retirement in 2016 opened the seat for Pramila Jayapal.

On August 22, 2007, King Letsie III of Lesotho knighted McDermott in recognition of his leadership on the African Growth and Opportunity Act. In 2011 he received a plaque from Indonesian diplomat Firdaus Dahlan. Former President Barack Obama described him as "a much-needed voice for the nation's most vulnerable."

In the autumn of 2002 McDermott visited Iraq with Representatives David Bonior and Mike Thompson. His prediction from Baghdad that President Bush would "mislead the American public" to justify military action brought fierce criticism and the nickname "Baghdad Jim". In 2008 a federal indictment alleged that the trip, paid for by the charity Life for Relief and Development, had been arranged with Iraqi intelligence money; those charges were later dropped. An aide had said in 2004 that McDermott was not aware of any Saddam Hussein link to the trip.

In 1997 McDermott, then the senior Democrat on the Ethics Committee, gave reporters a tape of an illegally intercepted 1996 telephone call in which Speaker Newt Gingrich and Republican leaders including John Boehner discussed his ethics case. Boehner sued. A divided appeals court ruled against McDermott in 2006 and again en banc in 2007, the Supreme Court declined review, and in 2008 he was ordered to pay Boehner about 1.05 million dollars in fees, costs and interest. The House Ethics Committee formally rebuked him in 2006.

McDermott was a frequent guest on cable news and online programmes, including MSNBC's The Ed Show, PoliticsNation and HuffPost Live, and his congressional office posted floor speeches on health care, Medicare and unemployment insurance to YouTube. He also wrote columns for The Huffington Post and The Nation.